"Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell; 8/10

Which most of the world knows better as the sci-fi novella which inspired the films "The Thing.. From Another World," and "The Thing." 

A team of scientists working in Antarctica, and therefore secluded from the rest of the world perforce, come across an alien craft with a frozen alien life form intact.  After some debate, they thaw the alien, and the real fun begins.

It is really amazing to me how ahead of its time this book was.  Published in 1938 in Astounding, it is brutal and realistic (sci-fi concepts aside) at every turn in ways that you just don't often see in writing from that period.  Campbell has really tried to imagine how people would behave in such a situation, rather than how he is going to make them behave, and this, to me, is the mark of good writing.  The premise is one of the greatest in the annals of the genre, and he does not let it shy away from its awesome potential.  The only thing missing from this story was more length, which John Carpenter's mostly-faithful 1981 adaptation restored to it.

This was a surprisingly good read, and my first direct experience with someone who may be the most important figure in the history of science fiction, and is undoubtedly the most interesting.  There are two prestigious science fiction awards, for best new writer and best novel, respectively, named after him.  Campbell had a background in science and particularly physics, with degrees from MIT and Duke in the field, but turned them towards science fiction, and began publishing short stories.  The best of these, including "Who Goes There," were published by Astounding Stories, which subsequently hired him to be its editor. 

In capacity as editor for Astounding, Campbell published early stories by the royalty of Golden Age science fiction: Clifford D. Simak, L. Ron Hubbard, L. Sprague Du Camp, Poul Anderson, Jack Williamson, Lester Del Rey, A.E. van Vogt, Fritz Leiber, Theodore Sturgeon, Frank Herbert, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein, and Isaac Asimov. 

Not only did Campbell give these men their livelihood by publishing their stories, he was very involved in the conceptual and stylistic development of their stories and of most of these men themselves as writers.  He was to science fiction as Miles Davis was to jazz music, which is to say that nearly everything that happened afterwards, if not directly influenced by him, was touched in some way by his influence. Asimov said of him that he was the "most powerful force in science fiction ever." He probably knows something about that.

Campbell is also interesting because he was, by all accounts, an extraordinary and eccentric person.  There are a number of accounts given of him by the many writers of his acquaintance, and they paint pictures that often only agree on the point of his having been very out there.  Having built a stable for Astounding by the beginning of the Cold War which included nearly every important sf writer of the period other than Ray Bradbury (who sought publication with Astounding repeatedly and was rejected), he then proceeded to drive them away in the early fifties. 

His publication had been the only good way for a sci-fi writer to make a living until this decade, but then new publications began springing up, and this happened as he trumpeted his own views on slavery (not so great) and psionics ever louder, and began pushing the metaphysical concepts of his favorite writer, L. Ron Hubbard, on the other people of his acquaintance.  It is an interesting postscript to his insanity that while he undoubtedly helped make these men famous, many of them achieved their greatest fame and did their best work after leaving his association. 

But "Who Goes There?" preceded all of this, and is a poignant reminder that before he was a figure, John W. Campbell was a great writer in his own right.

Also, I am now halfway from the beginning of my book diary to the present day. Hooray for catching up!