The Black Star Passes | Page 2

year, a student may say, "I want to be a chemical
engineer."
At graduation, he may say, "I'm going into chemical engineering
construction."
Ten years later he may explain that he's a chemical engineer
specializing in the construction of corrosion-resistant structures, such
as electroplating baths and pickling tanks 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