Visions of Tomorrow, Alec Nevada-Lee Astounding

  I have finished reading Astounding, Alec Nevada-Lee's book on John W. Campbell and some of the writers most associated with Astounding, Isaac Asimov,  Robert A, Heinlein, and L. Ron. Hubbard. It was a good read, but fair warning, all four were deeply flawed individuals, though often in different ways. I had been following Alec's blog for years, so this came as no surprise to me. That said, Asimov and especially Heinlein were important authors to me when I began reading science fiction and the accounts of their death did make that child in me feel a bit sad, even though the works I remembered them for were written decades before they passed away. Also "Twilight" and "Who Goes There" by Campbell, writing as Don A. Stuart, remain two of my favourite science fiction stories. Alec's book delivered what it promised, an understanding of John W. Campbell's influence in the field for good or ill. Some of the behaviour mentioned in the book is chilling, so if you would like to read something a little more upbeat about Astounding, it's authors and the science fiction of the period I will make some suggestions below.

I did want to pass along two items related to Alec's research for the book. From his website:

"And I can reveal now that this was all in preparation for a more ambitious project that has been in the works for a while—a visual essay on the art of Astounding and Unknown that has finally appeared online in the New York Times Book Review, with the highlights scheduled to be published in the print edition this weekend. It took a lot of time and effort to put it together, especially by my editors, and I’m very proud of the result, which honors the visions of such artists as H.W. Wesso, Howard V. Brown, Hubert Rogers, Manuel Rey Isip, Frank Kelly Freas, and many others. It stands on its own, but I’ve come to think of it as an unpublished chapter from my book that deserves to be read alongside its longer companion. As I note in the article, it took years for the stories inside the magazine to catch up to the dreams of its readers, but the artwork was often remarkable from the beginning. And if you want to know what the fans of the golden age really saw when they imagined the future, the answer is right here."

https://nevalalee.wordpress.com/2019/01/11/visions-of-tomorrow/

Link to the (wonderful)  New York Times Book Review article.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/10/books/review/astounding-science-fiction-magazine.html

In his year end review Alec also notes "that I saw John W. Campbell’s Frozen Hell, based on the original manuscript of “Who Goes There?” that I rediscovered at Harvard, blow past all expectations on Kickstarter. (The book, which will include introductions by me and Robert Silverberg, is scheduled to appear in June.) " 

Full post here: https://nevalalee.wordpress.com/2018/12/31/the-last-resolution/

Kickstarter (closed) information:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wildsidepress/frozen-hell-the-book-that-inspired-the-thing

  

Wildside Press will be selling copies:

http://wildsidepress.com/kickstarter-project-international-backers/

And as promised, some other titles about Astounding and it's authors. Bud Webster's Past Masters, a number of his essays can also be found online, see my Handy Resources. The other items are out of print as far as I know. 

A Requiem for Astounding (1964) 

A very detailed look at Astounding by an early fan.

Two titles by Sam Moskowitz, a fairly feisty (polarizing?) member of First Fandom. But he did seem to know everyone and claimed to have read pretty much everything.  I do enjoy his profiles, and it is nice to hear from someone who actually knew at least some of the early science fiction writers.

 

 Cover credits:

Photo one L-R, Hubert Rogers, Rogers, Rogers

Photo two, design Ploy Sirpant, illustration Travis Coburn

Photo three L-R, Rogers, Howard V. Brown, H.W. Scott, Wesso

Photo four L-R, Timmins, Kelly Freas, Freas

Who Goes There?, Richard Powers 

Sam Moskowitz SF Historial New Arrivals

 

Last month I noted that I had purchased Sam Moskowitz's Seekers of Tomorrow.

I have since read a number of the entries on SF authors and enjoyed them enough that I purchased another of his non-fiction works Explorers of the Infinite which deals with earlier figures of interest in the history of SF. I also purchased two anthologies edited by Moskowitz, The Coming of the Robots and Exploring Other Worlds.

Moskowitx is an significant figure in early SF history. As a fan he participated in some of the early feuds, which he chronicled in his book The Immortal Storm: A History of Science Fiction Fandom (1954)

"As a child, Moskowitz greatly enjoyed reading science fiction pulp magazines. As a teenager, he organized a branch of the Science Fiction League. Meanwhile, Donald A. Wollheim helped organize the Futurians, a rival club with Marxist sympathies. While still in his teens, Moskowitz became chairman of the first World Science Fiction Convention held in New York City in 1939.^[2] He barred several Futurians from the convention because they threatened to disrupt it. This event is referred to by historians of fandom as the "Great Exclusion Act"."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Moskowitz

Explorers of the Infinite; Shapers of Science Fiction, 

The World Publishing Company, (1957) 1963, Jacket Design by Ellen Raskin

 He was an author, an editor of both magazines and anthologies, taught one of the first courses on SF and was a significant collector of early SF.

"Along with Forrest J Ackerman, he was the most significant twentieth-century American collector of sf books and memorabilia, describing his extraordinary library in "Anatomy of a Collection" (in Science/Fiction Collections: Fantasy, Supernatural & Weird Tales, anth 1984, ed Hal W Hall). Tragically, his library was dispersed after his death."

http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/moskowitz_sam

As I have mentioned I really enjoyed his profiles of writers like A. E. Van Vogt, E.E. (Doc) Smith,  Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Fritz Lieber, and Arthur C. Clarke among others. While his non-fiction has been criticized for a lack of scholarly rigor, I instead got the impression of a man who knew many of the writers through a long connection to the field, and had a greater knowledge of how their character and personalties influenced their writing than someone who encountered them only through reading their works, and reviews and critical discussions of their works by others. I particularly liked his discussion of A.E. Van Vogt an author I think is now often dismissed or misunderstood. It is said that in the early days of SF a fan could read everything published in the field. I am not sure this is true, pulps and early magazines came and went at a furious rate, but I think they could have read the most significant works. And Moskowitz seems to have tried.

"The entire published science-fiction output of every science-fiction writer discussed in this book (the average career spans more than twenty-five years) was read or rather re-read. ….. Quite literally, it took thirty years of reading  and collecting to make the writing of this book possible." (5) Seekers of Tomorrow, Masters of Modern Science Fiction, Sam Moskowitz, (1961)

"Moskowitz did more original research in this field than any other scholar of his period and few since; no later history of sf has failed to make use of Moskowitz's painstaking work, especially his research into the early History of SF."

http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/moskowitz_sam

I wanted to look at some anthologies edited by Moskowitz to see which stories he selected and what notes he provided. When I saw these covers on the ISFDB database I knew these were the one's I wanted, I loved the covers, I also liked the fact they came with the original Canadian Price stickers. (As an aside, Canadians always pay more for books than purchasers in the United States regardless of the exchange rate, an irritant constantly reinforced by the fact that both prices are listed on the books.) 

The Coming of the Robots, Collier Books, 1963, sadly the artist is not credited. One has to wonder how the robots are going to deal with the large stones, or whether like the early Daleks of Dr. Who, their intentions benevolent or not, may be thwarted by the same mobility issues. 

Exploring Other Worlds, Collier Books, 1963, again ISFDB cannot identify the cover artist.