1. The two big sci-fi epics of this fall are Dune & Foundation, which spring from the same source: John W. Campbell's Astounding magazine (remained Analog in 1960). Which also gave the world Starship Troopers, the Thing, and, oh, yes, various religions, including Scientology.
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3. Campbell was type of contrarian crank of the type all too familiar to us today: a failed engineer, he banged off editorials on the merits of slavery (calling for its revival), deriding the idea that smoking was bad for you & promoting Dianetics as a cure for health problems
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4. Lately there has been a lot of controversy about Campbell in science fiction circles because of his pretty brutal racism (his name was taken off a big award). Frank Herbert's Dune itself shows Campbell's ambiguous legacy was sometimes use against him.
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5. Campbell's Analog was the top-paying sci fi magazine in its time & lots of writers cynically tailored their stories to fit Campbell's various obsessions: ESP, genetic supermen, human conquest of universe, eugenics etc. Frank Herbert put all that in Dune: but with a twist
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6. One way to read Dune is that Herbert took all the things that made Campbell excited (ESP, superman, galactic imperial conquest, eugenics) but showed the downsides: he inverted Campbell's universe (mostly in later books not serialized in Analog).
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7. Lots more going on in Dune: a prescient critique of resource extraction imperialism & US foreign policy, the myth of Lawrence of Arabia, Catholicism, Islam, Indigenous cultures (particularly the Quileute).
@DavidKlion & I talk about this & more here:https://jeetheer.substack.com/p/dune-bugs?r=bh54&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&utm_source= …Show this thread
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I frequently have trouble remembering which is which between John W. Campbell and Joseph John Campbell, aside from the similar names, there's a lot of other overlaps in their spheres of influence
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Didn’t he also help PKD’s career?
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No, I don't think Dick ever sold to Campbell.
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"Astounding" by
@nevalalee is a very good book about him / the era.Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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