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Worlds Without End Blog

Astounding History Posted at 2:07 PM by James Wallace Harris

jwharris28

I’ve always thought interest in science fiction’s history was extremely tiny, but when Alec Nevala-Lee’s new book, Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction got reviewed in The Wall Street Journal and Nature I had to revise that thought. Who knew? Earlier this year Paul Giamatti and Stephen Colbert discussed Golden Age science fiction on The Tonight Show. That blew me away. Just how many old Baby Boomers know about Astounding Science-Fiction?

Astounding under slight title variations was published from 1930 to 1960 when it became Analog Science Fact & Fiction The science fiction boom that began in the 1950’s coincided with the Baby Boom generation. It was kickstarted with hardback and paperback reprints from 1930’s and 1940’s Astounding. It’s glory days, often called The Golden Age of Science Fiction was from 1939-1950 when its editor John W. Campbell reshaped the genre with new writers like Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, A. E. van Vogt, L. Ron Hubbard, and many others.

All my life I’ve been reading about the legendary issues of Astounding Science-Fiction. I even collected them for a while in the 1970’s but I gave that up when I realized it would become an obsession. Last year I bought the complete run of Astounding scanned to digital images sold on DVDs at eBay. The same digital scans are available free on the net if you look around. For the past several years I’ve been seeing cover images and interior art shared all over the web. Evidently, those scanned copies are being read again by a fair number of people. It’s wonderful to have this digital library of Astounding because whenever I read a reference to a story, editorial, or letter to the editor, I can quickly call it up.

What I’d love to know is just how many fans of Astounding are there today? Evidently, enough to make Alec Nevala-Lee’s book a minor hit. His book is not the first history of Astounding, and maybe not the last, but it seems to have arrived at a significant time. The book has gotten lots of advance reviews, it’s available in hardback, Kindle, and audio, and it’s getting great word of mouth. I really want to know how many people buy it. That number should be a census of my people.

Astounding by Alec Nevala-Lee is probably the most significant book about science fiction history since The World Beyond the Hill by Alexei and Cory Panshin. That book won a Hugo, and I expect this one will too.

 

1 Comment

Scott Laz   |   25 Oct 2018 @ 22:00

I’ve been reading scans of Astounding (along with a few other significant SF magazine runs) for a few years now. I enjoy the “time capsule” feel of seeing these stories in their original context. (And I’ve been enjoying the “reading the pulps” blog posts.)

I suspect part of the interest in Nevala-Lee’s book in particular is due to the partial focus on L. Ron Hubbard. He was one of the most important writers of the Astounding Golden Age, but that is likely to come as an interesting revelation to those who know of him in his post-pulp writer guise. (Do most people know that Hubbard wrote science fiction? It does explain a few things…)

I pretty well know the history already, and greatly enjoyed the Panshins’ book, but I’m still really looking forward to this one after hearing Nevala-Lee talk about it on the Coode Street podcast a couple of weeks back. It seems he looks at it from some new angles, and has come up with some original research.

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