John W. Campbell Summary

John W. Campbell, Jr., has been called perhaps the first writer to devote his life deliberately to science fiction, and certainly an examination of a career begun at the age of eighteen and continued ... Read more

Critical Essay by Sam Moskowitz There is a school of thought that holds that the dramatic Orson Welles War of the Worlds scare, on the evening of October 30, 1938, provided the real basis of the scie... Read more

Critical Essay by Jack P. Rawlins [The essay from which this excerpt is taken was originally presented as a lecture at the Eaton Conference on Science Fiction and Fantasy at the University of Califor... Read more

Critical Essay by Sam Moskowitz Campbell was a true giant in popularity among those authors who had grown out of the science-fiction magazines. The Mightiest Machine … epitomized the type of s... Read more

Critical Essay by Theodore Sturgeon John W. Campbell Jr., escaped from MIT and, a fine traditional sf writer himself (and for a time, as Don A. Stuart, a superb fantasist), took over the editorial ch... Read more

Critical Essay by Richard Hodgens [The essay from which this excerpt is taken was originally published in a different form in Film Quarterly, Winter 1959.] [The Thing from Another World, a 1951 fi... Read more

Critical Essay by Dan Miller In the pantheon of science fiction, Campbell ranks slightly higher than a deity, yet most readers new to SF know little of the basis for his reputation. This definitive c... Read more