Black Gate

This is the fourth installment in Rich Horton’s retro-reviews of science fiction and fantasy digest magazines from the mid-20th Century. The first three were the February 1966 Analog, the December 1965 Galaxy, and the January 1966 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

Click the images for larger versions.

Back to the ’50s for this one. If is a magazine I remember with affection, even though I never saw a precisely new copy — the last issue, except for an abortive one issue 1986 revival, appeared in December 1974, just a couple of months after I started buying magazines, but my source (Alton Drugs in Naperville, IL) didn’t carry it. But its evident sense of playfulness, at least in the Pohl years, has always appealed to me.

At any rate, this issue appeared at a portentous time – its issue date is October 1957, the same month that Sputnik I was launched. So this magazine is from the very cusp of the Space Age.

Indeed, I have a few magazines on hand from roughly the same time (1957, or up to January 1958 – which certainly went to press before the news of Sputnik), and I propose to cover them in the next few old magazine reviews.

The title is one odd aspect. Is it If: Worlds of Science Fiction? Or is it Worlds of If? Apparently the original title was officially If: Worlds of Science Fiction, but it wobbled early on, at least as to its display. In 1972 the then publishers, UPD, officially changed it to Worlds of If. (All this from Phil Stephenson-Payne’s wonderful Galactic Central site.)

At any rate this issue appears fairly unambiguously to be If: Worlds of Science Fiction. The editor (and publisher, and indeed founder) was James L. Quinn. (Confusing because a later publisher was named Guinn.) (And I should note that though Quinn was publisher from the start, the first editor was Paul Fairman.)

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Here’s the second of three consecutive months of SF magazines I recently bought, each a different specimen of the canonical “Big Three” of that time. The first, the December 1965 issue of Galaxy, is here.

Edward Ferman was the Editor of F&SF at this time, as he had been for a while. (I have heard that even while his father Joseph was listed as Editor, Edward was actually doing the job.)

The cover is by Jack Gaughan, illustrating “L’Arc de Jeanne,” by Robert F. Young. Of course there was no interior artwork, excerpt for Gahan Wilson’s cartoon. There were also no ads except for the Classifieds in the F&SF Marketplace, and except for one or two inhouse ads. This issue did feature the Statement of Management and Circulation. Average Paid Circulation, 53,831. Average Mail Circulation, 16,644.

The features include Wilson’s Cartoon, a very brief “Science Springboard” by Theodore L. Thomas, about smog, and Isaac Asimov’s Science column, this time called “The Proton Reckoner,” about counting things, lots of things, like the protons in the universe.

And there is a book review column by Judith Merril. She writes from London, in September of 1965, and her subject is how much better things are in England: the drinking, people’s looks, the rock and roll, and the SF — the New Wave SF (though Merril does not here use that term). She focuses on three major fairly young writers: J. G. Ballard, Brian W. Aldiss, and John Brunner.

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I picked up a few magazines at an antique store near Columbia, MO, last week, including three consecutive issues — of different magazines — from the end of 1965/beginning of 1966: the December 1965 Galaxy, the January 1966 F&SF (reviewed here), and the February 1966 Analog. The first one I got to was the Galaxy.

This is from more or less the center of Frederik Pohl’s editorial tenure. Galaxy in this period was bimonthly, with two sister magazines — Worlds of Tomorrow, also bimonthly, and Worlds of If, which was monthly. (I admit I had not known that — I thought it was also bimonthly, and I’m surprised that Galaxy, the “senior” magazine, was not the monthly one.) Galaxy was generously sized, at 196 pages (including covers), with about as much fiction as Analog and Asimov’s feature these days. By contrast Worlds of Tomorrow had 164 pages per issue, and If only 132. The latter two were 50 cents, but Galaxy was 60 cents. (I find this mixture of format, frequency, and pricing in three magazines from the same stable rather intriguing.)

The cover of the December 1965 Galaxy is by Pederson, illustrating “The Mercurymen”, by C. C. MacApp. (Galaxy typically only credited last names for artists — apparently this particular artist was named John Pederson, Jr. — I’m not very familiar with his work, and not too impressed with this particular example!) Interiors were by Gray Morrow, Giunta, Jack Gaughan, and Wood. (The artists whose first names I know are, not surprisingly perhaps, the better ones, though I am told that John Giunta and Wally Wood were well known for work in comics.) There are a fair number of ads — more than often in SF magazines — though somewhat low rent ones: Rosicruans, hypnotism, the Puzzle Lovers Club, the Book Find Club, book plates (from Galaxy), and the Duraclean Company.

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