BESTER REMEMBERS

   Writers sometimes don't live up to the image that admiring readers have of them, especially when readers may have carried those idealized images from their teens.Writer Alfred Bester described his first and only meeting with John W. Campbell in 1951. Summoned to the offices of Astounding magazine in northern New Jersey, Bester found Campbell in an enormous warehouse, where Campbell occupied a tiny space.Campbell told Bester that a few references to psychiatry would have to be removed from a story he submitted because, he said, "Psychiatry is dead."He then took Bester to lunch. Over a pastrami sandwich and a coke in a cafeteria, Campbell explained how one can recall memories from the womb and urged Bester to do so. Bester pretended to comply and managed to get away as quickly as he could.Later Bester said, "It reinforced my private opinion that a majority of the science fiction crowd, despite their brilliance, were missing their marbles."