John Wood Campbell

John Wood Campbell Biography

John Wood Campbell (1910-1971) was an influential science fiction writer and editor who played a major role in shaping the genre during the mid-twentieth century.

Born in New Jersey, Campbell attended MIT and later began his career as a writer in the 1930s. He quickly gained recognition for his science fiction stories, which often explored themes of technology and humanity.

In 1937, Campbell became the editor of Astounding Science Fiction, one of the most popular science fiction magazines of the time. As editor, he became known for his demanding standards and his insistence on scientific accuracy and technical detail in the stories he published. He also encouraged many of the leading science fiction writers of the time, including Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, and Arthur C. Clarke.

Campbell continued to write science fiction throughout his career, and his most famous work is the novella "Who Goes There?" which has been adapted into several films, including the 1982 movie "The Thing."

Despite his success as a writer and editor, Campbell was controversial for his conservative political views and his belief in psionics, a pseudoscientific field that purported to study psychic abilities. He died in 1971 at the age of 60. Despite the controversies surrounding his beliefs and editorial decisions, his contributions to the development of science fiction as a genre remain significant.

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