SOURCE: Gunn, James. “The Astounding Editor: 1938-1950.” In Alternate Worlds: The Illustrated History of Science Fiction, pp. 148-71. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1975.

In the following essay, Gunn offers an overview of John W. Campbell's seminal career as the editor of Astounding Stories.

The dozen years between 1938 and 1950 were Astounding years. During these years the first major science fiction editor began developing the first modern science fiction magazine, the first modern science fiction writers, and, indeed, modern science fiction itself.

The editor was John W. Campbell; the magazine was Astounding Stories, a name which soon became Astounding Science Fiction and then, later, Analog Science Fact & Fiction as the magazine evolved. …

Now, as editor of the leading science fiction magazine—a pulp magazine, to be sure, but Campbell did not think of it as a pulp magazine and few of its writers and readers felt that the meanness of...