Fantastic Adventures was also developed as a companion to Amazing Stories in 1939. Raymond Palmer launched it as part of publisher Ziff-Davis’s attempt to expand the pulp magazine market after its acquisition of Amazing Stories. Alas, in spite of initially solid sales, the overall low quality of the fiction dragged it down. New editor Howard Browne absorbed it into his 1952 effort, Fantastic. Rather than science fiction, however, the focus shifted to fantasy, and circulation fell off as science fiction readers turned away. Browne’s half-hearted efforts to re-incorporate more science fiction led to some improvement in sales, but it was never a powerhouse like Amazing or Astounding. Nevertheless, Fantastic continued to limp along into the 1960s under different editors, largely ignored by Ziff-Davis until they sold it to Sol Cohen. During the 1960s, Cohen’s reprint policy became the focus of an infamous dual against a still-new writers’ rights organization, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. By 1980, after a few more failed attempts at revivification, publication ceased.
Not to be outdone, John W. Campbell launched a 1939 companion magazine to Astounding Stories called Unknown Worlds. Though the theme was ostensibly fantasy, Campbell utilized many of the same contributors already appearing in Astounding, so stories were most often hybrids of fantasy and science fiction. Notables who appeared during Unknown Worlds’ short-but-distinguished run included A.E. van Vogt, L. Sprague de Camp, and L. Ron Hubbard. In 1943, the magazine was canceled because of paper shortages blamed on World War II. According to author and editor Darrell Schweitzer, Unknown Worlds remains an important footnote in the history of science fiction magazines, because an “Unknown school of fantasy fiction” remains impactful to this day.
THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION
By the late 1940s, the heyday of the pulps had passed, not due to a lack of readership but more because of outside forces associated with World War II and the paper shortages it caused. However, though the Golden Age may have passed, a Silver Age soon followed.
In 1949, a new quarterly called The Magazine of Fantasy began publication under the aegis of editors Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas. The name soon changed to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in order to encompass all of the content presented. The goal was to offer genre fiction stories on a plane far above what was commonly associated with the pulp era. The look of the magazine was different than the others, as well. It eschewed interior artwork and mimicked the layout of a literary journal, and included formal introductions to each story by Boucher. The new effort quickly attracted some of the top writers in the field: Ray Bradbury, Damon Knight, and the debut by a young future master, Richard Matheson.
Aside from its notable contributors, some of the great editors in the field of science fiction and fantasy have served at what is today called Fantasy & Science Fiction, or simply F&SF. They include William Tenn, Avram Davidson, and Kristine Kathryn Rusch. F&SF remains one of the modern “big three” publications in the science fiction world and continues to showcase high-quality content from industry greats.
GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION
Founding editor Horace L. Gold—“Vespasian” to Gernsback’s Claudius and Campbell’s Hadrian, according to Mr. Silverberg’s earlier analogy—was already a very successful author of adventure, fantasy, mystery and science fiction when he launched Galaxy Science Fiction in 1950. Perhaps because of his deep roots as a writer, Gold went out of his way to pay up to six cents a word to his contributors, in comparison to the still-average one-half to two cents paid by his competitors. He also paid upon acceptance, rather than on publication, and was known for actively discovering new writers.
Under Gold, Galaxy focused on stories about social issues rather than nifty technology, as was more common in the pulps. He published the Bradbury story, “The Fireman” that became the basis of Fahrenheit 451, along with seminal works by Robert Heinlein and Alfred Bester.
After suffering debilitating injuries in a car accident, Gold ceded the editor’s chair to Frederik Pohl, who was already assisting in the production department. Pohl continued Gold’s tradition of publishing high-quality, socially conscious science fiction until 1969, when then-owner Robert Guinn sold it to Universal Publishing and Distribution Corporation. The subsequent editor’s shift was undistinguished, but Galaxy recovered briefly under the stewardship of Jim Baen in the 1970s. Sadly, after Baen left, financial problems and other issues led to its demise in 1980. Galaxy was revived for a short time by Gold’s son in 1994, but again petered out. Nevertheless, Gold’s legacy as having provided the foundation for the “New Wave” of science fiction secured Galaxy’s place of honor in the history of science fiction magazines.
IF
James Quinn of Quinn Publications first published If in 1952, but it wasn’t until Quinn sold it to Robert Guinn at Galaxy Publishing that it came into prominence. The already-esteemed Horace L. Gold edited both If and Galaxy for two years before turning If, in which he had less of a vested interest, over to Frederik Pohl. Pohl ushered it to great success and won three Hugo awards for Best Professional Magazine in the process. During its heyday, If published some of the most impressive short stories ever written in SF, including Harlan Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.” Pohl also had an eye for new talent, and published the first short stories by giants Larry Niven and Gardner Dozois. If also included columns that appealed to broader science fiction fandom outside of print fiction, which drew many younger readers. By 1967, If’s high circulation numbers were only rivaled by Analog. When Guinn sold Galaxy to UPD Corporation in 1969, he also sold If, and Pohl elected to step down from his editorial duties at both magazines. Pohl fondly reminisced in a recent interview that editing was like, “Being a twelve-year-old boy playing with a brand new train set.”
If followed nearly the same trajectory as its sister publication, failing to thrive under the new editor. Just as things were looking up with the hiring of Jim Baen to edit both Galaxy and If in 1974, the rising cost of paper forced UPD to decide which magazine to continue. If lost that roll of the dice and was folded into the senior publication, Galaxy.
ISAAC ASIMOV’S SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE
The modern age of science fiction magazines has seen the rise and decline of many publications, including short-lived efforts like editor Charles Ryan’s acclaimed Galileo and his longer-lived Aboriginal. Two stand out from the crowd, however, and are deserving of closer attention. I begin with the third of the Big Three, today known simply as Asimov’s.
In 1977, Joel Davis of Davis Publications published a new science fiction digest that maintained his already-successful habit of tying a big name to his publications (e.g., Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine). Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine bore the name and cover image of one of the Golden Age greats, drawing instant recognition and reader interest. However, Asimov didn’t want to be the regular editor (being a wee bit busy with his writing career, no doubt) so Davis tapped George H. Scithers to shepherd the magazine day-by-day, while Asimov became the “Editorial Director.” This basically meant he contributed a column, answered reader letters and, of course, regularly contributed stories to his namesake publication.
Scithers went on to discover such (science fiction fan) household names as Barry Longyear, who later won the Hugo and the Nebula for the same story in Asimov’s, “Enemy Mine.” Scithers won his own share of Hugos for Best Editor, beginning in 1978. Davis Publications then added the already-venerable Analog to its family in the early 1980s, making it and Asimov’s sibling publications.
In 1982, Scithers stepped down and, after a brief interim, Shawna McCarthy took over, with future editor-in-chief Sheila Williams brought on as an editorial assistant. Shawna, one of the earliest, distinguished female editors in charge of a science fiction magazine, earned her own Hugo for Best Professional Editor in 1984 and brought even greater acclaim to the magazine, which now regularly published Hugo and Nebula award-winning fiction.
In 1986, editorial great Gardner Do
zois, already a well-established fixture in the science fiction community, took over and Asimov’s reached a new level of respectability and success. Dozois collected an unprecedented number of Hugo awards from the mid-Eighties on, winning the Best Professional Editor category every year from 1988 forward, save for 1994 (when another distinguished female editor, Kristine Katherine Rusch of Fantasy & Science Fiction snuck in and nabbed one).
Though the world sadly bid farewell to Isaac Asimov in 1992, his namesake publication remains one of the giants in the field, currently under the auspices of Sheila Williams, who took over for Dozois in 2004. It has expanded in these modern times to include an e-zine version, which Williams tells me has been a “very successful” addition.
OMNI
Omni, though not strictly a “fiction” magazine, published some of the great science fiction stories of the modern era, has the distinction of being both founded and later edited by women, and racked up enough awards for its original fiction to evidence its impact on the field.
Omni Science Fiction and Fact first took the stage in 1978 thanks to its unlikely founder, Kathy Keeton, wife of Penthouse magnate Bob Guccione. With a successful mainstream publisher’s money behind it, Omni was able to draw the top writers of science fact and fiction, including luminaries Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen King, and William Gibson, who contributed early works that became the foundation of the cyberpunk subgenre. Omni’s first significant editor was Ben Bova, who stayed with the magazine until 1981. A variety of editors filled the position, including the highly respected Robert Sheckley, until Ellen Datlow took over fiction editing responsibilities in the early 1980s and remained until the magazine folded. Omni was also noteworthy for having featured striking, original artwork, unique in the field at the time.
Omni’s first issue sold 850,000 copies, an incredible statistic when you consider that the majority of science fiction magazines were already experiencing a decline in circulation during the late 1970s on into the 1980s. Omni’s fiction won several Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards, provided science fiction to a new, mainstream audience, and, to quote Ellen Datlow, “Introduced a whole new generation of science fiction and fantasy writers to the largest audience they’d ever had before, or would ever again.”
By 1996, as circulation numbers for all magazines continued to spiral downward and production costs began to significantly increase, the print version of the magazine ceased publication. In a bold move that, in hindsight, was made too early, Omni transformed into a wholly online e-zine. It was still unclear to publishers how to monetize content in this still-nascent market, and Omni’s publisher was unable to effectively capitalize upon the “early adopter” readers who made the switch from print. Before long, the site was deemed unprofitable and removed.
THE RISE OF THE E-ZINE
Today, prompted by continually rising costs associated with the production of print magazines, more science fiction periodicals are originating or moving online. Unfortunately, the comparative ease of publishing stories on the Web has allowed many less-than-qualified publications to proliferate, which has led many readers to assume everything presented in an e-zine format is substandard and to be avoided. However, just like there were trashy, low-quality print magazines published in tandem with great publications, there are diamonds shining through the detritus on the Web.
A few examples (some still in existence, some defunct) include:
Sci Fiction (ed., Ellen Datlow)
Strange Horizons (ed., Mary Anne Mohanraj)
InterGalactic Medicine Show (eds., Orson Scott Card and Edmund R. Schubert)
Clarkesworld (ed., Neil Clarke)
Apex Magazine (ed., Jason Sizemore)
Abyss and Apex (ed., Wendy Delmater)
Many of these e-zines pay professional or above-professional rates (a minimum of five cents per word, according to SFWA standards), feature work by top names in the field, and are regular nominees/winners of top industry awards. Even the Big Three now offer online subscription options and have experienced positive growth from such diversification.
Paper-based magazines continue to experience drops in circulation numbers, rising paper and shipping costs, and other challenges that make publishing online an increasingly attractive alternative. The e-zine is not a harbinger of death, but rather a viable option for continuing the traditions begun by Gernsback and his compatriots. Additionally, e-readers, Smartphone applications, and other delivery systems that were once considered science fiction are being recognized by forward-thinking publishers as opportunities to deliver even more quality science fiction to future generations of readers.
While traditional science fiction magazine publication may indeed be on the decline, science fiction itself retains a passionate audience. There are markets for both paper and pixels, and they will continue to demand science fiction stories presented in all available forms. The science fiction magazine is experiencing change, not extinction, and we proud members of the community should embrace it. After all, aren’t the unknown and the innovative what we’re all about?
* * * *
Hildy Silverman took over as publisher of Space and Time Magazine (www.spaceandtimemagazine.com) from its founder, Gordon Linzner, in early 2007. Space and Time, which started in 1966 as a mimeographed high school fanzine, published some of the earliest short fiction by Jeffrey Ford, Charles de Lint, Josepha Sherman, and many others. Hildy also writes short stories, which have appeared in anthologies from Baen Books and other fine publishers. When not reading, editing, or writing she develops corporate training, marketing communications materials, and search engine–optimized articles for websites. She serves as the co-chair of literary programming for the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society and as vice-president of the Garden State Horror Writers.
JOHN W. CAMPBELL
(1910-1971)
Because he became so well-known as the iconic editor of Astounding, and because he stopped writing fiction almost entirely by his late twenties, it’s easy to forget how successful Campbell was as a writer. Both under his own name (mostly for space opera) and under the Don A. Stuart pseudonym (for more literary SF, named for his then-wife Dona Stewart) Campbell was one of the field’s most popular authors.
Campbell was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1910. His father was cold and aloof. His mother had an identical twin sister who mistreated Campbell while pretending to be his mother; Campbell couldn’t tell them apart. After being kicked out of MIT for failing German, Campbell went to Duke University, where he graduated with a degree in physics in 1932. By then he was married and selling stories and articles to SF magazines. (Campbell’s first published story appeared in Amazing Stories in 1930, but he’d sold a story to them previously only to have the editor lose the manuscript.)
Once Campbell was named editor of Astounding in 1937, his fiction output dropped to almost nothing, though his nonfiction output remained considerable. Campbell dominated the Hugo voting once the award was established, winning Best Editor eight times from 1952–64. The John W. Campbell, Jr. Award for Best New Writer and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award were both established after his death to honor his contributions to the field.
Along with the lyrical end-of-the-world story “Twilight,” “Who Goes There?” is probably Campbell’s most frequently anthologized story. It was adapted into the 1951 horror movie The Thing from Another World and its 1982 remake, The Thing.
WHO GOES THERE? by John W. Campbell
First published in Astounding Science Fiction, March 1938 by “Don Stuart”
I
The place stank. A queer, mingled stench that only the ice-buried cabins of an Antarctic camp know, compounded of reeking human sweat, and the heavy, fish-oil stench of melted seal blubber. An overtone of liniment combated the musty smell of sweat-and-snow-drenched furs. The acrid odor of burnt cooking fat, and the animal, not-unpleasant smell of dogs, diluted by time, hung in the air.
Lingering odors of machine oil contrasted sharply with the taint of ha
rness dressing and leather. Yet, somehow, through all that reek of human beings and their associates—dogs, machines, and cooking—came another taint. It was a queer, neck-ruffling thing, a faintest suggestion of an odor alien among the smells of industry and life. And it was a life-smell. But it came from the thing that lay bound with cord and tarpaulin on the table, dripping slowly, methodically onto the heavy planks, dank and gaunt under the unshielded glare of the electric light.
Blair, the little bald-pated biologist of the expedition, twitched nervously at the wrappings, exposing clear, dark ice beneath and then pulling the tarpaulin back into place restlessly. His little birdlike motions of suppressed eagerness danced his shadow across the fringe of dingy gray underwear hanging from the low ceiling, the equatorial fringe of stiff, graying hair around his naked skull a comical halo about the shadow’s head.
Commander Garry brushed aside the lax legs of a suit of underwear, and stepped toward the table. Slowly his eyes traced around the rings of men sardined into the Administration Building. His tall, stiff body straightened finally, and he nodded. “Thirty-seven. All here.” His voice was low, yet carried the clear authority of the commander by nature, as well as by title.
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