Michael Bishop c/o Challenger

(A letter to Joe Green)

I never met or even sold a story or article to John W. Campbell, but I always regarded him as an eminence within the SF field and aspired both to meet and to sell to him, and so I want to thank you for your clearly observed, recalled, and written memoir of the five days that you hosted him in your home on his trip to Cocoa Beach in 1970, not too long after I published my first sale in Galaxy (not, alas, Analog).

You’ve painted a memorable portrait of the man and one that I will therefore remember for a good while. I was shocked, by the way, to learn that Campbell – John, as you by rights refer to him – died shortly after turning 61. When he died, I was only about 25 myself and viewed him with some awe as a person of great and venerable age, and probably imagined him at least in his late seventies and probably even 85 or so.

It’s chastening, to say the least, to report to you that I turned 61 in November and still foolishly think of myself as at the doorstep of old age rather than well over its threshold. In any case, it was good of you to look back upon this episode and to share it with the readers of The Bulletin, many of whom, I’m sure, will read it with the same bittersweet pleasure that I did.

Joe’s piece on Campbell was reprinted in The SFWA Bulletin