Computers and science fiction – an essay - The Computing Universe: A Journey through a Revolution - page 337

B.17.4. John Wood Campbell Jr. (1910-71) was indisputably the greatest editor of science fiction
and nurtured a whole generation of science fiction writers including Isaac Asimov and Robert
Heinlein. In 1938 he became editor of the magazine Astounding Science Fiction and, by his insistence
on a much higher standard of writing and his help and support for writers like Asimov, created
the modern science fiction genre. Under the pseudonym of Don A. Stuart he also wrote science
fiction. Isaac Asimov rated Campbell's story “Who Goes There?,” published in 1938, as “one of the
very best science fiction stories ever written.” (Photo courtesy of Marsh Library.)
Campbell was editor of Astounding Science Fiction and its successor, Analog Science
Fact - Science Fiction , for more than thirty years. In a 1946 editorial, he gave a
definition of what is now called hard SF :
Science fiction is written by technically minded people, about technically
minded people, for the satisfaction of technically minded people. 11
In the early days of computers, after World War II, the public learned about the
awesome calculating power of the ENIAC. Soon after this, Ekert and Mauchly
launched the first U.S. commercial computer - UNIVAC. During the 1952 U.S.
presidential election, UNIVAC shot to fame by appearing on TV and, with only a
fraction of results reported, correctly predicted a landslide win for the preelec-
tion underdog, Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Given the enormous scale of these early vacuum tube computers it was
natural for science fiction writers to equate the power of a computer with its
size. Kurt Vonnegut ( B.17.5 ) published a short story in 1950 about a computer
called “EPICAC,” the largest and smartest computer on the planet:
EPICAC covered about an acre on the fourth floor of the physics building at
Wyandotte College. Ignoring his spiritual side for a minute, he was seven tons
B.17.5. Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) was a U.S. novelist who used science fiction techniques in
many of his novels. His novel Player Piano explores the theme of computers making workers
redundant, a scenario that is even more relevant today. This photograph of the Vonnegut mural in
Indianapolis was created by the artist Pamela Bliss. Vonnegut's face in the mural is a composite
image based on three different photos.