The impressive thing about Asimov — incidental to the quality of the writing — is he probably sat down and blasted that out in an hour top-to-bottom with no edits.
Volumetrically one of the most impressive authors in history.
"I just write down the first draft, read it through from start to finish and write up the second draft, and that's it," Asimov says.
"What's the second draft for?" Heinlein says.
Anyway, I'm a fan of Asimov.
> This particular thesis was addressed to me a quarter of a century ago by John Campbell, who specialized in irritating me.
I only know of Campbell from “A Hero With a Thousand Faces”. I’d love to read more about how Campbell specialized in irritating Asimov.
Campbell (John, not Joseph; you got the wrong Campbell) specialized in irritating lots of people.
First, he was one of Scientology's early advocates (Dianetics, actually), and all kinds of pseudoscientific ideas. Even other scifi authors thought this weird.
His pseudoscientific ideas obviously clashed with Asimov's atheist and rational mindset about the world.
Campbell also bought into bizarre scifi/racist/supremacist theories which were not well received by his fellow authors. He was very pushy and meddlesome as an editor -- that alone wasn't unusual in scifi & pulp magazines of the time -- but he was also obsessed about specific and weird directions that he insisted most stories he published must follow.
For example, Philip K. Dick didn't really like Campbell's insistence that most scifi stories must feature telepaths, and also that telepaths must be benevolent and superior and take over humanity. PKD thought this reminded him too much of Nazi "master race" theories, and didn't like Campbell as a result.
The one good thing in Campbell's record: he wrote "Who Goes There", the original story then turned into the "Thing" movies. The story is quite good, too!