Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction

by Alec Nevala-Lee

Yet it also encourages us to see all problems as provinces of engineering, and science as the solution to the dilemmas that it creates. When we propose technological fixes for climate change, or place our hopes in the good intentions of a few visionary billionaires, we unconsciously endorse a view of the world straight out of the pages of Astounding.

These values were expressed through the figure of “the competent man,” whose very name points to the way in which science fiction encourages certain assumptions. Editors like Campbell tended to favor writers who looked like them, and from the start, fandom was overwhelmingly male.

Many of the same factors apply to race. Campbell’s writers and their characters were almost exclusively white, and he bears part of the blame for limiting the genre’s diversity. At best, this was a huge missed opportunity. Astounding, which questioned so many other orthodoxies and systems of power, rarely looked at racial inequality, and its lack of historically underrepresented voices severely constrained the stories that it could tell. At his worst, Campbell expressed views that were unforgivably racist, and even today, the most reactionary movements in modern fandom—with their deep distrust of women and minorities—have openly stated, “We have called for a Campbellian revolution in science fiction.”