Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

Chapter 5
Science Fictions
'By 1938, Hubbard was already established and recognized as one of the top-selling authors . . .
[and] was urged to try his hand at science fiction. He protested that he did not write about
"machines and machinery" but that he wrote about people. "That's just what we want," he was told.
The result was a barrage of stories from Hubbard that expanded the scope and changed the face
of the literary genre . . .' (About L. Ron Hubbard, Writers of the Future, Volume II, Bridge
Publications Inc., 1986)
• • • • •
To science-fiction fans, 1938 marked the dawn of a new era they were pleased to call the 'Golden
Age'. Before then, science-fiction pulps with gosh-wow titles like Amazing, Wonder, Planet Stories
and Startling had usually been ridiculed if not ignored. Crowded into the darkest corner, or on to the
lowest shelf of the news-stand, they were only sustained by the devotion of a small group of
passionately loyal enthusiasts who, dreaming of time machines and space travel in the grimly
haunted days of the Depression, were widely considered to be dotty.
The sad truth was that the nineteenth century heritage of Mary Shelley, Jules Verne, Edgar Allen
Poe and H.G. Wells had largely degenerated, by the early 'thirties, into trash - uninspiring tales of
slavering robots and talking animals written in penny-dreadful prose, mediocre fiction without the
science. Bug-eyed monsters figured prominently, either invading earth with the intention of
enslaving the human race or carrying away our 'fairest maidens' for use as love-toys on some alien
planet. Readers needed considerable faith to relish repeated workings of the same tedious
themes, but then science-fiction fans were acknowledged to be particularly fanatical, if not
particular.
It was possible to date, precisely, the metamorphosis that ushered in the Golden Age because it
began with the appointment of John W. Campbell Junior as editor of Astounding magazine, at the
age of twenty-seven, in early 1938. Campbell was the man who dragged science fiction out of the
pulp mire and elevated it to an art form.
Opinionated, overbearing and garrulous, he was a chain-smoking intellectual dynamo bursting
with ideas which he would expound at length, driving home every point by stabbing the air with his
long black cigarette holder. His first science-fiction story, 'When The Atoms Failed', was published
in Amazing in 1930 and he quickly made a name for himself as an original, imaginative and
sophisticated writer. One of his best stories was transformed, through no fault of his, into one of
Hollywood's worst movies, The Thing From Outer Space.
As an editor, Campbell used his magazine to speculate on the implications - emotional,
philosophical and sociological - of future scientific discoveries. He expected style, skill, ingenuity
and technical proficiency from his contributors. Few of the existing pulp writers could meet his
exacting standards and so he set out to nurture new talent. Almost all the biggest names of the
Golden Age - Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, A.E. van Vogt and many others - were first published
in Astounding. Campbell never compromised. Faulty plots were ruthlessly rejected with pages of
closely typed criticism - Theodore Sturgeon once got a story back with a seven-page explanation as
to why a particular fission of light metals was not feasible. Yet Campbell's critiques to writers were