102 Years Ago John Wood Campbell Was Born

John Wood Campbell was an American science fiction writer and editor-in-chief of the famous magazine "Astounding Science Fiction". He actually created the range of works that are admitted as modern classical science fiction.
John Wood Campbell was born in Newark, New Jersey. He started writing being a student at Massachusetts Technology University. In 1932 he received the diploma of a physician and by that time he had become a famous science fiction writer.
His first story was published when he was 19. The first stories of Campbell were about cosmic adventures. Then, he took a pseudonym Don A. Stuart and began publishing a different kind of stories. The most famous story of that time is "Who Goes There?" which is till now believed to be one of the best thriller stories.
In September 1937 Campbell became editor in chief of the magazine "Astounding" and began to reform it by bringing it to a new level. He introduced the "mutant" column for unusual stories and renamed the magazine from "Astounding Stories" into "Astounding Science Fiction".
Campbell published stories of the new writers: Asimov, Van Vogt, Robert Heinlein. Very often these stories were authors' debuts. What Campbell did resembled a revolution but he was never wrong.
In 1940s "Astounding" became the best science fiction magazine. Later on, Campbell founded another magazine called "Unknown", which was fully dedicated to fantasy.
During years of his work Campbell didn't write, dedicating himself to publishing of others' stories. But the time spent was worth it. He became part of the world literature.

 

Who Goes There