Aaron's Magazine of the Week :: Analog December 1963

The Magazine of the Week is the December 1963 issue of Analog magazine (formerly known as Astounding), containing the first appearance of Frank Herbert's landmark novel Dune. In the early 1960's, before Dune appeared, Frank Herbert was regarded as a second-tier science fiction writer at best, having published only one novel and a couple dozen short stories. When he wrote Dune, it was rejected by every major SF book publisher. It was too long, too confusing and too strange, the editors agreed. The dissenting voice was John W. Campbell, Jr., who saved the novel (and perhaps Frank Herbert) from possible obscurity by purchasing the rights to serialize Dune in Analog, beginning with the Magazine of the Week.

Campbell published the first portion of the novel in three parts under the title Dune World. Even though it was only part of a novel, with no real resolution, Dune World was an instant success, receiving Frank Herbert's first Hugo Award nomination. After the readers' positive reaction, Campbell published the rest of the lengthy novel in five more installments, under the title The Prophet of Dune. The success of the magazine version helped Frank Herbert's agent to find a hardcover publisher for the book, and Dune became one of the most successful SF novels ever printed, both commercially and artistically. It was filmed with mixed results by David Lynch in 1984 and by John Harrison for the Sci-Fi Channel in 2000.

John Schoenherr's cover for the Magazine of the Week really doesn't do justice to the fascinating world Frank Herbert created in Dune, but not to worry--John Schoenherr ended up making a career out of cover art for Dune and got much better with practice. He did the cover art for the first part of The Prophet of Dune serialization, which was also used as the cover for the first hardcover edition of Dune, next week's Book of the Week.

Aaron's Book of the Week :: The Thing from Another World by John W. Campbell, Jr.

The Book of the Week is The Thing from Another World, a collection of short fiction by John W. Campbell, Jr.

While John W. Campbell, Jr. is best remembered to fans of literary science fiction as an influential editor, his greatest direct impact on pop culture was writing the story "Who Goes There?", which Hollywood filmed as The Thing from Another World in 1951 and again as The Thing in 1982. The Book of the Week is a paperback reprint of the hardcover first edition titled Who Goes There? (1948). While the original hardcover edition predated the first movie, this paperback edition came out afterwards, and the book's title was changed to take advantage of the movie's success. This paperback edition was published by small British publisher Fantasy Books in 1953 (I think -- there is no date listed on the book). Since it appeared only in England with a small print run, this book is actually more difficult to find than the hardcover first edition; on the other hand, unlike the hardcover, it doesn't cost you $500 if you do find it.

Before he reshaped the genre of science fiction as editor of Astounding magazine, John W. Campbell, Jr. was an important influence on the field through his own writing. While he wrote traditional space opera under his own name, the moody and stylish stories he wrote under the pseudonym Don A. Stuart were his most ground-breaking works. The seven stories in the Book of the Week were all originally printed under the Don A. Stuart byline between 1934 and 1938, and they comprise much of Campbell's best fiction.

It is sometimes said that by the early 1950's Campbell had ceased to be an important influence on the field of science fiction. It is certainly true that in the 50's and 60's Campbell did not dominate SF as he did in the late 30's and 40's; however, the idea that he was no longer doing important work as an editor is belied by a single novel that he purchased and serialized in Astounding after every major book publisher had turned it down. The first installment of this landmark novel is next week's Magazine of the Week.

Aaron's Magazine of the Week :: Astounding Science Fiction May 1950

The Magazine of the Week is the May 1950 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. This issue was printed not long after Astounding switched from pulp to a digest format. Because they are more durable, old digest magazines are generally less valuable than the pulps; nevertheless, the Magazine of the Week is a very collectible issue of Astounding, because it contains the first appearance of the new "science" of Dianetics, the basis for L. Ron Hubbard's Church of Scientology. All of Hubbard's early writings are prized collectors' items now, sought both by SF collectors who view Hubbard as a curiosity and by adherents of his religion, who seem to find it charming that Hubbard used to write stories oddly similar to what he later revealed as the literal truths of the universe. (This just never ceases to boggle my mind.)

When he published this first Dianetics article in Astounding, the magazine's editor John W. Campbell, Jr. called it "one of the most important articles ever published" and predicted that L. Ron Hubbard would win the Nobel Peace Prize. Campbell, who was always eccentric, was by this time becoming increasingly fascinated with bizarre pseudoscientific concepts such as the "Dean Drive" (don't ask). This was an unfortunate turn to his career. As mentioned in the May 1, 2006 Magazine of the Week, Campbell was the driving force behind the "Golden Age" of science fiction. As editor of Astounding, he discovered and/or developed most of the top SF writers from the late 1930's through the mid-1950's. The Magazine of the Week, for example, includes such all-time greats as Jack Vance, Poul Anderson, and A.E. van Vogt. Even before he began editing Astounding, Campbell was influential on the field through his own writing. Next week's Book of the Week will be a very hard to find collection of Campbell's fiction featuring his most famous story, which was first published in 1938, then adapted into a classic film in 1951 and remade in 1982.