Of course there's a whole thread for this stuff---but speaking of Campbell and pulp offices, here's the essential Alfie Bester's encounter with both:
I wrote a few stories for Astounding, and out of that came my one demented meeting with the great John W. Campbell, Jr. I neednt preface this account with the reminder that I worshipped Campbell from afar. I had never met him; all my stories had been submitted by mail. I hadnt the faintest idea of what he was like, but I imagined that he was a combination of Bertrand Russell and Ernest Rutherford. So I sent off another story to Campbell, one which no show would let me tackle. The title was Oddy and Id and the concept was Freudian, that a man is not governed by his conscious mind but rather by his unconscious compulsions. Campbell telephoned me a week later to say that he liked the story but wanted to discuss a few changes with me. Would I come to his office? I was delighted to accept the invitation despite the fact that the editorial offices of Astounding were then the hell and gone out in the boondocks of New Jersey.The editorial offices were in a grim factory that looked like and probably was a printing plant. The offices turned out to be one small office, cramped, dingy, occupied not only by Campbell but by his assistant, Miss Tarrant. My only yardstick for comparison was the glamorous network and advertising agency offices. I was dismayed.
Campbell arose from his desk and shook hands. Im a fairly big guy but he looked enormous to me, about the size of a defensive tackle. He was dour and seemed preoccupied by matters of great moment. He sat down behind his desk. I sat down on the visitors chair.
You dont know it, Campbell said, you cant have any way of knowing it, but Freud is finished.
I stared. If you mean the rival schools of psychiatry, Mr. Campbell, I think—
No I dont. Psychiatry as we know it, is dead.
Oh come now, Mr. Campbell. Surely youre joking.
I have never been more serious in my life. Freud has been destroyed by one of the greatest discoveries of our time.
Whats that?
Dianetics.
I never heard of it.
It was discovered by L. Ron Hubbard, and he will win the Nobel peace prize for it, Campbell said solemnly.
The peace prize? What for?
Wouldnt the man who wiped out war win the Nobel peace prize?
I suppose so, but how?
Through dianetics.
I honestly dont know what youre talking about, Mr. Campbell.
Read this, he said, and handed me a sheaf of long galley proofs. They were, I discovered later, the galleys of the very first dianetics piece to appear in Astounding.
Read them here and now? This is an awful lot of copy.
He nodded, shuffled some papers, spoke to Miss Tarrant and went about his business, ignoring me. I read the first galley carefully, the second not so carefully as I became bored by the dianetics mishmash. Finally I was just letting my eyes wander along, but was very careful to allow enough time for each galley so Campbell wouldnt know I was faking. He looked very shrewd and observant to me. After a sufficient time I stacked the galleys neatly and returned them to Campbells desk.
Well? he demanded. Will Hubbard win the peace prize?
Its difficult to say. Dianetics is a most original and imaginative idea, but Ive only been able to read through the piece once. If I could take a set of galleys home and—
No, Campbell said. There is only this one set. Im rescheduling and pushing the article into the very next issue. Its that important. He handed the galleys to Miss Tarrant. Youre blocking it, he told me. Thats all right. Most people do that when a new idea threatens to overturn their thinking.
That may well be, I said, but I dont think its true of myself. Im a hyperthyroid, an intellectual monkey, curious about everything.
No, Campbell said, with the assurance of a diagnostician, Youre a hyp-O-thyroid. But its not a question of intellect, its one of emotion. We conceal our emotional history from ourselves although dianetics can trace our history all the way back to the womb.
To the womb!
Yes. The foetus remembers. Come and have lunch.
Remember, I was fresh from Madison Avenue and expense-account luncheons. We didnt go to the Jersey equivalent of Sardis, 21, or even P.J. Clarks. He led me downstairs and we entered a tacky little lunchroom crowded with printers and file clerks; an interior room with blank walls that made every sound reverberate. I got myself a liverwurst on white, no mustard, and a coke. I cant remember what Campbell ate.
We sat down at a small table while he continued to discourse on dianetics, the greatest salvation of the future when the world would at last be cleared of its emotional wounds. Suddenly he stood up and towered over me. You can drive your memory back to the womb, he said. You can do it if you release every block, clear yourself and remember. Try it.
Now?
Now. Think. Think back. Clear yourself. Remember! You can remember when your mother tried to abort you with a button hook. Youve never stopped hating her for it.
Around me there were cries of BLT down, hold the mayo. Eighty-six on the English. Combo rye, relish. Coffee shake, pick up. And here was this grim tackle standing over me, practicing dianetics without a license. The scene was so lunatic that I began to tremble with suppressed laughter. I prayed. Help me out of this, please. Dont let me laugh in his face. Show me a way out. God showed me. I looked up at Campbell and said, Youre absolutely right, Mr. Campbell, but the emotional wounds are too much to bear. I cant go on with this.
He was completely satisfied. Yes, I could see you were shaking. He sat down again and we finished our lunch and returned to his office. It developed that the only changes he wanted in my story was the removal of all Freudian terms which dianetics had now made obsolete. I agreed, of course; they were minor and it was a great honor to appear in Astounding no matter what the price. I escaped at last and returned to civilization where I had three double gibsons and dont be stingy with the onions.
That was my one and only meeting with John Campbell and certainly my only story conference with him. Ive had some wild ones in the entertainment business but nothing to equal that. It reinforced my private opinion that a majority of the science fiction crowd, despite their brilliance, were missing their marbles. Perhaps thats the price that must be paid for brilliance.
Then he gets a call from Horace Gold, who actually doesn't mess up his material---from this splendid memoir of Bester's best SF years: