If science-fiction has a name, it's John W. Campbell. As editor of Astounding Science Fiction during the crucial Golden Age of Science Fiction from 1937 until the end of the Second World War, he defined the form and tropes of the genre. He was responsible for nurturing it as a serious endeavor, as real literature, and as a form distinct from fantasy, horror, adventure, and other speculative fiction. Even as the genre grew beyond the control of any one man, and Campbell slipped towards crankdom, he was still the Institution, the editor who authors measured their ambition against. Nevala-Lee links Campbell to the three most important men in his life: Asimov, Heinlein, and L. Ron Hubbard, and provides a fascinating story of the immense work of these visionaries, and their equally immense flaws.

Campbell had an unhappy childhood, caught between an authoritarian father and a manipulative mother. At worst, the cruelty of his mother and her identical twin sister provided the inspiration for his story "Who Goes There?", adapted in film as The Thing. At best, they provided him with drive and editorial skills. Certainly, Campbell's recollections of his childhood display a deep ambivalence and surety that his parents wounded him psychologically. Large, intense, almost friendless, with the ambition to be an engineer but without the talent, Campbell was hired as editor of Astounding Stories almost as a fluke. It was the job he was born to have.

As editor of Astounding, quickly renamed to Astounding Science Fiction, Campbell created a new form of literature for modernity, centered around advances in science and technology, rational extrapolation of those advances, and the figure of the 'competent man', the engineer-hero who analyzes problems and arrives at solutions through mastery of rational thinking. Campbell cultivated a stable of talented writers. Robert Heinlein was probably the greatest literary talent, with an eye for character, detail, the sweep of history, and perfect pacing. L. Ron Hubbard had raw charisma and an engaging style, even if his biography of adventure was a mutable facade over constant reversals and defeats. Isaac Asimov was an awkward youth, unable to fit in and desperate to please; his actual genius would see him advance the furthest of the group. As editor, Campbell shot ideas off the proper writers, a continual shower of sparks and a demand for higher standards right when the genre needed it most.

World War 2 provided a critical test for the group, and one which by many measures was a failure. Campbell thought his readership could serve as a super-lab for the US military, but failed to gain traction with the bureaucracy. Asimov and Heinlein worked together at the Pennsylvania Naval Shipyard, in important but mundane tasks, but they were too different personalities to be good friends. Hubbard was an abysmal failure as a naval officer. Campbell baited the censors with a story in 1944 that "predicted" the atomic bomb. The gamble, which could have closed Astounding, paid off, and became an element of Campbell's personal mythology.

The post-war years were marked by Campbell's fall into crankdom. Obsessed with the atomic bomb, and with the need for men to master themselves before they ended the world, Campbell became the leading proponent of L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics. The readership of Astounding served as the testbed for the process of auditing and generating "clears", humans free of negative memories with supposed superpowers. Campbell is apparently responsible for much of what is borrowed from cybernetics in Dianetics, but he and Hubbard soon parted ways over financial matters. Hubbard went on to turn Dianetics into the Church of Scientology, though there is no evidence that he founded the religion as part of a bet from either Asimov or Heinlein. The most parsimonious story is that he did it as a tax dodge, and to avoid lawsuits from medical licensing boards.

So what of those flaws? Campbell became increasingly domineering, a "universal expert" who lacked actual knowledge, lectured people at length, and became fascinating with psychic powers and supernatural phenomenon. As the civil rights movement advanced, he became harshly reactionary in his views on race. Heinlein's politics also turned rightwards (he had campaigned as a socialist in the 1930s), and the last truly great book he wrote was The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, as he believed he was too good to need editing. Isaac Asimov has perhaps the dirtiest feet, for all his talent. As he became a prolific science writer and institution in fandom, authoring over 400 books, his initial social awkwardness became a love of seeing his name in lights. His behavior was defined by constant sexual harassment, from pinching butts to public passes. Hubbard, of course, founded an authoritarian brainwashing cult and wrote Battlefield Earth, but expectations were low.

In an interesting bit of parallelism, all the men had deeply important first marriages that defined how they grew, and once they achieved success, they discarded their wives and remarried. The circumstances varied. Doña Campbell grew frustrated with John's obsession with dianetics and left him for another man. Leslyn Heinlein experienced a nervous collapse. Gertrude Asimov grew tired of Isaac's philandering. Hubbard tried to murder his wife Sara, have her committed, and deny her custody of their children. And while early scifi was very much a man's world, Astounding's assistant editor Catherine Tarrant was by Campbell's side the whole time, and so important that when she fell ill, it took five men to replace her.

But for their flaws, these were still great men. They wrote stories which will resonate for centuries. Campbell turned a tiny literary niche into a cultural juggernaut, and cast a mode of heroic futurism that is still at the heart of science-fictions. Nevala-Lee's book is deeply sourced, comes from an authentic love of the genre, and tells us who these men were, and why their ideas matter today. Campbell saw his mission as creating a literary 'Sword of Achilles', stories so appealing that boys who would grow into the men who would build the future would embrace it on sight. In that, he had absolute success.

This is a great book! If it doesn't win best associated work at the next Hugos, I will eat my hat.