Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction – Alec Nevala-Lee

The longer I live, the less I am interested in people.

Man that sounded horrible.

The longer I live, the less interested I am in the lives of people whose art I consume. I think it comes form a recognition that they are just human like the rest of us, and that a certain whatever brilliance they may have is probably balanced out by a profound stupidity in some, if not many, other fields.

I don’t think I held that opinion, or held it as deeply, when I started reading this book. I dove into the book with a lot of interest in learning more, although mostly about Heinlein, the writer on this list that was most important to my upbringing.

And then at some point I wasn’t interested in learning more. There was something a little too gossip column about some of the information and details I found in this.

Before I wrap up my complaining about this book, I will say a few nice things. I did find it well written, I did find it interesting enough as I worked through it. I read the whole thing without many complaints, as Nevala-Lee’s style carries things well even when I found myself less than interested or perhaps too salacious.

Having read this, there is so much I find myself remembering and not wanting to repeat, simply from a sentiment of merely wanting to mind my own fucking business. Things Asimov did and why, things Heinlein did any why. Weirdly enough, not much of what I read here actually shocked me, in the sense that none of it was all that new information. It was all stuff that the science-fiction community has known for a while (if you knew that people were pushing to rename the John W. Campbell award, you probably also knew why). In the case of Asimov and Campbell, having some (Asimov) or a lot (Campbell) of indifference to these author helps.

Not really Hubbard though. Fuck that guy. If you make a religion, not to mention one as controversial as Scientology, you deserve to every ounce of scrutiny the world throws at you. That church and every member can eat shit.

A good book, but just not a taste I was all that much into.