The Black Star Passes | Page 2

for stainless steel.
Year by year, his knowledge has become more specialized, and much deeper. He's better and better able to do the important work the world needs done, but in learning to do it, he's necessarily lost some of the broad and enthusiastic scope he once had.
These are early stories of the early days of science-fiction. Radar hadn't been invented; we missed that idea. But while these stories don't have the finesse of later work--they have a bounding enthusiasm that belongs with a young field, designed for and built by young men. Most of the writers of those early stories were, like myself, college students. (Piracy Preferred was written while I was a sophomore at M.I.T.)
For old-timers in science-fiction--these are typical of the days when the field was starting. They've got a fine flavor of our own younger enthusiasm.
For new readers of science-fiction--these have the stuff that laid the groundwork of today's work, they're the stories that were meant for young imaginations, for people who wanted to think about the world they had to build in the years to come.
Along about sixteen to nineteen, a young man has to decide what is, for him, the Job That Needs Doing--and get ready to get in and pitch. If he selects well, selects with understanding and foresight, he'll pick a job that does need doing, one that will return rewards in satisfaction as well as money. No other man can pick that for him; he must choose the Job that he feels fitting.
Crystal balls can be bought fairly reasonably--but they don't work well. History books can be bought even more cheaply, and they're moderately reliable. (Though necessarily filtered through the cultural attitudes of the man who wrote them.) But they don't work well as predicting machines, because the world is changing too rapidly.
The world today, for instance, needs engineers desperately. There a lot of jobs that the Nation would like to get done that can't even be started; not enough engineers available.
Fifty years ago the engineering student was a sort of Second Class Citizen of the college campus. Today the Liberal Arts are fighting for a come-back, the pendulum having swung considerably too far in the other direction.
So science-fiction has a very real function to the teen-agers; it presents varying ideas of what the world in which he will live his adult life will be interested in.
This is 1953. My son will graduate in 1955. The period of his peak earning power should be when he's about forty to sixty--about 1970, say, to 1990. With the progress being made in understanding of health and physical vigor, it's apt to run beyond 2000 A.D., however.
Anyone want to bet that people will be living in the same general circumstances then? That the same general social and cultural and material standards will apply?
I have a hunch that the history books are a poor way of planning a life today--and that science-fiction comes a lot closer.
There's another thing about science-fiction yarns that is quite conspicuous; it's so difficult to pick out the villains. It might have made quite a change in history if the ballads and tales of the old days had been a little less sure of who the villains were. Read the standard boy's literature of forty years ago; tales of Crusaders who were always right, and Saracens who were always wrong. (The same Saracens who taught the Christians to respect the philosophy of the Greeks, and introduced them to the basic ideas of straight, self-disciplined thinking!)
Life's much simpler in a thatched cottage than in a dome on the airless Moon, easier to understand when the Villains are all pure black-hearted villains, and the Heroes are all pure White Souled Heroes. Just look how simple history is compared with science-fiction! It's simple--but is it good?
These early science-fiction tales explored the Universe; they were probings, speculations, as to where we could go. What we could do.
They had a sweep and reach and exuberance that belonged.
They were fun, too....
John W. Campbell, Jr. Mountainside, N.J. April, 1953

BOOK ONE
PIRACY PREFERRED

PROLOGUE
High in the deep blue of the afternoon sky rode a tiny speck of glistening metal, scarcely visible in the glare of the sun. The workers on the machines below glanced up for a moment, then back to their work, though little enough it was on these automatic cultivators. Even this minor diversion was of interest in the dull monotony of green. These endless fields of castor bean plants had to be cultivated, but with the great machines that did the work it required but a few dozen men to cultivate an entire county.
The passengers in the huge plane high above them gave little thought to what passed below, engrossed with their papers or books, or engaged in casual conversation. This monotonous trip was boring to most of them.