How Galaxy Magazine Saved Robert Silverberg from a Life of Smoking

How Galaxy Magazine Saved Robert Silverberg from a Life of Smoking

galaxy-issue-1-smallI’ve been neglecting Galaxy magazine in my recent Vintage Treasures articles. I’ve covered some of the great fiction in Analog, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and Worlds of If, but the truth is that Galaxy was on its last legs by the time I started reading science fiction and fantasy in 1976, and it folded in 1979.

But I’m not wholly ignorant of the contribution Galaxy made to the field, especially under the editorship of H.L. Gold (1950 – 1961) and Frederik Pohl (1961 – 1969). Until 1950 the field was almost entirely dominated by John W. Campbell, editor of Astounding, who was legendary in his ability to spot talent, but also held a fairly narrow view of what kinds of SF and fantasy would sell. Gold was interested in tales of social and psychological upheaval, not just the hard science puzzle fiction in Astounding, and quickly proved that readers would buy stories with that bent — as well as satire, humor, and tales where mankind didn’t always triumph in its march to the stars and inevitable conflict with alien races.

Mike Ashley, one of our field’s finest historians, credits the success of Galaxy for the huge boom in science fiction and fantasy in the fifties, when the field grew from a handful of magazines to over two dozen, saying Galaxy “revolutionized the field overnight.”

Author Robert Silverberg, however, has a more personal tale of how Galaxy changed his life. He writes:

It was the founding of Galaxy that saved me from a life of smoking. It was September, 1950, and I was a teenager with about forty cents in my pocket. A pack of cigarettes cost about a quarter then. So did the first issue of Galaxy, which had just come out. I went into a newsstand thinking I might buy some cigarettes (I had been smoking a few, not with any pleasure, but simply to make myself look older) and there was the shiny Vol One Number One Galaxy. I could afford one or the other, not both. I made my choice and lived happily ever after.

While I was too late to buy more than a handful of issues of Galaxy on the newsstand, I rectified that later in life, amassing a fair collection going back to that famous first issue in 1950. I’ve been enjoying them over the last few years, and will report in here with the very best stories I find.

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James Enge

The Baen Galaxy/If zines (later the same zine) were just hitting their stride when I started buying magazines. I still have a lot of those issues. I especially like the serials (The Org’s EggSign of the Unicorn & its sequels–OrbitsvilleInferno…) Good stuff.

Jeff Stehman

I’d not heard that Silverberg anecdote. It’s a good one.

Matthew Wuertz

Aside from buying it at the time of release, how are you guys getting these older issues? I’ve mentioned some titles to my wife to look for at garage sales (which is a shot in the dark, I know). And I suppose there’s always eBay. There are probably reprints of the better works in various anthologies, but I really want to get my hands on the originals.

Allen Snyder

@Matthew: I compiled complete collections of F&SF (all the way back to the first issue from 1949), Analog, Asimov’s, and Galaxy using eBay. Searching every day helps, and buying up large collections when you can find them: I got an almost complete collection of Analogs thanks to a closet someone’s wife wanted cleaned out ;-).

If you do that, learn how to snipe. You’ll get much better prices than you would from bidding early.

Allen Snyder

Oh, and though I disagree with him about “Dhalgren” ( ;-), smiley meant to indicate that it really had nothing to do with it), I bought quite a few back issues from Darrell Schweitzer on eBay.

Dave T

Some conventions have dealers selling back issues of magazines, especially at worldcons. Back in the 90s I bought several dozen out of the hundreds and hundreds this one dealer was selling; most for a quarter on up to a dollar. If I’d had more money… 🙂

Matthew Wuertz

My wife is well acquainted with eBay. I mentioned what I’m looking for, and she’s now tracking certain types of auctions and will make bids on collections that sound interesting to me. We’ll see if we end up with something soon. I’m pretty excited! Now, to find the time to read these gems… 🙂

Matthew Wuertz

Thanks. I’ll keep you posted. 🙂

Matthew Wuertz

…and my wife won the first auction we tried for. A stack of Galaxies (around 20) from the ’50’s and ’60’s are now mine. Mwa ha ha ha!

[…] short time later John O’Neill posted the article How Galaxy Magazine Saved Robert Silverberg from a Life of Smoking, so I posed the question on how one might acquire an issue. One of the answers was eBay, and John […]

[…] Robert Silverberg (who credits the first issue of Galaxy with saving him from becoming a smoker) offers his own comments on the […]


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