Astounding & Analog Authors Through the Decades

I'm fascinated by the history and development of science fiction, and much of this history derives from development in Astounding magazine. Such was its place in the genre for decades, that the authors who contributed represented the best state of SF and reflect its developments and changes. As an experiment to see how authors changed over the decades, and who was most prolific under different editors, I've analysed author contributions for each decade, along with making a few notes as to those authors.

Short-cuts to specific decades: 
1930's   -   1940's   -   1950's   -   1960's   -   1970's   -   1980's   -   1990's   -   2000's   -   2010's   -   All-Time   

1930's - Before the Golden Age
Astounding started in January 1930, as Astounding Stories of Super Science, with Harry Bates as editor.  Bates himself published a number of his own stories, co-written with D. W. Hall (under various pseudonyms). After March 1933, Astounding was acquired by Street & Smith, and there was a publishing hiatus until October of that year, when F. Orlin Tremaine took over as editor. Tremaine did his best to elevate the magazine away from simple adventure fiction and he remained editor until September 1937. In October 1937, John W. Campbell became editor, though he didn't get full control until March '38. Campbell's 'reign' as editor of Astounding is generally considered to represent a significant uptick in the quality of SF, and his tenure ushered in the "Golden Age" of science fiction. However, its not clear exactly when the golden age started: Campbell's editorial influence could not have affected story acceptance until the middle of 1938, and the true beginning of the golden age is in fact generally considered to have arrived in July 1939, when both A. E. van Vogt and Isaac Asimov both published in the magazine for the first time. The very next month, Heinlein also published in the magazine, and the great years of Astounding were off and running. What this means is that, but for the very tail-end of this decade, the 1930's were before the golden age. 

In the earliest days of Astounding the top contributor was Capt. S. P. Meek (below left)  
Meek contributed many stories in the first years of Astounding for Bates, but nothing after mid-1932.

Also notable for their contributory work in this period are Harl Vincent, Charles Wifford Diffin and Nat Schachner. Others on the list include authors I am not very familiar with, e.g. Sewell Peaslee Wright (below middle) and Arthur J. Burks (below right) - who wrote for Astounding throughout the '30's.

Jack Williamson contributed not only short stories but also several serials, so was quite prominent in the magazine, and Murray Leinster was more active between '30-'34 than in the second half of he decade years.

In the the second half of the decade, Astounding was filled with stories from both Nat Schachner, and Raymond Z. Gallun, who were both prolific.

The next top contributors have all become relatively unfamiliar names: Clifton B. Kruse was often published, as were Otto Binder (as Eando Binder), John Russell Fearn and Nelson Tremaine.

John W. Campbell himself published a good deal between late '34 and early '39. Jack Williamson is still in the list in the second half of the decade, and L. Sprague de Camp had broken through successfully.

Of those who don't quite make the list shown, Clifford D. Simak and Lester del Rey both contributed 5 stories, while L. Ron Hubbard provided 4 stories, and C. L. Moore had 3 stories published.

The most prominent female author in 1930's Astounding was not Catherine Moore, however, but Amelia Reynolds Long (1904-1978).  Long had 6 stories published in Astounding in the 'decade, roughly 1/year between '34 and '39, and was a pioneer of early SF, though she was more famous for detective fiction.

Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein and A. E. van Vogt and were only just starting their publishing careers by the end of 1939, each contributing only 1 or 2 stories to Astounding.

The final top 10 ranking table for the decade, therefore ​looks like this:

Top Contributors to Astounding in the 1930's: 
Top:              Nat Schachner
Runner Up:    Raymond Z. Gallun
Third Place:   Harl Vincent

Nat Schachner (1895-1955) wrote all his short fiction between 1930 and 1941, some of which he co-authored by Arthur Leo Zagat. He won no awards for his work - but most awards came after he stopped writing, so he can't be blamed for that!  He wrote only one SF novel - Exiles of the Moon (1931) with Arthur Leo Zagat - but he published 10 non-genre novels between 1937 and 1954. 

Raymond Z. Gallun (1911-1994) was the second most published author in 1930's Astounding, writing most of his SF between 1929 (publishing as an 18 year old) and 1956. But late in life he published some final SF short stories (some of them in German) between 1976 and 1988. In 1979, Gallun won the First Fandom Hall of Fame Award and he was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award in 1985 at I-CON IV; the award was later renamed The Raymond Z. Gallun Award

1940's - The Golden Age
The 1940's were in many ways the golden age of SF, and the 1940's saw Astounding Science Fiction regularly publish many of SF's household names. Campbell was ensuring stories had weight and ideas, rather than simply adventures in space, and the likes of Heinlein, van Vogt, Kuttner, Moore and Asimov were answering the call.

A. E. van Vogt (below left) was hugely prolific in this 5 year span, and is way out in front in the rankings. The first half of the decade saw Robert A. Heinlein take off with a sprint, having 18 stories published by the end of 1942, but he then had nothing further in the magazine in either '43 and '44, interestingly. Isaac Asimov started more slowly, but was submitted regularly by 1942 - including Robot and Foundation stories. 

It is interesting to note that, simply based on stories published, Malcolm Jameson (centre below) was the second most prolific and successful author in this period, and yet he's not a household name. Also note the large number of publications by L. Ron Hubbard (right below)  well before he thought of dianetics and Scientology.

In the second half of the 1940's several household names in SF published in Astounding for the first time, kick-starting their illustrious careers, including Poul Anderson, Jack Vance, Katherine McLean and Australian, A. Bertram Chandler.

Henry Kuttner & C. L.  Moore were an almost constant feature of the period, publishing many stories together as 'Lewis Padgett', and they jointly top the ranking for the period 1945-49.

Interestingly, Murray Leinster, who featured heavily between 1930-34, was back and represents one of a very small group who survived in these lists from the 1930's. Campbell's Astounding of the '40's made a pretty clean break from the adventure tales of the '30's, with only Leinster, Jack Williamson, Ross Rocklynne and Frank Belnap Long appearing in lists from both decades. All the other top contributors from the 1930's no longer heavily feature.

An interesting observation is the prolific publications of stories in the half-decade periods by authors who were staples for the magazine, but who have not remained major figures in the genre. In the first half of the 1940's that was Malcolm Jameson. By 1946, his contributions completely ceased, but his role as the 'reliable stable-author' was seemingly taken by George O. Smith, who was ever present.

Of the biggest names in SF - Isaac  Asimov and Theodore Sturgeon continued to publish regularly throughout the latter half of the decade and feature high in the list. In contrast, Robert Heinlein published nothing in Astounding between August 1942 and his single publication in November 1949, which may surprise some.

The final top 10 ranking table for the decade, therefore ​looks like this:

Above: Husband and wife writing team, Henry Kuttner (1915-1958) and Catherine Moore (1911-1987), writing as 'Lewis Padgett', published prolifically in the 1940's and took the covers for several issues of Astounding, including those above in Feb 1945 and Jan 1947. Each also published several individually-authored stories in the period.

Top Contributors to Astounding in the 1940's: 
Top:               A. E. van Vogt
Runner Up:      Henry Kuttner
Third Place:    C. L. Moore

1990's - A Connected, Mobile World is Born 
The 1990's were in some ways more of the same, continuing on from the 1980's with many of the same authors contributing, but many tech advances were gaining general acceptance and use. It was in the 1980's that mobile phones became widely used, and from the mid-'90's onward personal computer use and the world-wide web was becoming a more significant feature, especially in universities. NCSA Mosaic was the web-browser of choice, and the Nokia and Motorola digital mobile phone were common. These advances encouraged increasing numbers of high-tech stories, following on from the earlier cyberpunk wave of the 1980's.

Like most decades, the 1990's saw some recent familiar faces leave the ranking list (Turtledove, Thompson, Chilson), but other new entries rose high up, including Grey Rollins, G. David Nordley, Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff and Daniel Hatch.

Two stalwarts of Analog, Jerry Oltion and Michael F. Flynn, maintained their high rate of contribution. A blast from the past (1970's) also made it back on the high ranking list with numerous stories: Hayford Peirce.

The second half of the 1990's saw continued and significant publication of work by Jerry Oltion and Nordley, and increased input from Bud Sparhawk and Michael A. Burnstein. 

One 'old' name crops up in the ranking list at this time, who deserves mention - Laurence M. Janifer was back, with 7 stories, an author who had been contributing every decade since May 1959. Janifer is not perhaps a household name but by the end of the century he had had 33 stories published in the magazine. 

Taking the decade as a whole, how did the most famous Analog authors fare, and who was maintaining the longest publication 'streaks'? Well, Christopher Anvil deserves mention, as he had another 4 stories published in the '90's bringing his total output since the 1950's to 82 stories - the most by any author up to the end of the century. Also notable was Poul Anderson;  w ith 2 stories published in the '90's, this was a lean decade for him, but it meant he had been published every decade since the 40's! The longest streak goes to Isaac Asimov, however, who had a story published before his death in 1992, marking 7 consecutive decades of publication!

Overall, the highest ranking contributing author to Analog in the 1990's was Jerry Oltion. 

The final top 10 ranking table for the decade, therefore ​looks like this:

Top Contributors to Analog in the 1990's: 
Top:               Jerry Oltion
Runners Up:   Grey Rollins
Third Place:    Bud Sparhawk & G. David Nordley

2000's - Analog Enters the New Millennium 
The 2000's marked the final full decade of Stanley Schmidt at the helm of Analog. The rapid rise of the world wide web and email led to a dot-com revolution. You might think the typhoon of technological breakthroughs would benefit speculative magazines like Analog, but this was in some ways a tough decade for Schmidt and Analog. Since the previous decade Analog had been in the shadow of Asimov's when it came to awards; Gardner Dozois seemed to win best professional editor almost every year, while Schmidt never won it in the 90's and the 2000's continued the theme. Likewise stories from Analog were occasionally nominated for Hugo's but only one short story (Falling Onto Mars, Geoffrey A. Landis), and one novelette (Slow Life, Michael Swanwick) actually won a Hugo, compared to a plethora of wins for stories from Asimov's. Analog did rather better for novellas at the start of the decade (two wins for The Ultimate Earth, Jack Williamson & The Cookie Monster, Vernor Vinge), but nothing after 2004. 

The first half-decade of the new millennium was notable for a significant number of stories from several new writers, including Rajnar Vajra and Edward M. Lerner (perhaps most famous for his Fate of Worlds novels, written with Larry Niven), while  Michael A. Burstein,  who also contributed considerably in the 1990's, tops the publication list this half-decade.

Speaking of Larry Niven, it was interesting to note his reappearance in the lists, due to his publication of a series of Draco Tavern stories in the magazine in this period. There's another blast from the past in the list: Charles L. Harness is again present, with 6 stories. Harness first published in the magazine in August 1948!

The second half the 2000's decade saw a ramp up in the contribution of fiction from Richard A. Lovett. Lovett had been contributing fact articles for many years (in fact since 1993) and was therefore a mainstay of the magazine already, but once he got going with fiction, there was almost no stopping him. Another big contributor in this period with an equal-top number of stories was Carl Frederick, with Jerry Oltion continuing to submit on a very regular basis.  By this point, Oltion was getting very high on the all-time submission list (see end of this feature article). Jack Campbell, writing as John G. Hemry, also had numerous stories published. Campbell is now best known for his Lost Fleet novels.

Although he doesn't make it onto the ranking list, Jack Williamson must be mentioned in the 2000's. He had 3 stories published - one of which won a Hugo Award - making it nearly 74 years since his first publication in Astounding Stories (March 1931) until his last in Analog Science Fiction & Fact (Jan/Feb 2005)!  The 2000's also marked the last decade Poul Anderson had a story published in Analog - making it 7 consecutive decades for Poul, equaling Asimov's previous record.

The final top 10 ranking table for the decade, therefore ​looks like this:

Top Contributors to Analog in the 2000's: 
Top:               Richard A. Lovett
Runners Up:   Carl Frederick
Third Place:    Jerry Oltion

2010's - Trevor Quachri & Online Competition 
Stanley Schmidt's last issue of Analog as editor was March 2013, after which Trevor Quachri took over the reins. This was a difficult decade for Analog, and toward the end of the decade it became a bi-monthly magazine, cutting its previous 10 issues per year down to 6. This move was doubtless in response to the increasing competition from online 'magazines', many of which are available for free. That said, the fewer issues has not meant fewer stories. While Dell Magazines save much needed profits with fewer print runs, readers of the magazine actually got to enjoy more stories in this decade in Analog than in any previous decade (see story total statistics at the end of the feature article). 

The start of the decade saw many of the same names contributing to Analog as in the previous decade, with the ranking list topped by Carl Frederick again, and Jerry Oltion and Richard A. Lovett still submitting numerous stories.

Bud Sparhawk was back with a bang this decade, having first submitted two stories in the '70's then nothing in the '80's but was a regular contributor again from 1993 through to the end of the decade.

Two new names offering significant contributions in this half-decade were Brad R. Torgersen and Kyle Kirkland. 

The second half of the 2010's saw a new name at the top of the publication list: Adam-Troy Castro. Hot on Adam's heels were two other names new to the ranking lists: Jay Werkheiser and Marissa Lingren, who were joint second. While the impression may be that the household names in SF were no longer submitting to Analag, this was not actually the case. The household names were simply not writing so much short fiction. Nonetheless, Analog in this decade did see stories from Alan Dean Foster, David Brin, Jack McDevitt, Ben Bova, Harry Turtledove, and Larry Niven. And notably, Norman Spinrad was back, with 5 stories this decade, having first published in Astounding in May 1963.

The final top 10 ranking table for the decade, therefore ​looks like this:

Trevor Quachri, the current editor of Analog Science Fiction & Fact

Top Contributors to Analog in the 2010's: 
Top:               Jerry Oltion
Runners Up:   Bud Sparhawk
Third Place:    Edward M. Lerner, Jay Werkheiser & Marissa Lingren

Some authors racked up many stories in a short space of time, or at least with very high numbers in particular decades. These authors we might call the hares. Others published few stories, or seldom, but over a very protracted period: the tortoises. The two tables below capture the top 'hares', which are given the "Light that burns twice as bright" award, and 'tortoises', which get the "Slow and steady wins the race" award.

Nat Schachner is the winning 'hare', most especially as most of his publications came within a single decade, the 1930's. Jerry Oltion rates second on the stories per decade metric, but he submitted solidly for 4 decades, so it's not clear if he really qualifies as a 'hare'.

On the other hand, several other 1930's authors only submitted in that decade so deserve their place here, including Clifton B. Kruse and John Russell Fearn. 

C. L. Moore is another excellent example of a 'hare' as most of her output (37 of her 45 stories) fell within the 1940's.

The top of the 'tortoise' table sees an unfamiliar name in Edward Wellen. He didn't publish much in the magazine, but spread his four stories over a long period (Nov 1957 - Jan 1981).

Other slow but steady contributors to note include Katherine Maclean (13 stories over 6 decades) and Walter L. Kleine (only 6 stories over 7 decades!).

It's perhaps interesting to see whether the SFWA 'Damon Knight' Grand Master Award winning authors published much in Astounding/Analog. Some didn't at all. For some of the greats, this was because they didn't write Astounding/Analog's style of 'hard SF'. Softer SF writers, such as Ursula K. Le Guin, of course published elsewhere. This doesn't explain Philip Jose Farmer's absence and its surprising to me that C. J. Cherryh has not published in the magazine, as it would appear to coincide with her style of story. The recent crop of SFWA Grand Master Award winners that haven't published in the magazine, 2017 onwards, perhaps says as much about the award than it does the authors or the magazine. (And Willis has published a lot in Asimov's and I find a lot of her work is hardly SF, so her absence is to be expected). 

As well as to consider the authors in each decade, the total number of different authors and the number of stories in each decade tells us something about the preference of different editors to use new writers. The table below provides some insight into which editors published the the highest number of different authors, and which tended to stick to their 'favourites'.

It would appear from this graphic that the 'golden age' under Campbell (the 1940's) actually had the fewest number of different authors published. However, one reason for this is probably because Campbell was publishing a lot of serials that later became famous novels.  Each serial only counts as one story. It is interesting to note that Campbell published far fewer authors in the '60's than in the preceding decade, and this perhaps suggests publication of fewer new authors - was he getting stuck in a rut? When Ben Bova took over for most of the '70's, the number of authors skyrocketed, and Bova won much acclaim for his editorship. Doubtless, Bova published far more new authors and was more experimental in this regard. Indeed, I consider the 70's in many ways to be the high water mark for the magazine.  A similar pattern merges throughout Schmidt's turn as editor, with fewer authors as his tenure progressed though the 1980's, 1990's and 2000's. But with Quachri, this has leapt up considerably. Some of this may be due to the publication of more short stories in each issue, and fewer novellas and novelettes.