John W. Campbell's birthday today 6/8/1910

[kennychaffin]

From Goodreads quote of the day:

"History does not always repeat itself. Sometimes it just yells, 'Can't you remember anything I told you?' and lets fly with a club."
- John W. Campbell Jr.
As a child, science fiction writer John W. Campbell (born June 8, 1910) was unable to tell his mother and her identical twin apart. He used the memory as inspiration for Who Goes There?, a short story about a shape-changing alien.

Wiki:

John Wood Campbell, Jr. (June 8, 1910 – July 11, 1971) was an American science fiction writer and editor. As editor of Astounding Science Fiction (later called Analog Science Fiction and Fact) from late 1937 until his death, he is generally credited with shaping the Golden Age of Science Fiction.

Isaac Asimov called Campbell "the most powerful force in science fiction ever, and for the first ten years of his editorship he dominated the field completely."

As a writer, Campbell published super-science space opera under his own name and moody stories under his primary and most famous pseudonym, Don A. Stuart. Campbell also wrote under the pen names Karl Van Kampen and Arthur McCann.[2] He stopped writing fiction after he became editor of Astounding.
....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_W._Campbell

 

[Hobbit]

Ooooh, thank you for the reminder, Kenny. And Happy 105th birthday to JWC, who (to put it mildly) deliberately liked to shake things up in his time.

I've been lucky enough to meet a few people in my time that knew him - their impressions vary quite a lot. If you were favoured, then he seems to have been a valuable friend. If you fell out of favour, or never were in favour, then JWC could be hard work and rather rude.

Reading the letters between JWC and Robert A Heinlein, though, are quite interesting, both when they were friends (to start with) and more professionally respected (at the end.) Though they fell out, there was always a degree of respect between the two.

I may read some more of these tonight.

 

[majawe13]

"Who Goes There?" is a fantastic short story. It's amazing how identical it is to John Carpenter's vision. Scary stuff!