Portal:Speculative fiction/Selected publications

Selected publications

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Publications

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Amazing Stories was an American science fiction magazine launched in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback's Experimenter Publishing. It was the first magazine devoted solely to science fiction. Before Amazing, science fiction stories had made regular appearances in other magazines, including some published by Gernsback, but Amazing helped define and launch a new genre of pulp fiction.

Amazing was published, with some interruptions, for almost eighty years. The title first changed hands in 1929, when Gernsback was forced into bankruptcy and lost control of the magazine. Amazing became unprofitable during the 1930s and in 1938 was purchased by Ziff-Davis, who hired Raymond A. Palmer as editor. Palmer made the magazine successful though it was not regarded as a quality magazine within the science fiction community. In the late 1940s Amazing began to print stories about the Shaver Mystery, a lurid mythos which explained accidents and disaster as the work of robots named "deros"; the stories were presented as fact, and led to dramatically increased circulation but also widespread ridicule.

Palmer was replaced by Howard Browne in 1949, who briefly entertained plans of taking Amazing upmarket. These plans came to nothing, though Amazing did switch to a digest format in 1953, shortly before the end of the pulp-magazine era. A brief period under the editorship of Paul W. Fairman was followed, at the end of 1958, by the leadership of Cele Goldsmith. Despite her lack of experience she was able to bring new life to the magazine, and her years are regarded as one of Amazing's most creative eras. She was unable to arrest the declining circulation, though, and the magazine was sold to Sol Cohen's Universal Publishing Company in 1965.

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Beyond Fantasy Fiction was a US fantasy fiction magazine edited by H. L. Gold, with only ten issues published from 1953 to 1955. The last two issues carried the cover title of Beyond Fiction, but the publication's name for copyright purposes remained as before.

Although not a commercial success, it included several significant short stories by distinguished authors, such as Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury and Philip K. Dick. The publication has been described by critics as a successor to the tradition of Unknown, a fantasy magazine that ceased publication in 1943. It was noted for printing fantasy with a rational basis such as werewolf stories that included scientific explanations. A selection of stories from Beyond was published in paperback form in 1963, also under the title Beyond.

James Gunn, a historian of science fiction, regarded the magazine as the best of the fantasy magazines launched in the early 1950s, and science fiction encyclopedist Donald H. Tuck contended it printed very good material. Not every critic viewed Beyond as completely successful, however; P. Schuyler Miller, in a 1963 review, commented that the stories were most successful when they did not try to emulate Unknown.

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Portal:Speculative fiction/Selected publications/3 Unknown (also known as Unknown Worlds) was a pulp fantasy fiction magazine, edited by John W. Campbell, that was published from 1939 to 1943. Unknown was closely associated with the science fiction magazine Astounding Science Fiction, which was also edited by Campbell at the time; many authors and illustrators contributed to both magazines.

In keeping with its relation to Astounding Science Fiction, the style and approach of the stories in Unknown was a hybrid between those of fantasy and science fiction. The premises of many of the stories were caused by unexpected, and often humorous, situations in which a traditional fantasy creature or concept is introduced into an otherwise ordinary world. For example, in de Camp’s "Nothing in the Rules", the manager of a swimming team tries to win a race by including a mermaid on the team.

Other stories take the opposite trope of applying a scientific logic in a traditional fantasy setting; the Harold Shea series is based upon the premise that traditional fantasy worlds, such as those in Norse mythology, are based upon the rules of mathematical logic.

Unknown also included some science fiction which used the themes of traditional fantasy. For example, Darker than You Think uses the premise that werewolves exist, but that they are not supernatural, and explains the traditional beliefs about them without using fantasy.

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Portal:Speculative fiction/Selected publications/4 Fantastic was a fantasy and science fiction magazine published in the United States from 1952 to 1980. Begun by editor Howard Browne and publishers Ziff Davis as an attempt at a sophisticated and handsome digest-sized magazine, Fantastic was initially a success, and became even more so by its third issue, which featured a story attributed to the enormously popular crime fiction writer Mickey Spillane. The story was actually written by Browne, a crime-fiction writer and editor who had been editing the pulp magazines line Z-D published at that time, including Amazing Stories, Fantastic Adventures, and the recently-folded Mammoth Detective, among others; apparently Spillane had told a version of the story he'd previously sold to Fantastic to a reporter from Life Magazine, where it appeared ahead of the Z-D magazine's publication, leaving Browne unwilling to run the actual Spillane text.

Subsequent issues of Fantastic sold well enough for the pulp Fantastic Adventures to be merged with it in 1954; Amazing had already been reshaped to resemble Fantastic. Browne was by his own account more comfortable with fantasy fiction than with sf, and soon was concentrating his attention on his writing career; his assistant Paul W. Fairman became editor of Fantastic and Amazing in 1956, and soon established a policy of reliable mediocrity by purchasing nearly all the contents of his issues from four writers: the young Robert Silverberg, Harlan Ellison, Randall Garrett and Milton Lesser (later better known as Stephen Marlowe), all commissioned to produce a certain amount of words per month, purchased unread.

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Fantastic Universe was a U.S. science fiction magazine which began publishing in the 1950s. It ran for 69 issues, from June 1953 to March 1960, under two different publishers. It was part of the explosion of science fiction magazine publishing in the 1950s in the United States, and was moderately successful, outlasting almost all of its competitors. The main editors were Leo Margulies (1954–1956) and Hans Stefan Santesson (1956–1960); under Santesson's tenure the quality declined somewhat, and the magazine became known for printing much UFO-related material.

Fantastic Universe's first issue, in digest format, was dated June–July 1953 and priced at 50 cents. This was higher than any of its competition, but it also had the highest page count in the field at the time, with 196 pages. The initial editorial team was Leo Margulies as publisher, and Sam Merwin as editor;. Fantastic Universe enjoyed good distribution from the start—a key factor in a magazine's success. The first issue included stories by Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, and Ray Bradbury. According to Donald Tuck, the author of an early SF encyclopaedia, the magazine kept a fairly high quality through Merwin's departure after a year, and through the subsequent brief period of caretaker editorship by Beatrice Jones. Margulies took over the editor's post with the May 1954 issue.

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Galaxy Science Fiction was an American digest-size science fiction magazine, published from 1950 to 1980. It was the creation of editor H. L. Gold, who found a responsive readership when he put the emphasis on imaginative sociological explorations of science fiction rather than hardware and pulp prose.

For the first issue, Gold obtained several stories by well-known authors, including Isaac Asimov, Fritz Leiber and Theodore Sturgeon, as well as part one of Time Quarry by Clifford D. Simak. Along with an essay by Gold, Galaxy's premiere issue introduced a book review column by anthologist Groff Conklin (which ran until 1955) and a Willy Ley science column. Gold's editorial staff included Washington Irving van der Poel as art director. Gold made efforts to improve the quality of the printing techniques, though the paper quality was not high enough for the full benefits to be seen.

In the summer of 1951, disagreements within World Editions led to attempts to disrupt Galaxy's distribution. The head of operations found out, however, and agreed to sell Galaxy to the printer, Robert M. Guinn. Guinn 's new company was named Galaxy Publishing Corporation, and it took over beginning with the October 1951 issue. Gold remained as editor, but lost the assistance of staff at World Editions, relying instead on help from Jerome Bixby, Algis Budrys, Theodore Sturgeon, and Gold's wife Evelyn Paige. Frederik Pohl, who was working as a literary agent, was also helpful in connecting writers with Gold.

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Wonder Stories was an early science fiction magazine which was published under several titles from 1929 to 1955. It was founded by Hugo Gernsback in 1929 after he had lost control of his first science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories, when his media company Experimenter Publishing went bankrupt. Within a few months of the bankruptcy, Gernsback launched three new magazines: Air Wonder Stories, Science Wonder Stories and Science Wonder Quarterly.

Air Wonder Stories and Science Wonder Stories were merged in 1930 as Wonder Stories, and the quarterly was renamed Wonder Stories Quarterly. The magazines were not financially successful, and in 1936 Gernsback sold Wonder Stories to Ned Pines at Beacon Publications, where, retitled Thrilling Wonder Stories, it continued for nearly 20 years. The last issue was dated Winter 1955, and the title was then merged with Startling Stories, another of Pines' science fiction magazines. Startling itself lasted only to the end of 1955 before finally succumbing to the decline of the pulp magazine industry.

The editors under Gernsback's ownership were David Lasser, who worked hard to improve the quality of the fiction, and, from mid-1933, Charles Hornig. Both Lasser and Hornig published some well-received fiction, such as Stanley Weinbaum's "A Martian Odyssey", but Hornig's efforts in particular were overshadowed by the success of Astounding Stories, which had become the leading magazine in the new field of science fiction. By the end of the 1940s, in the opinion of science fiction historian Mike Ashley, the magazine briefly rivaled Astounding.

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If was an American science fiction magazine launched in March 1952 by Quinn Publications, owned by James L. Quinn. Quinn hired Paul W. Fairman to be the first editor, but early circulation figures were disappointing, and Quinn fired Fairman after only three issues. Quinn then took over the editorial position himself. He stayed in that role until late 1958, though Larry T. Shaw took over most editorial duties for a year from mid-1953. In 1958 Damon Knight was hired as editor, but within three issues Quinn sold the magazine to Robert Guinn at Galaxy Publishing.

The new editor at Galaxy Publishing was Horace L. Gold, who was also editing Galaxy Science Fiction. After two years Frederik Pohl took over as editor, and it was under Pohl that If reached its greatest success, winning the Hugo Award for best professional magazine three years running from 1966 to 1968. In 1969 Guinn sold all his magazines to Universal Publishing and Distribution (UPD). Pohl decided not to continue as editor as he wanted to return to his writing career. Ejler Jakobsson became editor; the magazine was not successful under his management and circulation plummeted. In early 1974 Jim Baen took over from Jakobsson as editor, but increasing paper costs meant that UPD could no longer afford to publish both Galaxy and If. Galaxy was regarded as the senior of the two magazines, so If was merged into Galaxy after the December 1974 issue, its 175th issue overall.

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Imagination was an American fantasy and science fiction magazine first published in October 1950 by Raymond Palmer's Clark Publishing Company. The magazine was sold almost immediately to Greenleaf Publishing Company, owned by William Hamling, who published and edited it from the third issue, February 1951, for the rest of the magazine's life. Hamling launched a sister magazine, Imaginative Tales, in 1954; both ceased publication at the end of 1958 in the aftermath of major changes in US magazine distribution due to the liquidation of American News Company.

The magazine was more successful than most of the numerous science fiction titles launched in the late 1940s and early 1950s, lasting a total of 63 issues. Despite this success, the magazine had a reputation for low-quality space opera and adventure fiction, and modern literary historians refer to it in dismissive terms. Hamling consciously adopted an editorial policy oriented toward entertainment, asserting in an early issue that "science fiction was never meant to be an educational tour de force". Few of the stories from Imagination have received recognition, but it did publish Robert Sheckley's first professional sale, "Final Examination", in the May 1952 issue, and also printed fiction by Philip K. Dick, Robert A. Heinlein and John Wyndham.

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Portal:Speculative fiction/Selected publications/10 OMNI was a science magazine and science fiction magazine published in the United States. It contained articles on science fact and short works of science fiction. The first issue was published in October 1978, the last in Winter 1995, with an internet version lasting until 1998. It was launched by Kathy Keeton, long-time companion and later wife of Penthouse magazine publisher Bob Guccione, who described the magazine in its first issue as "an original if not controversial mixture of science fact, fiction, fantasy and the paranormal". Before launch it was referred to as Nova, but the name was changed before the first issue to avoid a conflict with the PBS science show of the same name, NOVA.

The magazine was initially edited by Frank Kendig, who left several months after the magazine's launch. Ben Bova, who was hired as Fiction Editor, was promoted to Editor, leaving the magazine in 1981. After Kendig and Bova, Editors of OMNI included Richard Teresi, Gurney Williams III, Patrice Adcroft, Keith Ferrell, and Pamela Weintraub (editor of OMNI Online). Kathleen Stein managed the magazine's prestigious Q&A interviews with the top scientists of the 20th century through 1998. Ellen Datlow was associate fiction editor of OMNI under Robert Sheckley for one and a half years, and took over as Fiction Editor in 1981 until the magazine folded in 1998. The very first edition had an exclusive interview with renowned physicist, Freeman Dyson, the second edition with American writer and futurist, Alvin Toffler.

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Other Worlds Science Stories (usually referred to by readers as simply Other Worlds) was an American science fiction magazine, edited by Raymond A. Palmer with Bea Mahaffey. It was published by Palmer's Clark Publishing in Evanston, Illinois beginning in the late 1940s. Sold for 35 cents, the digest-size publication was bi-monthly until September 1950, six-weekly until October 1952 and then monthly.

The first issue, dated November 1949, was credited to editor Robert N. Webster, one of Palmer's pseudonyms, since Palmer was, at the time, still employed by Ziff-Davis as the editor of Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures. Other Worlds debuted with "The Fall of Lemuria" by Richard S. Shaver, "Where No Foot Walks" by G.H. Irwin and "Venus Trouble Shooter" by John Wiley.

It continued as a bi-monthly, running stories by Forrest J Ackerman, Poul Anderson, Ray Bradbury, Eando Binder, Jerome Bixby, Robert Bloch, Anthony Boucher, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Fredric Brown, Lester del Rey, David H. Keller, Daniel Keyes, Fritz Leiber, Rog Phillips, Mack Reynolds, Eric Frank Russell, E. E. Smith, Theodore Sturgeon, William F. Temple, A.E. van Vogt, Jack Vance, H.G. Wells, Robert Moore Williams, Donald A. Wolheim and others. In 1952-53, Other Worlds serialized L. Sprague de Camp's non-fiction Lost Continents (published as a book in 1954). Covers were by Paul Blaisdell, Hannes Bok, Virgil Finlay, Robert Gibson Jones, Harold McCauley, James B. Settles, Malcolm H. Smith and J. Allen St. John.

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