The World Beyond the Hill: Science Fiction and the Quest for Transcendence (47 page)

But he was ready to accept that challenge. It didn’t matter to him that his first story had been rejected. John Campbell had treated him and his writing with respect! More than that, Asimov had caught something crucial from Campbell—a spirit of enthusiasm and a sense of new possibility. Asimov desired no happier fate than to be allowed to write another science fiction story that John Campbell could see fit to publish.

Month after month, Asimov would journey to Campbell’s office with a new story in hand, not yet sure precisely what was required, but always hoping that he might have come closer to the mark this time. And month after month, Campbell would interrupt his work to give Asimov personal attention, read his latest story, and then promptly reject it.

At last, however, there came the wonderful day when Campbell perceived a faint possibility buried in an Asimov manuscript—the suggestion of possible social resistance to space travel. He called Asimov back to his office only one week after his usual monthly visit and told him to rewrite this latest effort putting social reaction at the center. Asimov did, and Campbell bought it, publishing it under the title “Trends” in the July 1939
Astounding.

Asimov would soon find himself adopted as John Campbell’s most favored pupil. And eventually, after two or three years of now-weekly visits, Asimov would justify Campbell’s faith in him by assuming a place as one of his most central innovators.

But who except John Campbell would ever have thought to see a potential giant of science fiction in the strange and hapless adolescent who first entered Campbell’s office clutching an unprintable story called “Cosmic Corkscrew”? Even Asimov himself couldn’t help but wonder about this:

Many years later I asked Campbell (with whom I had by then grown to be on the closest terms) why he had bothered with me at all, since that first story was surely utterly impossible.

“It was,” he said frankly, for he never flattered. “On the other hand, I saw something in
you.
You were eager and you listened and I knew you wouldn’t quit no matter how many rejections I handed you. As long as you were willing to work hard at improving, I was willing to work with you.”

That was John. I wasn’t the only writer, whether newcomer or oldtimer, that he was to work with in this fashion. Patiently, and out of his own enormous vitality and talent, he built up a stable of the best s.f. writers the world had, till then, ever seen.”
³⁵⁶

It was not merely that Campbell might groom and tutor and nudge a writer like Asimov until he was capable of producing the kind of work Campbell was seeking. When Campbell suggested to Asimov that as editor he wrote the stories that a hundred writers wrote, he wasn’t altogether exaggerating the case. In countless instances, Campbell prompted his writers by providing them with the basic ideas for new stories.

Some measure of the continuing degree of involvement, both direct and indirect, that Campbell might have in a writer’s fiction may be seen in his relationship with another early contributor, science fiction fan Lester del Rey.

Ramon Felipe Alvarez-del Rey (longer versions of his name have been offered) was a short, slight young man born in 1915, the largely self-educated son of a Minnesota tenant farmer. At the end of 1937, when he made his first story submission to Campbell, he was living in Washington, D.C., and falling in and out of different lines of work.

At first appearance, del Rey might not seem a prime candidate to write for Campbell. He was a feisty, opinionated little cuss, completely bent on living life according to his own lights. Far more important to him than the jobs he might hold was his pursuit of an ever-changing set of hobbies and interests, of which science fiction was just one.

But it happened that one day, as young Lester was reading the January 1938 issue of
Astounding
—the very issue in which John Campbell first announced his policy of change—he came to find a particular story intolerable rubbish, and hurled the magazine across the room in a sudden critical fit. His then-girlfriend wouldn’t hold still for this. She challenged him to do as well himself.

Del Rey wasn’t used to thinking of himself as a writer. But he knew that John Campbell was now editor of
Astounding,
and in the past he had written letters of comment to the SF magazines that had included words of praise for Campbell’s stories. He thought there was a good chance that Campbell would remember his name and at least give him some minimal attention. So he asked the girl if she would be willing to settle for a personal note of rejection. And she agreed.

“The Faithful,” the story that del Rey wrote in response to this challenge, was a nostalgic tale of loyal intelligent dogs as the heirs to a dying mankind. Del Rey thought of himself as writing a reply to the story he had so disliked—“Pithecanthropus Rejectus” by Manly Wade Wellman. But it is also possible that somewhere in the back of his mind were a few lines thrown out in the course of Don A. Stuart’s “Twilight”:

“Dogs. They must have been remarkable animals. Man was reaching his maturity then, and his animal friend, the friend who had followed him through a thousand millenniums to your day and mine, and another four thousand millenniums to the day of man’s early maturity, had grown in intelligence.”
³⁵⁷

But John Campbell didn’t reject his story outright, as del Rey had prepared himself to expect. Rather, he bought “The Faithful” and published it immediately in the April 1938
Astounding.

Quite naturally, then, del Rey tried dashing off several more SF stories. But these Campbell did reject. And at this point, del Rey was ready to consider his story sale a lucky fluke and conclude that he wasn’t really meant to be an SF writer. On to other things.

But Campbell wouldn’t let go of him. He needed his new writers, and he wasn’t about to let this del Rey slip away. What Campbell did was to write him a note that said: “Your story was darned well received, del Rey, and it’s been moving up steadily in the reader’s choice. But as I look through my inventory, I don’t find anything more by you. I hope you’ll remedy this.”
³⁵⁸

It was exactly the right tone to strike with del Rey—respectful of his independence, unpresuming, and thoroughly flattering in its receptivity. It was more than Lester could resist. He set out to study just what it was that Campbell really did want, and to see if he could supply it.

He looked in the market report of the latest issue of
Writer’s Digest.
There he found Campbell saying: “I want reactions rather than actions. I want human reactions. Even if your hero is a robot, he must have human reactions to make him interesting to the reader.”
³⁵⁹

The message was clear to del Rey—Campbell wanted science fiction humanized. It was this element in Campbell that had responded to del Rey’s story about intelligent dogs mourning the passage of man. Taking his clue from Campbell’s market report, del Rey sat right down and wrote a story about a man falling in love with a selfless female robot.

Campbell bought del Rey’s story, “Helen O’Loy,” and published it in the December 1938
Astounding.
It was one of the most popular stories of the year.

Shortly thereafter, Campbell wrote again to del Rey. But this time he didn’t merely urge del Rey to send him another story—he suggested the idea for one: Perhaps Neanderthal man wasn’t actually exterminated by Cro-Magnon, but died instead from the heartbreak and frustration of meeting culturally and technically superior human beings. Del Rey wrote his version of this in less than two hours—not sparing the human sentiment—and Campbell popped “The Day Is Done” right into the May 1939
Astounding.

And so it would go. During the Golden Age, del Rey would write stories for Campbell under his own name and no fewer than four pseudonyms. Some of these stories would be written completely on del Rey’s own initiative, but at least as often Campbell would have to seek del Rey out, woo him away from his latest hobby, and stimulate him with story ideas—all without offending del Rey by appearing to overdirect him.

Eventually, Campbell would entrust del Rey with the major idea of disaster in an industrial nuclear plant. And the short novel that del Rey produced, “Nerves” (
Astounding,
Sept. 1942), would become his best-known story.

Del Rey says of John Campbell:

He was, as I came to know, a great and creative editor. Nobody has any idea how many of the stories in his magazine came from ideas he suggested, but a group of us once determined that the figure must be greater than half. . . . Part of his success probably came from the fact that he gave just enough of an idea to inspire, but not so much as to stifle the writer’s own ideas.
³⁶⁰

The story seeds planted by Campbell might be plots or situations as specific as those in “The Day Is Done” or “Nerves.” But just as frequently, Campbell might hand a writer a universal principle that could be given fictional illustration in any number of different ways. Campbell would convey to the writer a sense of the relationship or operation he had in mind, and it was then up to the writer to elaborate his own particular example of the general case.

Fred Pohl can remember Campbell telling him: “When I think of a story idea, I give it to six different writers. It doesn’t matter if all six of them write it. They’ll all be different stories, anyway, and I’ll publish all six of them.”
³⁶¹

But as much as Campbell might contribute to the fiction that appeared in his magazines, he asked for an even greater measure of thought and effort in return. Campbell required commitment, insight and imagination from the writers he gave story ideas to. And if a writer should prove to have no grasp of the new vision; if he was not able to perceive that Campbell was handing him a seed and expecting back a universe; if he was unable both to speak to Campbell’s central concerns and also to present Campbell with wonders never seen before, then the editor would not bother to expend further energy and attention upon him.

As Campbell once said to Isaac Asimov: “If I give a story idea to a writer and get it back exactly as I told it to him, I don’t waste any more story ideas on him. I want it to grow and develop inside him. I want more back than I give. I’m selfish that way.”
³⁶²

But of all Campbell’s new writers of 1938, the one he valued the most was a man who already had his own individual sense of the new vision, a self-starter who didn’t have to be cajoled, stimulated, prompted or led into writing modern science fiction, but who had a natural affinity for this splendid new game. This was a tall, thin, highly erudite patrician named L. Sprague de Camp.
³⁶³

Lyon Sprague de Camp was born on November 27, 1907 in New York City. As a boy, he took his share of licks for being overly well-read and well-bred and for having a snooty name. However, without ever losing his aristocratic bearing, Sprague gradually managed to learn to get along in the rough-and-tumble world of the Twentieth Century by taking life as he found it, offering respect to all, cultivating a sense of humor, and becoming interested in the new science and technology.

John Carter of Mars, an early hero of his, had more than a little to do with how he met life.

De Camp majored in aeronautical engineering in college, and then did graduate work in engineering and economics. Like so many others, however, his immediate hopes for a career got sidetracked by the Depression. At the time he first met Campbell, he was the principal of the inventions and patents branch of the International Correspondence School in Scranton, Pennsylvania, a job that was much less grand than his title might suggest.

In 1937, his college roommate, John D. Clark, brought him into the informal circle of New York SF writers to which John Campbell belonged. De Camp had just sold a story to
Astounding,
but it hadn’t yet been published. Campbell was then still some months away from being hired as editor of the magazine.

The two men hit it off together immediately. De Camp, the beginning science fiction writer, was impressed by Campbell, the old pro. In those scuffling days, Campbell was more reserved and less aggressively argumentative a person than he would later become, and de Camp was struck by the shrewdness and quietly voiced good sense of his observations on writing.

But Campbell saw something special in de Camp, too.

When he became editor of
Astounding,
Campbell requested and bought a story, or even several, from most of the writers who had sat in with his old circle—Edmond Hamilton, Henry Kuttner, Manly Wade Wellman, Otto Binder, Frank Belknap Long. Of these, it was the ever-adaptable Jack Williamson who would work out the best for him. Starting with
The Legion of Time
in 1938, Campbell would be able to rely on Williamson to contribute a novel and a shorter story each year to
Astounding
or
Unknown.

However, out of all the SF writers he knew, it was the newcomer, L. Sprague de Camp whom Campbell picked to become his first major ally in the presentation of modern science fiction.

On the face of it, that might seem strange. De Camp’s first story, published in the last Tremaine-edited issue of
Astounding,
was lively and learned, but it was also clumsy. Moreover, de Camp did not know a lot about science fiction. He had never been a regular reader of the pulp magazines. His own influences in SF ran more to Edgar Rice Burroughs, Mark Twain, Lord Dunsany and E.R. Eddison than to E.E. Smith, Don A. Stuart and Stanley Weinbaum.

But three things in particular recommended de Camp to Campbell:

One was de Camp’s special background and experience. He had been editor of his college newspaper at Cal Tech, and he was co-author of a new book on patents and their management. De Camp was that altogether rare individual inside science fiction or out—the man who combined a sound technical education with the ability to express himself clearly and easily. John Campbell was prepared to appreciate a scientific man who knew how to write.

De Camp’s second attraction for Campbell was his temperament. To the outward eye, de Camp might be stiff, upright and thoroughly proper—a man of unimpeachable rationality. But, as Campbell soon came to recognize, lurking beneath this well-buttoned exterior there was another de Camp with urges to be a zany, a social critic and a romantic. Campbell, the professional provocateur, could respond to de Camp’s heretical inclinations.