Of course, Astounding/Analog, like any magazine, had its lean periods.
During WWII, Campbell's best writers went off to Europe and the South Pacific, leaving him to fill the pages as best he could. Then, during the early '50s, vigorous competition from Galaxy and Fantasy and Science Fiction lured away Asimov, Heinlein, Sturgeon, Bester and other authors whose careers he had fostered.
After Campbell changed the magazine's title from Astounding to Analog, issues became largely loaded with thin gimmick stories with the exception of an occasional serial by Poul Anderson and Hal Clement or a story by a newcomer like Anne McCaffrey or James Tiptree, Jr.
Campbell was clearly scratching together each issue with what he could find, often with unsatisfactory results.
Fact analogous to fiction
And let's not forget some of the articles Campbell billed as non-fiction.
To its credit, Astounding/Analog was among the first popular magazines to forecast digital computers, civilian nuclear energy, communications satellites, manned space travel, biotechnology, hypertext, interplanetary probes and SETI.
However, Campbell also made much of such topics as Dianetics, perpetual-motion machines, dowsing, telepathy and the suggestion that cigarettes may actually prevent lung cancer.
There's a thin margin between the speculative and the absurd, the cutting edge and the lunatic fringe, and Astounding/Analog (like all SF, really) has always walked that line uneasily.
The Silver Age
Analog didn't become a major force again until after Ben Bova succeeded Campbell in 1972. During the decade that followed, Bova replicated Campbell's feat of 30 years earlier by bringing forth a Silver Age of Science Fiction.
Bova introduced new writers like Joe Haldeman, George R.R. Martin, Vonda McIntyre, Greg Bear, Spider Robinson and John Varley to the genre, while coaxing giants like Asimov, Sturgeon, Bester, and even Heinlein back to the magazine.
For much of the '70s, Analog stories picked up the lion's share of Hugo and Nebula awards. However, having become the most respected magazine editor in the field, Bova left Analog in 1979 to become editor of Omni.
A few years before that, Analog gained another new competitor, an upstart digest titled Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. Caught between Omni's high pay scales and the cachet of Asimov's, Analog's new editor Stanley Schmidt found many of his writers lured away.
As a result, Analog fell out of fashion among the SF literati during the late '80s and early '90s.
Being known as "an Analog writer" became a derisive term among the cyberpunk lunch bunch, and someone coined the term "Analog Mafia" as a means of branding writers who regularly published stories in this venue.
Times have changed, though, and this, too, has passed. At century's end, the pomo new wave has become a bunch of crabby old hipsters sitting around the cafe listening to Billy Idol records, while cyberpunk seems somewhat redundant.
Asimov's now faces competition from Science Fiction Age and a half-dozen small-press SF magazines, and its gloss is beginning to flake a bit around the edges.
And Analog is still here.
New tricks for old dogs
It's not the same Analog of ten years ago. New writers have come up during the last decade -- Robert J. Sawyer, Stephen Baxter, Catharine Asaro, Geoffrey A.Landis, Paul Levinson, Lois Tilton, G. David Nordley, Sarah Zettel, Jerry Oltion, Michael Burstein, Shane Tourlellotte -- who, along with returning old hands, are bringing about a renaissance of "hard" science fiction.
In today's Analog, substance means more than style and optimism about the upcoming 21st Century gets more play than introspective nihilism. These guys wear their "Analog Mafia" buttons with pride.
There's something to be said about old age when it demonstrates not just maturity, but the willingness to change.
Old dogs can learn new tricks, if you give them enough room to jump -- and I'm looking around for a larger shelf to put in the attic to give my old dogs some space.
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