It’s funny to watch as Analog Magazine cancelled one of its forefather champions yesterday, John W. Campbell, removing the former editor’s name from the award for best new writer from the Hugos because a current winner, Jeanette Ng, made some crazy rant about white men and fascism.
It’s peak 2019 cancel culture, and it’s hilarious to watch this group of mentally ill old women in publishing do everything they can to erase history in an attempt to pacify nonsensical modern outrage.
Naturally, looking at reactions, it breaks down along party lines: the establishment publishing extreme pinko nut jobs are all cheering it on, the conservative writers who tell fun stories are saying it’s a travesty to erase someone who had such a huge impact on the genre because 2019 authors who don’t have an ounce of the talent people like Campbell had in their pinky finger didn’t like some essays from 1940.
Campbell wrote essays which were provocative and controversial intentionally to draw attention to issues, to make readers think, to spur discussion. It was his whole intention, but in 2019, we don’t discuss things. We’re not allowed to talk about subjects that “offend” people. It’s a world of 1984 driven by a constant mob of online outrage.
All it takes is a cursory online search to show how idiotic these virtue signalers positions are:
They have zero reading comprehension ability, which is probably why their stories are such hot garbage. These ourtrage warriors have no business winning awards, let alone changing them to suit them better. They should learn to read before opening their low IQ mouths.
It’s interesting as I was just watching Dave Chapelle’s new comedy special where he purposefully chose outrageous topics to make light of, and I could tell the whole point of his routine was that he was hitting topics on repeat that he “isn’t allowed to do. It was absolutely brilliant, and if he were some no name and not the big, great, Dave Chapelle—and if he were say, white— he would never get away with what he’s doing. As it is, it seems like he’s red-pilled to the fact that the current shrieking and crying over everything, attempts to utterly destroy people dead or alive for ANYTHING they’ve done that wasn’t perfect, is absurd.
Naturally I’ve come to the the same conclusions as Chapelle as these science fiction harpies have done everything in their power to destroy me.
But I’m not here to champion Campbell’s virtue. I very much enjoy watching them burn down their own establishment in order to try to show how woke they are to each other. Please, Worldcon, take the next step and look into Hugo Gernsback! Tell me you approve of his namesake award after you uncover his past words!
My friends and I have a completely different take, however, about this “controversy” on Campbell, the man who was integral in editorial for Analog Science Fiction And Fact, which was, when he took it over, Astounding Science Fiction.
The Campbellian legacy of science fiction deserves to be destroyed not because of the man’s political opinions which are irrelevant in 2019, but because of his impact upon science fiction as a whole which is to a detriment. In fact, you can see it in the name change from Astounding to Analog – and attempt to boring-ize sci-fi and remove the sense of wonder and fun that made the genre popular in the 1930s-1950s, to the hard sci-fi focused, anti-space opera elements that brought the genre down from the late 1950s forward.
Campbell’s legacy as an editor was, as he aged, to reject the pulp mentality of stories and push the genre into a “more scientific” and “literary” movement, something that as it spiraled, shed readers in exchange from applause from authors in the genre. Between Campbell, Clark, and Asimov, they succeeded in using their platforms to set forth generations of unfun stories which transformed science fiction from something millions read, to something thousands read.
Their legacy is everything the Hugo crowd gives golf claps for, everything Analog as a magazine stands for, a literary style which I reject and stick a middle finger to on a regular basis. It was on the back of Campbell that fiction became a race to push hard science concepts and social commentary in every single piece that gets published.
I daresay, John W. Campbell is responsible for mainstream science fiction becoming unreadable.
So whereas you may have expected I be decrying the move by Analog at the beginning of this essay, it’s quite the opposite. I cheer it on.
However, it’s not because of politics. His essays or different thoughts on politics 100 years ago don’t matter in the slightest, and it’s the most retarded reason they could have ever come up with in order to make their stand. Who cares what some dead guy thought in an environment which is also dead? Get back on your meds, Jeanette Ng and company, your autism and hysterical rantings are pushing people away from sci-fi, not drawing people toward it.
But so is Campbellian-style fiction. It’s not a mutually exclusive proposition. It’s merely ironic that the people who are continuing his legacy are pretending like it’s year zero, and that they are the ones who have any creativity, when in reality, they’re just copying this dead man’s vision.
If you want a great example of non-Campbellian style fiction that readers love, something that makes establishment writers and editors grind their teeth because they wish it wasn’t so successful, read my steampunk series! Start with For Steam And Country today.
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