John W Campbell stories

AE35Unit

AE35Unit

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Many will be familiar with the John W Campbell award but he also wrote SF. I've read Who Goes There? which forms the basis for the movie The Thing but never come across any others. Just how much did he write,and was it only before he became editor of a certain magazine?
 
IIRC, he started writing super science star smasher stories in the 30s as John W. Campbell - a few novels and a dozen or two stories - and then started writing more "thoughtful" pieces under the Don A. Stuart pseudonym from the mid-30s, which produced about a dozen or two more stories. He was one of the biggest writers of the era (probably with "Doc" Smith, Ed "World-Wrecker" Hamilton, and Weinbaum, though Weinbaum didn't do any star smashing).

After he became editor of Astounding, in late '38 or so, he wrote another one or two - I think also a collaboration for Unknown - but basically stopped as he could feed all his ideas to his "stable" and have them write the ideas for him. :)

I've only read The Cloak of Aesir (collection), The Best of John W. Campbell (collection, which almost completely contains Aesir and has many more stories), The Moon Is Hell (a pretty gritty story about trying to build a self-sustaining colony on the moon which also includes the Unknown story), and The Ultimate Weapon. I've also got The Mightiest Machine and The Space Beyond (collection) but haven't read them yet and just came across The Black Star Passes the other day. That's an "Arcot, Morey and Wade" story and I think his other main series was the "Penton and Blake" stories which especially influenced Asimov.

I'm sure there's stuff on the web that can give you a more detailed overview, though.

I'm surprised you haven't come across things like "Twilight", though - a Don A. Stuart story that's in The SFWA Hall of Fame, among others.
 
Ah yes Don A Stuart,thanks for reminding me! Of course I heard of the name but forgot all about it! And I never realised he was so prolific! Will see if I can find anything on bookmooch.com!
 
A lot of his super-science stuff can be found on Gutenberg:

Science Fiction (Bookshelf) - Gutenberg

His Stuart stuff is great. NESFA put a book of it out a few years ago. I read it recently and here is something I wrote about it:

Omphalos' Book Reviews: Book Info

I'd recommend that NESFA book if you are interested. It has pretty much all of the Stuart stuff, save for one or two fantasies, and includes some essays. If you want to go retro, then NESFA also sells a facsimile of Hyperion's Cloak of Aesir.

Hyperion Press / Classics of Science Fiction

I think that NESFA's book is probably the best buy though. You can get it at Amazon
 
Thanks Omphalos but i'm not in a position to buy new books plus i wouldn't buy a book unless I knew i'd like it. I found The Moon is Hell on bookmooch tho,so hopefully will have that in a few days,and totally free!
 
Bookmooch is like a trading site or something? Never used it.

I think that The Moon is Hell was published under Campbell's real name, so if its the "Campbell" stuff you are looking for, then you will probably enjoy at least the title story of that book. There is a difference between the stories he wrote as Campbell and as Stuart. If you can find the SFWA Hall of Fame Vol. I there, the one edited by Silverberg, its got what I consider to be Stuart/Campbell's best story in it. One called Twilight. That anthology is really a good one anyway, so if you can "mooch" that, I think one story will give you a much better idea of what Campbell was trying to do with his writing as Stuart then The Moon is Hell will, though The Moon is Hell is a good story. Plus The Moon is Hell also has a fantasy story in it that I never really liked, but YMMV.
 
Omphalos said:
Bookmooch is like a trading site or something? Never used it.

I think that The Moon is Hell was published under Campbell's real name, so if its the "Campbell" stuff you are looking for, then you will probably enjoy at least the title story of that book. There is a difference between the stories he wrote as Campbell and as Stuart. If you can find the SFWA Hall of Fame Vol. I there, the one edited by Silverberg, its got what I consider to be Stuart/Campbell's best story in it. One called Twilight. .
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Yes bookmooch is a book swap site where you list books you no longer want,fiction or no,and them mooch books that other people don't want. Have managed to find a lot of otherwise hard to find SF books thru it.
 
Super-science space opera. Dated. Not poorly written. If you want to see what Campbell is like pre-Stuart, that is probably the one to go with.
 
LOL! If you look at the links I provided above to the Gutenberg site, you will, I think, find all of those books for free.
 
Omphalos said:
LOL! If you look at the links I provided above to the Gutenberg site, you will, I think, find all of those books for free.
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Yea i know but I can't read ebooks unless I could get them on the DS. There's no way I'm sitting in front of a computer reading and my phone,which i'm using now,doesn't support pdf files. Wouldn't mind one of those Amazon things!
 
Kindle? I'd love one too. They are just too obscenely expensive for what you get though. Im all for paying $2.99 for electronic books, but $450 for the device is just crazy.
 
Omphalos said:
Kindle? I'd love one too. They are just too obscenely expensive for what you get though. Im all for paying $2.99 for electronic books, but $450 for the device is just crazy.
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450,wow! But i'm sure the prices will come down once others get in on the technology,just like digital SLR cameras were once prohibitively expensive but one can be bought for less than that kindle! But i'm sure that one day,just like in an Asimov story i read,everyone will be reading their books on one.
 
I just checked. Its down to $360, but still, too much for what you get.
 
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