[July 10, 1961] The Last Straw (Campbell's wrong-headed rant in the August 1961 Analog)

Has John W. Campbell lost his mind?

Twenty years ago, Campbell mentored some of science fiction's greats. His magazine, Astounding (now Analog), featured the most mature stories in the genre. He himself wrote some fine fiction.

What the hell happened? Now, in his dotage, he's used his editorial section to plump the fringiest pseudosciences: reactionless space drives, psionic circuits with no physical components, the assertion that the human form is the most perfect possible. The world hasn't seen an embarrassing decline like this since Sir Arthur Conan Doyle started chasing fairies.

But this month, Campbell has gone too far. This month, he replaced Analog's science-fact column with a rant on the space race, a full twenty pages of complete poppycock, so completely wrong in every way that I simply cannot let it lie.

(see the rest at Galactic Journey!)