ted; not enough engineers available.

Fifty years ago the engineering student was a sort of Second Class
Citizen of the college campus. Today the Liberal Arts are fighting for
a come-back, the pendulum having swung considerably too far in the
other direction.

So science-fiction has a very real function to the teen-agers; it
presents varying ideas of what the world in which he will live his
adult life will be interested in.

This is 1953. My son will graduate in 1955. The period of his peak
earning power should be when he's about forty to sixty--about 1970,
say, to 1990. With the progress being made in understanding of health
and physical vigor, it's apt to run beyond 2000 A.D., however.

Anyone want to bet that people will be living in the same general
circumstances then? That the same general social and cultural and
material standards will apply?

I have a hunch that the history books are a poor way of planning a
life today--and that science-fiction comes a lot closer.

There's another thing about science-fiction yarns that is quite
conspicuous; it's so difficult to pick out the villains. It might have
made quite a change in history if the ballads and tales of the old
days had been a little less sure of who the villains were. Read the
standard boy's literature of forty years ago; tales of Crusaders who
were always right, and Saracens who were always wrong. (The same
Saracens who taught the Christians to respect the philosophy of the
Greeks, and introduced them to the basic ideas of straight,
self-disciplined thinking!)

Life's much simpler in a thatched cottage than in a dome on the
airless Moon, easier to understand when the Villains are all pure
black-hearted villains, and the Heroes are all pure White Souled
Heroes. Just look how simple history is compared with science-fiction!
It's simple--but is it good?

These early science-fiction tales explored the Universe; they were
probings, speculations, as to where we _could_ go. What we
_could_ do.

They had a sweep and reach and exuberance that belonged.

They _were_ fun, too....

John W. Campbell, Jr.
Mountainside, N.J.
April, 1953

BOOK ONE

PIRACY PREFERRED

PROLOGUE

High in the deep blue of the afternoon sky rode a tiny speck of
glistening metal, scarcely visible in the glare of the sun. The workers
on the machines below glanced up for a moment, then back to their work,
though little enough it was on these automatic cultivators.