In 1965 the eminent American science-fiction writer John W Campbell wrote an essay titled The Barbarians Within. In it, he recommended that “the barbarian” – and it was clear he meant African Americans – be injected with cocaine and heroin in order to be kept under control. It was a plan that, he said, “has the advantage … of killing him both psychologically and physiologically, without arousing any protest on his part”. He also claimed that slavery was “a useful educational system”, supported segregation, and argued that “the Negro race” had failed to “produce super-high geniuses”. Black sci-fi writers were unable to “write in open competition” with whites.

In 1960, Macmillan rejected her manuscript for The Mystery That Never Was on the grounds of xenophobia

Incidentally, Campbell also believed in telepathy, and once argued that there was “a barely determinable possible correlation between cigarette smoking and cancer”. His opinions never got in the way of his success. As the editor of Astounding Science Fiction magazine, he was hugely influential on the genre during the 1940s, 50s and 60s; not just the authors he worked with (Isaac Asimov, Arthur C Clarke and Robert A Heinlein), but also those he kept out. All three of those writers were positive pinkos compared to Campbell; even Robert A Heinlein, who was an anti-communist rightwinger who proselytised the positives of nuclear weapon testing. In 1941, he wrote Sixth Column, a novel based on a story by Campbell, in which “pan-Asians” enslave the US, which fights back with a ethnic-specific ray gun that can kill the “slanty” and “flat face”. Heinlein would later voice his regret over the openly racist novel. Campbell would not.

Last month, while accepting the John W Campbell award for best debut writer in science fiction and fantasy (awarded by the latest editor of the magazine), British author Jeannette Ng called him “a fucking fascist”. Campbell, she said, had set a tone that was “stale, sterile, male, white, exalting in the ambitions of imperialists, colonialists, settlers and industrialists”. Within days, the prize was no longer named after him. It was a lesson in efficiently dealing with the legacy of influential, if morally questionable artists: the prize organisers considered the implications and made a decision.

The same day Ng got on stage it was revealed that, in 2016, the Royal Mint had considered Enid Blyton for the face of a commemorative coin, but decided against it as she was “known to have been a racist, sexist, homophobe and not a very well-regarded writer”. This verdict sparked much blustering about censorship and “political correctness gone mad” in certain pockets of British media. Richard Madeley and Toby Young, for example, lamented the mistreatment of a beloved author who had sold hundreds of millions of books. Young even blasted the decision as “transphobic”, given that Blyton had created George, the short-haired tomboy of the Famous Five.

Like many booky children, I grew up with three options: science fiction, fantasy and Blyton. Science fiction and fantasy were often told over multiple, fat tomes, and Blyton, a one-woman powerhouse, wrote around 600 books over her long career. As an adult, I still read her. (A little known fact: Famous Five books take as long to read as the perfect bath.)

Both English children’s fiction and American science fiction of that era undoubtedly have a reactionary dimension. Just as 1960s sci-fi gave me a particular view of the world – full of cigar-chomping, gun-toting paternalists saving Earth from invading forces – so did Blyton. The baddies were often foreign or Travellers in her mysteries. Her fantasy villains were alternately golliwogs or ugly goblins, depending on whether I was reading her original text or a sterilised, modern edition. The adventures of her polite, white children were affirmative in many ways for me, a child in 1990s Australia who owned a golliwog – and not an old relic “of its time” but a brand spanking new one, given to me by adults who would not have seen much wrong in Blyton’s vision of the world.

When a beloved literary figure from the past is refused some kind of recognition as a result of their personal views, a backlash against modern “culture warriors” inevitably follows. This is understandable to a degree. After all, records of human communication only go back so far; we can only guess what Shakespeare’s opinions on trans people would be (actually he would have loved them, have you seen his plays?). To recognise racism in canonical authors like Blyton and Campbell is not to advocate for a Year Zero approach, blitzing the literary canon until only good-hearted, liberal authors remain.

But I am as suspicious of that argument as I am of those who argue that Blyton was woke for writing a tomboy, or that she was only as racist as her time. In fact, in 1960, Macmillan rejected her manuscript for The Mystery That Never Was on the grounds of xenophobia. The Guardian published an editorial in 1966, criticising her book The Little Black Doll for featuring a toy who is ostracised for its “ugly black face”, but is welcomed back when its face is scrubbed pink.

These days, both American sci-fi and English children’s fiction have changed, and for the better: much of the best writing is coming from black and Asian authors (Ted Chiang, NK Jemisin, Muhammad Khan and Malorie Blackman). When the John W Campbell award was renamed, there was some grumbling, but it was mostly acknowledged as a good call. The reaction to the Blyton decision was more divided. Perhaps this is part of a peculiarly contemporary phenomenon, though not the political correctness Young and Madeley seek to deplore. Blyton is a reminder of a bucolic England that can never be again, one that was whiter, more insular and for some, less frightening. It’s complicated, but it’s perfectly possible to call out Blyton’s racism without consigning those 600 books to history.

• Sian Cain is the Guardian’s books site editor.

• This article was amended on 3 September 2019, to correct Jeannette Ng’s nationality.