Twilight

Campbell, John (writing as Don A. Stuart). "Twilight." Astounding Nov. 1934. Coll. The Best of John W. Campbell. Frequently rpt., including Science Fiction: A Historical Anthology (see under Anthologies and Collections). Man Unwept: Visions from the Inner Eye. Stephen V. Whaley and Stanley J. Cook, eds. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974. The Road to Science Fiction #2. James Gunn, ed. New York: NAL, 1979.

Features a city of the far future whose residents know nothing of the machines that run the city. Cf. E. M. Forster's "Machine Stops" and R. Heinlein's "Universe," q.v. this section. Significant also for the Time Traveller's instructing a highly advanced machine to make "something which can take man's place: 'A curious machine'"—implying that curiosity is the defining trait for humanity (quoting J. Sanders in TMG; see entry under Literary Criticism).[[1]]

See Alec Nevala-Lee, Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction, p. 63 for the assertion that in his earlier "Campbell" stories "Technology was portrayed as an unalloyed good, while the heroic scientist or engineer — the avatar of the the technocratic movement of the early thirties — was elevated to the status of a god." However, "In the Don A. Stuart stories, Campbell interrogated his previous assumptions [...]," describing these stories "as 'a dirty, underhanded crack at the pretensions of science fiction dressed in the most accepted terms of science fiction,'" but "aware of the limits of technology [...]" (Nevala-Lee quoting Campbell's introduction to Cloak of Aesir [Chicago: Shasta, 1952]: pp. 10-11).

RDE, addition, 4Sep19