Bates The first incarnation of
Astounding was an adventure-oriented magazine: unlike Gernsback, Bates had no interest in educating his readership through science. The covers were all painted by
Wesso and similarly action-filled; the first issue showed a giant beetle attacking a man. Bates would not accept any experimental stories, relying mostly on formulaic plots. In the eyes of
Mike Ashley, a science fiction historian, Bates was "destroying the ideals of science fiction". One historically important story that almost appeared in
Astounding was
E.E. Smith's
Triplanetary, which Bates would have published had
Astounding not folded in early 1933. The cover Wesso had painted for the story appeared on the March 1933 issue, the last to be published by Clayton.
Tremaine When Street & Smith acquired
Astounding, they also planned to relaunch another Clayton pulp,
Strange Tales, and acquired material for it before deciding not to proceed. These stories appeared in the first Street & Smith
Astounding, dated October 1933. The "thought variant" policy may have been introduced for publicity, rather than as a real attempt to define the sort of fiction Tremaine was looking for; "The Bright Illusion", by
C.L. Moore, and "
Twilight", by John W. Campbell, writing as Don A. Stuart. "Twilight", which was written in a more literary and poetic style than Campbell's earlier space opera stories, was particularly influential, and Tremaine encouraged other writers to produce similar stories. One such was
Raymond Z. Gallun's "Old Faithful", which appeared in the December 1934 issue and was sufficiently popular that Gallun wrote a sequel, "Son of Old Faithful", published the following July. Tremaine printed some nonfiction articles during his tenure, with Campbell providing an 18-part series on the
Solar System between June 1936 and December 1937. Campbell wanted his writers to provide action and excitement, but he also wanted the stories to appeal to a readership that had matured over the first decade of the science fiction genre. He asked his writers to write stories that felt as though they could have been published as non-science fiction stories in a magazine of the future; a reader of the future would not need long explanations for the gadgets in their lives, so Campbell asked his writers to find ways of naturally introducing technology to their stories. He also instituted regular nonfiction pieces, with the goal of stimulating story ideas. The main contributors of these were
R.S. Richardson, L. Sprague de Camp, and
Willy Ley.
Golden Age The period beginning with Campbell's editorship of
Astounding is usually referred to as the
Golden Age of Science Fiction, because of the immense influence he had on the genre. Within two years of becoming editor, he had published stories by many of the writers who would become central figures in science fiction. The list of names included established authors like
L. Ron Hubbard,
Clifford Simak,
Jack Williamson,
L. Sprague de Camp,
Henry Kuttner, and
C.L. Moore, who became regulars in either
Astounding or its sister magazine,
Unknown, and new writers who published some of their first stories in
Astounding, such as
Lester del Rey,
Theodore Sturgeon,
Isaac Asimov,
A. E. van Vogt, and
Robert Heinlein. The April 1938 issue included the first story by del Rey, "The Faithful", and de Camp's second sale, "
Hyperpilosity". began serialization in the following issue. De Camp contributed a nonfiction article, "Language for Time Travelers", in the July issue, which also contained Hubbard's first science fiction sale, "The Dangerous Dimension". Hubbard had been selling
genre fiction to the pulps for several years by that time. The same issue contained Clifford Simak's "Rule 18"; Simak had more-or-less abandoned science fiction within a year after breaking into the field in 1931, but he was drawn back by Campbell's editorial approach. The next issue featured one of Campbell's best-known stories, "
Who Goes There?", and included Kuttner's "The Disinherited"; Kuttner had been selling successfully to the other pulps for a few years, but this was his first story in
Astounding. In October, de Camp began a popular series about an intelligent bear named Johnny Black with "
The Command." In July 1939, the lead story was "
Black Destroyer", the first sale by van Vogt; the issue also included "
Trends", Asimov's first sale to Campbell and his second story to see print. Later fans identified the issue as the start of the Golden Age. Other first sales that year included Heinlein's "Lifeline" in August and Sturgeon's "Ether Breather" the following month. The September 1941 issue included Asimov's short story "
Nightfall" and in November,
Second Stage Lensman, the next novel in Smith's
Lensman series, began serialization. After 1942, several of the regular contributors such as Heinlein, Asimov, and Hubbard, who had joined the war effort, appeared less frequently. Among those who remained, the key figures were van Vogt, Simak, Kuttner, Moore, and
Fritz Leiber, all of whom were less oriented towards technology in their fiction than writers like Asimov or Heinlein. This led to the appearance of more psychologically oriented fiction, such as van Vogt's
World of Null-A, which was serialized in 1945. Kuttner and Moore contributed a humorous series about an inventor, Galloway Gallegher, who could only invent while drunk, but they were also capable of serious fiction. Campbell had asked them to write science fiction with the same freedom from constraints that he had allowed them in the fantasy works they were writing for
Unknown, Street & Smith's fantasy title; the result was "
Mimsy Were the Borogoves", which appeared in February 1943 and is now regarded as a classic. In the words of science fiction critic John Clute, "Cartmill's prediction made sf fans enormously proud", as some considered the story proof that science fiction could be predictive of the future.
Post-war years In the late 1940s, both
Thrilling Wonder and
Startling Stories began to publish much more mature fiction than they had during the war, and although
Astounding was still the leading magazine in the field, it was no longer the only market for the writers who had been regularly selling to Campbell. Many of the best new writers still broke into print in
Astounding rather than elsewhere.
Arthur C. Clarke's first story, "
Loophole", appeared in the April 1946
Astounding, and another British writer,
Christopher Youd, began his career with "Christmas Tree" in February 1949. Youd would become much better known under his pseudonym "John Christopher".
William Tenn's first sale, "Alexander the Bait", appeared in May 1946, and H. Beam Piper's "Time and Time Again" in the April 1947 issue was his first story. Along with these newer writers, Campbell was still publishing strong material by authors who had become established during the war. Among the better-known stories of this era are "
Vintage Season", by C.L. Moore (under the pseudonym Lawrence O'Donnell); Jack Williamson's story "
With Folded Hands";
The Players of Null-A, van Vogt's sequel to
The World of Null-A; and the final book in E.E. Smith's
Lensman series,
Children of the Lens. In the November 1948 issue, Campbell published a letter to the editor by a reader named Richard A. Hoen that contained a detailed ranking of the contents of an issue "one year in the future". Campbell went along with the joke and contracted stories from most of the authors mentioned in the letter that would follow the Hoen's imaginary story titles. One of the best-known stories from that issue is
"Gulf", by Heinlein. Other stories and articles were written by some of the most famous authors of the time: Asimov, Sturgeon, del Rey, van Vogt, de Camp, and the astronomer
R. S. Richardson.
1950s and 1960s By 1950, Campbell's strong personality had led him into conflict with some of his leading writers, some of whom abandoned
Astounding as a result. The launch of both
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and
Galaxy Science Fiction in 1949 and 1950, respectively, marked the end of
Astoundings dominance of science fiction, Campbell was deeply involved with the launch of
Dianetics, publishing Hubbard's first article on it in
Astounding in May 1950, and promoting it heavily in the months beforehand; later in the decade he championed
psionics and antigravity devices. In 1953, Campbell serialized Hal Clement's
Mission of Gravity, described by
John Clute and
David Langford as "one of the best-loved novels in sf", and in 1954
Tom Godwin's "
The Cold Equations" appeared. The story, about a girl who stows away on a spaceship, generated much reader debate, and has been described as capturing the ethos of Campbell's
Astounding. The spaceship is carrying urgently needed medical supplies to a planet in distress, and has a single pilot; the ship does not have enough fuel to reach the planet if the girl stays on the ship, so the "cold equations" of physics force the pilot to jettison the girl, killing her. 1965 marked the year Campbell received his eighth
Hugo Award for Best Professional Magazine; this was the last one he would win. Over his first few months some long-time readers sent in letters of complaint when they judged that Bova was not living up to Campbell's standards, particularly when sex scenes began to appear. On one occasion—
Jack Wodhams' story "Foundling Fathers", and its accompanying illustration by
Kelly Freas—it turned out that Campbell had bought the story in question. As the 1970s went on, Bova continued to publish authors such as Anderson, Dickson, and
Christopher Anvil, who had appeared regularly during Campbell's tenure, but he also attracted authors who had not been able to sell to Campbell, such as
Gene Wolfe,
Roger Zelazny, and
Harlan Ellison. Other new writers included
Spider Robinson, whose first sale was "The Guy With the Eyes" in the February 1973 issue;
George R.R. Martin, with "A Song for Lya", in June 1974; and
Orson Scott Card, with "
Ender's Game", in the August 1977 issue. Bova won the
Hugo Award for Best Professional Editor for five consecutive years, 1973 through 1977.
Schmidt Stanley Schmidt was an assistant professor of physics when he became editor of
Analog, and his scientific background was well-suited to the magazine's readership. He avoided making drastic changes, and continued the long-standing tradition of writing provocative editorials, though he rarely discussed science fiction. In 1979 he resurrected "Probability Zero", a feature that Campbell had run in the early 1940s that published tall tales—humorous stories with ludicrous or impossible scientific premises. Also in 1979 Schmidt began a series of columns titled "The Alternate View", an opinion column that was written in alternate issues by
G. Harry Stine and Jerry Pournelle, and which is still a feature of the magazine as of 2016, though now with different contributors. The stable of fiction contributors remained largely unchanged from Bova's day, and included many names, such as Poul Anderson, Gordon R. Dickson, and George O. Smith, familiar to readers from the Campbell era. This continuity led to criticisms within the field,
Bruce Sterling writing in 1984 that the magazine "has become old, dull, and drivelling... It is a situation screaming for reform.
Analog no longer permits itself to be read." The magazine thrived nevertheless, and though part of the increase in circulation during the early 1980s may have been due to Davis Publications' energetic efforts to increase subscriptions, Schmidt knew what his readership wanted and made sure they got it, commenting in 1985: "I reserve
Analog for the kind of science fiction I've described here: good stories about people with problems in which some piece of plausible (or at least not demonstrably implausible) speculative science plays an indispensable role". Over the decades of Schmidt's editorship, many writers became regular contributors, including
Arlan Andrews,
Catherine Asaro,
Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff,
Michael Flynn,
Geoffrey A. Landis,
Paul Levinson,
Robert J. Sawyer,
Charles Sheffield and
Harry Turtledove. Schmidt never won an editing Hugo while in charge of the magazine, but after he resigned he won the 2013
Hugo for Editor Short Form. ==Bibliographic details==