So I wrote Magic, Incorporated and started east on the proceeds, and wrote "They" and Sixth Column while I was on that trip. The latter was the only story of mine ever influenced to any marked degree by John W. Campbell, Jr. He had in file an unsold story he had written some years earlier. JWCdid not show me his manuscript; instead he told me the story line orally and stated that, if I would write it, he would buy it.
He needed a serial; I needed an automobile. I took the brass check.
Writing Sixth Column was a job I sweated over. I had to reslant it to remove racist aspects of the original story line. And I didn't really believe the pseudoscientific rationale of Campbell's three spectra — so I worked especially hard to make it sound realistic.
It worked out all right. The check for the serial, plus 35¢ in cash, bought me that new car… and the book editions continue to sell and sell and sell, and have earned more than forty times as much as I was paid for the serial. So it was a financial success… but I do not consider it to be an artistic success.
While I was back east I told Campbell of my plans to quit writing later that year. He was not pleased as I was then his largest supplier of copy. I finally said, "John, I am not going to write any more stories against deadlines. But I do have a few more stories on tap that I could write. I'll send you a story from time to time… until the daycomes when you bounce one. At that point we're through. Now that I know you personally, having a story rejected by you would be too traumatic."
So I went back to California and sold him "Crooked House" and "Logic of Empire and "Universe" and "Solution Unsatisfactory" and "Methuselah's Children" and "By His Bootstraps" and "Common Sense" and "Goldfish Bowl" and Beyond "This Horizon" and "Waldo" and "The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag" — which brings us smack up against World War II.
Campbell did bounce one of the above (and I shan't say which one) and I promptly retired — put in a new irrigation system — built a garden terrace — resumed serious photography, etc. This went on for about a month when I found that I was beginning to be vaguely ill: poor appetite, loss of weight, insomnia, jittery, absent-minded — much like the early symptoms of pulmonary tuberculosis, and I thought, "Damn it, am I going to have still a third attack?"
Campbell dropped me a note and asked why he hadn't heard from me — I reminded him of our conversation months past: He had rejected one of my stories and that marked my retirement from an occupation that I had never planned to pursue permanently.
He wrote back and asked for another look at the story he had bounced. I sent it to him, he returned it promptly with the recommendation that I take out this comma, speed up the 1st half of page umpteen, delete that adjective — fiddle changes that Katie Tarrant would have done if told to.
I sat down at my typewriter to make the suggested changes… and suddenly realized that I felt good for the first time in weeks.