Books: Astounding - The Golden Age of Science Fiction

 

(Drivebycuriosity) - I love science fiction and I enjoyed the novels & stories by Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clark, Frederic Pohl & Robert Heinlein and other scifi classics.  Therefore a recent book got my attention:  "Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction" by Alec Nevala-Lee (amazon). 

The author describes how the writer John W. Campbell became editor of the influential science fiction magazine "Astounding" and inspired and encouraged young authors like Robert Heinlein & Isaac Asimov, often trained scientists and engineers, starting in the 1940s.

For Campbell "science fiction is a problem solving medium. Man is a curious animal who wants to know how things work and, given enough time, can find out - If science fiction doesn`t deal with success or the road to success, then it isn`t science fiction at all. Mainstream literature is about failer, a literature of defeat. Science fiction is challenge and discovery". Campbell also claimed "there`s going to be a moon landing because of science fiction". During Campbell`s reign science fiction gained popularity. The science fiction writers got inspired by technological advances like the atomic bomb, satellites and the moon landing, but their writing may also have inspired many technological advances.

Nevala-Lee focuses on the lives of his protagonists. I learned a lot about Robert Heinlein`s sex life, Campbell`s family problems and Asimov´s conduct disorders, but the biographer devotes way too much room to Ron Hubbard, who was not important as a science fiction writer but developed Dianetics, a theory about psychology, and founded the Church of Scientology. In 1952 by Simon & Schuster published "The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology", edited by Campbell. The collection (23 stories) does not contain any story by Hubbard (wikipedia). I would rather liked to read more about the scifi stories published in the magazine. The book describes an interesting phase in the evolution of the science fiction genre but is a bit too long for my taste and has more information than I need to know (544 pages).