This post is brought to you by Ships of Steel edited by G. W. Thomas. (Check for a new price. Now $5.99 in ebook.) This anthology of Space Opera and SF Adventure tales features four novellas, each with its own illustration by M. D. Jackson. If you enjoy your Science Fiction with more action this is the book for you. Manhunts across a giant spaceship, a quest for stolen space pirate treasure with killer androids, a lost child that is the key to a mystery and a planet with a deadly secret that will cause a galactic war. These are stories that move but will also move you.
John W. Campbell took over Astounding Stories from F. Orlin Tremaine in 1938. The sub-editor took the magazine by the horns and made it the most important publication in SF. The Golden Age of Science Fiction begins with Campbell. By the 1950s, this will change, with new magazines like The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and Galaxy offering writers a narrative space free of Campbell, allowing the genre to become more literary and satirical again. In 1961, JWC would re-brand the old Pulp as Analog and continue with his more nuts&bolts approach to fiction.
In the years between 1938 and 1971, John W. Campbell was responsible for publishing many of the classics of Science Fiction. These naturally would appeal to Radio programs like X Minus One, Dimension X and later Mindwebs. Unlike the early SF Radio of Buck Rogers, these programs were slick, with strong narratives from the best magazines. The magazines were always twenty years ahead of other media, and you can see this here with 1950s shows based on tales from as early as 1938.
Lester Del Rey
“Helen O’Loy” (Astounding Science-Fiction, December 1938) is the Golden Age’s first robot classic, with a man building a wife.
Milton A. Rothman (as Lee Gregor)
“Heavy Planet” (Astounding Science-Fiction, August 1939) offers us a planet with gravity much stronger than Earth’s. Bad news for the crashed spaceship from Terra.
Robert A. Heinlein
“Requiem” (Astounding Science-Fiction, January 1940) has an old astronaut wanting to return to the space but paying with his life.
Isaac Asimov
“Nightfall” (Astounding Science-Fiction, September 1941) is Ike’s classic about a world where they can see the stars only once in a thousand years. The results are not good.
Alfred Bester
“Adam and No Eve” (Astounding Science-Fiction, September 1941) is Bester’s response to the SF cliche about two humans populating a planet and being Adam and Eve.
Clifford D. Simak
“Desertion” (Astounding Science Fiction, November 1944) was part of Simak’s classic City. In this tale the humans transcend earthly life, leaving the planet to the dogs.
Murray Leinster (Will F. Jenkins)
“First Contact” (Astounding Science Fiction, May 1945) is the classic that gave us the term “First Contact” for a story about meeting an alien race for the first time. For more on this concept, go here.
H. Beam Piper
“Time and Time Again” (Astounding Science Fiction, April 1947) is a time travel classic based on a fantasy many have: what if you could go back and change your youth? This one stood out for me because it’s Vincent Napoli who did the artwork. Napoli was associated more with Weird Tales than Astounding.
Jack Williamson
“With Folded Hands…” (Astounding Science Fiction, July 1947) is a later robot classic with robots doing all work for humanity, stealing our joy and humanity from life. Themes from this story and its sequel appeared in The Terminator movies (without credit, of course.)
Jack Vance
“Potters of Firsk” (Astounding Science Fiction, May 1950) offers the effects of colonization in space, with the potters’ work becoming desired all over the galaxy.
Tom Godwin
“The Cold Equations” (Astounding Science Fiction, August 1954) is Godwin’s one classic, with a space flier finding a woman stowed away on his ship. He has to make a terrible decision if he is to survive. Campbell made Godwin re-write the story until it had its bleak ending.
Bob Shaw
“Light of Other Days” (Analog, August 1966) is from Analog. I had to have at least one of the later magazine’s tales. This one by Bob Shaw is part of his Slow Glass series. Bob is the only UK author in this post.
Conclusion
As I was selecting stories for this post I noticed that the SF Radio shows used many more tales from Galaxy (will do in a later post) than Astounding. As Rod Serling found when doing SF from the magazines on The Twilight Zone, the quirky style of Galaxy is better suited to adaptation. (I am, of course, thinking of “It’s a Cookbook!”) Ray Bradbury shows up a lot too, and he never sold to Campbell. Ray was the opposite of a Campbell author.
Despite this fact, Astounding does offer this dozen and more (I was avoiding duplicates from the same authors), selecting from the classics of the Golden Age. How many times has “Helen O’Loy”, “With Folded Hands…”, “Nightfall” and “The Cold Equations” been anthologized? The 1940s belonged to JWC and Astounding, just as the 1950s would belong to H. L. Gold and Galaxy.
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