{"id":957,"date":"2014-01-05T22:22:55","date_gmt":"2014-01-06T04:22:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/?p=957"},"modified":"2014-01-05T22:22:55","modified_gmt":"2014-01-06T04:22:55","slug":"asimov-and-the-editorial-hand-of-john-w-campbell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/asimov-and-the-editorial-hand-of-john-w-campbell\/","title":{"rendered":"Asimov and the Editorial Hand of John W. Campbell"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a>I said in my post on Asimov’s birthday <\/a>a few days ago that I was going to read some stories from The Winds of Change<\/em>.\u00a0 I did, getting through the first four stories before my eyelids grew heavy.\u00a0 The third story is the oldest in the book, “Belief” from 1953.\u00a0 Asimov notes in his introduction to the story that this was its first appearance in one of his American collections.\u00a0 (The reasons are beyond the scope of this post.)<\/p>\n

I thought I had read it somewhere, perhaps in The Great SF Stories, but the ISFDB<\/a> said otherwise.\u00a0 It did, however, show that the story had been published in a later collection, The Alternate Asimov’s<\/em>.\u00a0 I had a copy I had picked up years ago that I’d never read, primarily because I didn’t have time to read the original and final versions of the novels The End of Eternity<\/em> and Pebble in the Sky<\/em>.\u00a0 The Alternate Asimovs<\/em> contains the original versions of those novels.\u00a0 It also contains both version of the novelette “Belief”.<\/p>\n

It seems the version of the story John W. Campbell, Jr. published in Astounding<\/em> wasn’t Asimov’s preferred version.\u00a0\u00a0 Campbell required Asimov to rewrite the ending significantly.\u00a0 I read the original version, and found the experience quite enlightening.\"alternate<\/a><\/p>\n

According to the notes in The Alternate Asimovs<\/em>, Campbell had suggested the premise to Asimov.\u00a0 The story is about Roger Toomey, a physicist at a small college.\u00a0 He wakes up one morning with the ability to levitate.<\/p>\n

This causes him a number of problems, as this new ability is not entirely under his conscious control.\u00a0 After being observed levitating unintentionally by the department secretary and some students, he gets in trouble with his department head and the dean.\u00a0 He gets in further trouble when writes to a number of leading theoretical physicists asking if they could think of a physical mechanism to explain levitation.<\/p>\n

Naturally, they think he’s a crank.\u00a0 The most prominent of these physicists named Deering is friends with Toomey’s department head, and since he wrote these letters on departmental stationary, he gets a medical leave.<\/p>\n

In order to prove his case, he attends a small conference hosted by Deering.\u00a0 He comes in after the talks start, sits in the back of the room, and levitates every time Deering takes the podium to speak.\u00a0 When Deering stops speaking and challenges Toomey, Toomey denies having done anything.\u00a0 Eventually, Deering comes to Toomey’s hotel with an FBI agent and offers Toomey a position if he will admit he can levitate.<\/p>\n

\"Isaac_Asimov\"<\/a>

Isaac Asimov<\/p><\/div>\n

The ending is upbeat, and while Toomey endures disbelief and skepticism at the hands of his fellow scientists, this isn’t the ending Asimov had originally intended but one more in line with what Campbell wanted.<\/p>\n

In the original version, Toomey is convinced by a psychiatrist friend to turn his ability into a stage act, saying that he’ll never convince his colleagues of his ability, that they won’t accept it because it doesn’t fit their belief system.\u00a0 Although he initially is a hit and rakes in the dough, he loses his booking.\u00a0 The owner of the club where he’s performing has figured out that this isn’t a stage act, it’s for real.\u00a0 Toomey doesn’t know how to work the crowd but just shows off.\u00a0 Ultimately they will figure out Toomey is for real.\u00a0 And while the audience at a magic show likes to be fooled, they want the comfort of knowing it’s a trick and what they’re seeing isn’t real.<\/p>\n

Toomey goes home dejected to find a note from his wife, saying she can’t take it anymore and has left him.\u00a0 Toomey commits suicide by taking a bottle of sleeping pills.\u00a0 A neighbor notices the front door isn’t closed, goes in to investigate, and leaves the house screaming at the sight of the corpse.<\/p>\n

When they police show up, they make an interesting discovery.\u00a0 Rigor mortis has caused whatever physiological mechanism responsible for levitation to activate. Even in death, Toomey is levitating, though only an inch or two off the bed.\u00a0 One of the cops pushes down on the body, there’s a soft pop, and Toomey drops to the mattress.\u00a0 The cop refuses to believe what he saw.<\/p>\n

\"John<\/a>

John W. Campbell, Jr.<\/p><\/div>\n

Campbell didn’t like the original ending and insisted that Asimov change it to an upbeat one.\u00a0 This wasn’t unusual for Campbell, although he was by no means the worst editor at this practice.<\/p>\n

Both stories are well written and differ only in the final third.\u00a0 Also, both stories have endings I found satisfying.\u00a0\u00a0 I found the upbeat ending, which was entirely conceived and executed by Asimov, to be clever.\u00a0 Toomey’s approach to levitate and then deny having done so to Deering was perfect.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, I’m not sure such a thing could have been pulled off successfully.\u00a0 The ending also raises the question of why Toomey didn’t demonstrate for his department head and dean.\u00a0 The explanation that they wouldn’t believe even if they saw Toomey levitate didn’t really wash, especially since Deering did eventually believe when he saw.<\/p>\n

I’m afraid I have to say the more negative ending is the one I find more realistic.\u00a0 There are some things we refuse to believe, even when the evidence says otherwise.\u00a0 Asimov pointed this out quite effectively in his original version of “Belief”.<\/p>\n

Inexpensive copies of both The Alternate Asimovs<\/em> (which has Asimov’s account of the writing of “Belief”) and The Winds of Change<\/em> are plentiful on the internet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I said in my post on Asimov’s birthday a few days ago that I was going to read some stories from The Winds of Change.\u00a0 I did, getting through the first four stories before my eyelids grew heavy.\u00a0 The third story is the oldest in the book, “Belief” from 1953.\u00a0 Asimov notes in his introduction […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[232,35,694],"tags":[772,762,782,783],"class_list":["post-957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astounding-science-fiction","category-isaac-asimov","category-jr","tag-astounding-science-fiction","tag-isaac-asimov","tag-john-w-campbell","tag-jr"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3P5pJ-fr","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=957"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":963,"href":"https:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/957\/revisions\/963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}