t the core of this long, multifaceted production is a relatively small seed. And that seed is a short documentary created in 1971. During that year, James Gunn, noted SF writer and critic, as well as professor at the University of Kansas, managed to capture on film John Campbell conducting a "working lunch" with two writers, Harry Harrison and Gordon Dickson. Campbell was then barely into his sixties and still serving as the editor of Analog magazine, the renamed successor to Astounding, where he had assumed the helm in 1937, and Harrison and Dickson were pitching a concept for a novel. Gunn bookended the film with a brief opener and closer conducted by himself.
What director and producer Solstein has done in this new version is to surround this meticulously restored kernel with dozens of interviews with writers who knew Campbell intimately, as well as with the insights of a few notable critics with less subjective thoughts on the man. In effect, Solstein has created a documentary about a documentary, or rather accreted a larger shell of meaning around the original text.
This production takes full advantage of the miracles of DVD navigation. Initially, the user is presented with a main menu with the following choices: "Long Version," "Short Version," "The Golden Age Module," "Lunch Module," "After the Golden Age Module," "JWC the Man Module" and "Special Features." Aside from "Special Features," the other choices are subsets of the "Long Version." (Additionally, a large text file of relevant material can be accessed from the DVD by those users with DVD drives on their PCs, or alternatively downloaded by visitors to the DMZ Web site.)
The "Long Version" is divided into many sections, each of which is filled with snippets from conversations conducted by Solstein with over two dozen respondents, ranging from Brian Aldiss through Greg Bear to Jack Williamson. (Isaac Asimov is the exception, appearing in segments dating from much earlier.) The first section is titled "The Ascent" and tells how Campbell came to the editorship of the magazine. "Astounding" seeks to characterize the 'zine that soon thereafter occupied the essential center of the field. "The Great Editor" reveals what made Campbell so unique. In "A Science Fiction World," the feedback between SF and the world at large is examined. We learn of the personal traits and quirks of JWC in "The Man." "Encounters with JWC" consists of some specific anecdotes involving face-to-face meetings. Some of JWC's less savory aspects are revealed in "A Changing World (Social Issues)."
Now comes the seed film. "Introduction to Lunch" segues into the actual Gunn material. A jazzy score underlies the scene. Campbell, Dickson and Harrison are seated at a table in a hotel restaurant. The cigarette-holder-wielding Campbell dominates the conversation, with Dickson visibly disheveled and nervous and a cooler Harrison barely restraining acerbic responses. The men thrash out, sometimes dully, sometimes brilliantly, the themes and characters of what would become the co-authored novel The Lifeship (1976). "Responses to Lunch" follows.
Rounding out the "Long Version" are the sections titled "Pseudoscience," about JWC's conceptual hobbyhorses; "The End of the Golden Age," about the magazine competition that rose to challenge Campbell; and "Final Chapters," in which we learn that Campbell conducted his own funeral via tape-recording. When we turn to "Special Features," we discover samples of JWC's famous letters and editorials; a gallery of cover images; author biographies; and "Barry's Favorites," in which Barry Malzberg selects the top issues of Astounding.
They come to praise Campbell, not bury him
For those of us readers and writers who never had the uneasy privilege of knowing the feisty and fecund John W. Campbell in person (he died in 1971, just a few months after the lunch date captured here), this documentary comes as close as any media presentation could to imparting the essence of the field's most fabled editor to a new generation. Through hearing and viewing the words and faces of the men with whom he worked, an instant bond is created between the viewer and Campbell. By the time the man himself appears onscreen, it's like seeing an old friend once again. We feel we've shared his whole career up to the moment of his somewhat surreal lunch with his two desperate contributors, and we are also suffused with the melancholy foreknowledge that they could not share: within months Campbell would be dead.
But none of our emotional or intellectual responses would have been generated without the hard work and cinematic/editing skills of Eric Solstein. Tracking down such figures as Thomas Disch, Robert Silverberg, William Tenn, Philip Jose Farmer, Ben Bova, Stanley Schmidt and others, Solstein managed to elicit from them candid and revealing insights into their shared subject—insights which surpass mere nostalgia to become the vivid recreation in words of a vanished era. Then he devised the organizational scheme and sliced and diced the free-flowing commentary into subunits. All the interviews, basically just talking-head shots, are nonetheless easy on the eyes, thanks to subtle and sophisticated camera movements and lighting. Solstein manages to capture the dynamic, differing personalities of all the interlocutors in much the manner as does a sharp portrait photographer.
Solstein has resisted to temptation to create a hagiography. JWC's many defects—racism, anti-Semitism, a bullying nature and a superiority complex—are discussed and modified from a dozen different perspectives. Michael Moorcock's comments are the most critical, but others chime in, with Robert Silverberg, for instance, mentioning how he grew unable to work with Campbell. Yet even those with reservations about the man somehow exude a tangible respect and admiration for him. In the science-fiction trenches, Campbell was an unshakable comrade even of those with whom he disagreed.
As for the original film, it has been spruced up to a high gloss, so that the inherent limitations (only one camera was used) are forgotten. The soundtrack is equally crisp.
Campbell smiles broadly when interviewed by Gunn and declaims what great "fun" he's had in his life, doing what he loved. This documentary honors that aspect of the man in the best possible way.
