I don't know if you're old enough to remember the '70s, but your sense of what was going on with the top SF magazines back then is a bit off. The idea that Analog was losing primacy to Galaxy is ridiculous on its face, considering that Galaxy started missing issues as early as 1975 and went out of business by 1980 while Analog remained a consistent and popular monthly publication throughout the '70s and for many years after. One can also examine the history of the Hugo award for Best Professional Editor to see what the active fans of the day thought. Ben Bova, Campbell's replacement at Analog, won the award every year from 1973 through 1977, after which, for a few years, the award shifted around between Bova, Ed Ferman of F&SF, and George Scithers of Asimov's. Analog didn't really start to lose its leadership role until three things happened between 1977 and 1980: (1) Asimov's started, (2) Bova was replaced by Stanley Schmidt, whose editorship was never all that impressive to me (and apparently not to Hugo voters, either; he rarely ranked higher than fourth in the Best Professional Editor category; even when he finally won in 2013, after he had resigned, it felt more like a sentimental farewell than a recognition of excellence), and (3) Analog was sold by Condé Nast to Davis Publications, which already owned Asimov's.
I agree with your characterization of Asimov's as a reactionary product, but the common trope about Astounding/Analog "reflecting an engineer mindset" was never really true even under Campbell, and became even less true under Bova and Schmidt. While there certainly were some stories from Campbell's era, in particular, that worked out their scientific backgrounds in detail, it was never really a dominant feature of the magazine. Many popular writers of the Campbell period (Christopher Anvil, James H. Schmitz, Randall Garrett... I could go on) never wrote science-heavy stories, and it's not clear to me to this day whether any of those writers actually knew much about science. In practice, Campbell had a wide-ranging curiosity and was open to stories of many kinds. Under his editorship, the magazine even became rather anti-scientific at times, whenever he got into one of his periodic obsessions with things like Dianetics or psychic powers.
Hello, I appreciate this comment! My point was not necessarily that Analog was surpassed by Galaxy in raw popularity, but rather that Galaxy was pulling readers away, esp younger ones. However, it looks like I got the years for this totally wrong— Galaxy reached its peak in the 1950s and 1960s, not the 1970s. And then Analog had a bit of a resurgence under Bova as you mentioned before Asimov’s took over. I apologize for this error and I will correct it.
As for Analog not reflecting an especially scientific mindset, I understand what you mean, but I think it still makes sense to view Analog in this way in the modern context. While I agree that Analog could be somewhat “anti-science” at times, one of Campbell’s main talking points initially was that Astounding had somewhat plausible science compared to existing pulp.
That being said, you’re right that it wasn’t always known for its rigor, and I read that this was actually part of why Galaxy started to pull younger readers. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Analog reflected a “sci-fi engineering mindset”— it reflects a transcendent, Golden Age way of viewing science (see: https://synthesizedsunsets.substack.com/p/golden-age-science-fiction-is-being) more than anything else. But then again, Analog still does present nonfiction science articles alongside its fiction, which I don’t see so much from the other modern magazines.
I don't read new SF magazines anymore, but back in The Day, most of the top magazines ran non-fiction science pieces. Isaac Asimov was the regular science columnist for F&SF in the '60s and '70s, and rocket pioneer Willy Ley regularly wrote for Galaxy in the '50s.
Your point about the Campbell mindset is fair. Certainly one of his big issues in the early years of his editorship (late '30s and '40s) was that SF should be more genuinely scientific than the bug-eyed monsters and Westerns in space that were all too characteristic of SF up to that point. He was an intelligent and scientifically-educated man (B.S. in Physics) and he insisted his writers think through the implications of their ideas. Those ideas didn't necessarily have to be about the hard sciences, though; they could be about sociology or psychology or just any interesting idea, as long as the writer did a good job of working it out and it had some plausible connection with science fiction.
The '50s are well before my time (I first read SF magazines as a child in the '70s), but I have a magazine collection extending back to the late '40s, and I think Astounding and Galaxy always had distinct styles. The cliché about Galaxy under H.L. Gold's editorship is that it was full of futuristic social satires along the lines of Pohl and Kornbluth's "The Space Merchants" (which was originally published in Galaxy under another title). This is no more accurate than the idea that Astounding was full of slide-rule calculations, but it's not entirely wrong either. Magazines tend to take on the personalities of their editors, and Gold was not trained in the sciences. His ideas about SF were quite different from Campbell's. To have both of them editing SF magazines, along with Anthony Boucher at F&SF, must have made for a very exciting time.
I don't know if you're old enough to remember the '70s, but your sense of what was going on with the top SF magazines back then is a bit off. The idea that Analog was losing primacy to Galaxy is ridiculous on its face, considering that Galaxy started missing issues as early as 1975 and went out of business by 1980 while Analog remained a consistent and popular monthly publication throughout the '70s and for many years after. One can also examine the history of the Hugo award for Best Professional Editor to see what the active fans of the day thought. Ben Bova, Campbell's replacement at Analog, won the award every year from 1973 through 1977, after which, for a few years, the award shifted around between Bova, Ed Ferman of F&SF, and George Scithers of Asimov's. Analog didn't really start to lose its leadership role until three things happened between 1977 and 1980: (1) Asimov's started, (2) Bova was replaced by Stanley Schmidt, whose editorship was never all that impressive to me (and apparently not to Hugo voters, either; he rarely ranked higher than fourth in the Best Professional Editor category; even when he finally won in 2013, after he had resigned, it felt more like a sentimental farewell than a recognition of excellence), and (3) Analog was sold by Condé Nast to Davis Publications, which already owned Asimov's.
I agree with your characterization of Asimov's as a reactionary product, but the common trope about Astounding/Analog "reflecting an engineer mindset" was never really true even under Campbell, and became even less true under Bova and Schmidt. While there certainly were some stories from Campbell's era, in particular, that worked out their scientific backgrounds in detail, it was never really a dominant feature of the magazine. Many popular writers of the Campbell period (Christopher Anvil, James H. Schmitz, Randall Garrett... I could go on) never wrote science-heavy stories, and it's not clear to me to this day whether any of those writers actually knew much about science. In practice, Campbell had a wide-ranging curiosity and was open to stories of many kinds. Under his editorship, the magazine even became rather anti-scientific at times, whenever he got into one of his periodic obsessions with things like Dianetics or psychic powers.
Hello, I appreciate this comment! My point was not necessarily that Analog was surpassed by Galaxy in raw popularity, but rather that Galaxy was pulling readers away, esp younger ones. However, it looks like I got the years for this totally wrong— Galaxy reached its peak in the 1950s and 1960s, not the 1970s. And then Analog had a bit of a resurgence under Bova as you mentioned before Asimov’s took over. I apologize for this error and I will correct it.
As for Analog not reflecting an especially scientific mindset, I understand what you mean, but I think it still makes sense to view Analog in this way in the modern context. While I agree that Analog could be somewhat “anti-science” at times, one of Campbell’s main talking points initially was that Astounding had somewhat plausible science compared to existing pulp.
That being said, you’re right that it wasn’t always known for its rigor, and I read that this was actually part of why Galaxy started to pull younger readers. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Analog reflected a “sci-fi engineering mindset”— it reflects a transcendent, Golden Age way of viewing science (see: https://synthesizedsunsets.substack.com/p/golden-age-science-fiction-is-being) more than anything else. But then again, Analog still does present nonfiction science articles alongside its fiction, which I don’t see so much from the other modern magazines.
Thanks for reading!
I don't read new SF magazines anymore, but back in The Day, most of the top magazines ran non-fiction science pieces. Isaac Asimov was the regular science columnist for F&SF in the '60s and '70s, and rocket pioneer Willy Ley regularly wrote for Galaxy in the '50s.
Your point about the Campbell mindset is fair. Certainly one of his big issues in the early years of his editorship (late '30s and '40s) was that SF should be more genuinely scientific than the bug-eyed monsters and Westerns in space that were all too characteristic of SF up to that point. He was an intelligent and scientifically-educated man (B.S. in Physics) and he insisted his writers think through the implications of their ideas. Those ideas didn't necessarily have to be about the hard sciences, though; they could be about sociology or psychology or just any interesting idea, as long as the writer did a good job of working it out and it had some plausible connection with science fiction.
The '50s are well before my time (I first read SF magazines as a child in the '70s), but I have a magazine collection extending back to the late '40s, and I think Astounding and Galaxy always had distinct styles. The cliché about Galaxy under H.L. Gold's editorship is that it was full of futuristic social satires along the lines of Pohl and Kornbluth's "The Space Merchants" (which was originally published in Galaxy under another title). This is no more accurate than the idea that Astounding was full of slide-rule calculations, but it's not entirely wrong either. Magazines tend to take on the personalities of their editors, and Gold was not trained in the sciences. His ideas about SF were quite different from Campbell's. To have both of them editing SF magazines, along with Anthony Boucher at F&SF, must have made for a very exciting time.