ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

   US magazine, pulp-size Jan 1930-Dec 1941, BEDSHEET-size Jan 1942-Apr 1943, pulp size May 1943-Oct 1943, DIGEST-size Nov 1943-Feb 1963, bedsheet-size Mar 1963-Mar 1965, digest-size Apr 1965 to date. It changed its title to ANALOG (details below) in 1960. Published by Publisher's Fiscal Corporation (which later became Clayton Magazines) Jan 1930-Mar 1933, STREET \& SMITH Oct 1933-Jan 1961, Conde Nast Feb 1961-Aug 1980, Davis Publications Sep 1980-1992; ed Harry BATES Jan 1930-Mar 1933, F.Orlin TREMAINE Oct 1933-Nov 1937, John W.CAMPBELL Jr Dec 1937-Dec 1971, Ben BOVA Jan 1972-Nov 1978, Stanley SCHMIDT Dec 1978-current. ASF was sold to Dell Magazines, part of the BANTAM/ DOUBLEDAY/Dell publishing group, early in 1992; the first redesigned ASF under the new management is projected to be (new logo and different cover style) was Nov 1992. By June 1995 the numeration had reached Vol. 115, no. 6. ASF was brought into being when the PULP-MAGAZINE publisher William Clayton suggested to one of his editors, Harry Bates, the idea of a new monthly magazine of period-adventure stories, largely in order to fill a blank space on the sheet on which all the covers of his pulp magazines were simultaneously printed. Bates counterproposed a magazine to be called Astounding Stories of Super-Science. The idea was accepted, and the first issue appeared in Jan 1930 under that title. Bates was editor, with assistant editor Desmond W.HALL and consulting editor Douglas M.DOLD (who in 1931 became editor of the short-lived MIRACLE SCIENCE AND FANTASY STORIES). Where its predecessors AIR WONDER STORIES, AMAZING STORIES and SCIENCE WONDER STORIES were larger than the ordinary pulp magazines and attempted a more austere respectability, in response to Hugo GERNSBACK's proselytizing desire to communicate an interest in science through SCIENTIFICTION, ASF was unashamedly an action-adventure pulp magazine where science was present only to add a veneer of plausibility to its outrageous melodramas. The flavour is suggested by the following editorial blurb (for The Pirate Planet by Charles W.Diffin, Feb 1931): From Earth \& Sub-Venus Converge a Titanic Offensive of Justice on the Unspeakable Man-Things of Torg. The covers of the Clayton ASF, all the work of Hans Waldemar Wessolowski (H.W. WESSO), show, typically, men (or women) menaced by giant insects or - anticipating KING KONG (1933) - giant apes. Regular contributors included such names as Ray CUMMINGS, Paul ERNST, Francis FLAGG, S.P.MEEK and Victor ROUSSEAU. One of the most popular authors was Anthony GILMORE (the collaborative pseudonym of Bates and Hall), whose Hawk Carse series epitomized ASF-style SPACE OPERA. In Feb 1931 the title was abbreviated to Astounding Stories; the full title was resumed in Jan 1933. During late 1932 the magazine became irregular as the Clayton chain encountered financial problems. In Mar 1933 Clayton went out of business and ASF ceased publication. Although the vast majority of the stories in its first incarnation (1930-33) are deservedly forgotten, ASF was a robust and reasonably successful magazine and, because its rates were so much better than those of its competitors (two cents a word on acceptance instead of half a cent a word on publication or later), it had attracted such authors as Murray LEINSTER and Jack WILLIAMSON. The magazine's title was bought by STREET \& SMITH, a well established pulp chain publisher, and after a six-month gap it reappeared in Oct 1933, restored to a monthly schedule which it has ever since maintained or improved upon (it has been four-weekly since 1981) - a record which no other magazine, even AMZ, can approach. Desmond Hall remained on the editorial staff for a time, but the new editor was F.Orlin TREMAINE. The first two Tremaine issues were an uneasy balance of sf, occult and straight adventure but, with the Dec 1933 issue, ASF became re-established as an sf magazine (with the Street \& Smith takeover the name had once again become Astounding Stories). In that issue Tremaine announced the formulation of his thought-variant policy: each issue of ASF would carry a story developing an idea which, as he put it, has been slurred over or passed by in many, many stories. The first such story was Ancestral Voices by Nat SCHACHNER. Although the thought-variant policy can be seen as a publicity gimmick rather than as a coherent intellectual design for the magazine, during 1934 Tremaine and Hall together raised ASF to an indisputably pre-eminent position in its small field. The magazine's payment rates were only half what they had been, but they were still twice as much as their competitors' and were paid promptly. ASF solicited material from leading authors: in 1934 it featured Donald WANDREI's Colossus (Jan), Williamson's Born of the Sun (Mar) and The Legion of Space (Apr-Sep; 1947), Leinster's Sidewise in Time (June), E.E.Doc SMITH's Skylark of Valeron (Aug 1934-Feb 1935; 1949), C.L. MOORE's The Bright Illusion (Oct), John W.Campbell Jr's first Don A.Stuart story, Twilight (Nov), Raymond Z.GALLUN's Old Faithful (Dec) and Campbell's The Mightiest Machine (Dec 1934-Apr 1935; 1947). Furthermore, Charles FORT's nonfiction Lo! (1931) was serialized (Apr-Nov) and ASF's covers featured some startling work by Howard V.BROWN. Also during 1934 the magazine's wordage increased twice, first by adding more pages, then by reducing the size of type. ASF continued to dominate the field in the following years. Superscience epics in the Campbell style were largely phased out as the moodier stories of Stuart became popular. Stanley G.WEINBAUM was a regular contributor during 1935 (the year of his death); H.P.LOVECRAFT's fiction appeared in 1936. Tremaine's intention (announced in Jan 1935) to publish ASF twice a month did not materialize, but the magazine prospered and in Feb 1936 made the important symbolic step of adopting trimmed edges to its pages, which at a stroke made its appearance far smarter than those of its ragged competitors. Other artists who began to appear in ASF included Elliott DOLD and Charles SCHNEEMAN. Campbell and Willy LEY contributed articles; L.Sprague DE CAMP and Eric Frank RUSSELL had their first stories published. At the same time, ASF's competitors were ailing: both AMZ and WONDER STORIES switched from monthly to bimonthly in 1935; Wonder Stories was sold in the following year (becoming THRILLING WONDER STORIES), and AMZ suffered the same fate in 1938. When Tremaine became editorial director at Street \& Smith late in 1937 and appointed John W.CAMPBELL Jr as his successor, he handed over a healthy and successful concern. For his first 18 months as editor Campbell did not develop the magazine significantly, although in 1938 he published the first sf stories of Lester DEL REY and L.Ron HUBBARD and reintroduced Clifford D.SIMAK. In Mar 1938 he altered the title to Astounding Science-Fiction. His intention was to phase out the word Astounding, which he disliked, and to retitle the magazine Science Fiction; however, the appearance in 1939 of a magazine with that title (SCIENCE FICTION) prevented him from doing so. He toyed briefly with thought-variant adaptations: Mutant issues (which would show significant changes in the direction of ASF's evolution - and that of sf generally) and Nova stories (which would be unusual in manner of presentation rather than basic theme). Such gimmicks were soon forgotten. In Mar 1939 he began ASF's successful fantasy companion, UNKNOWN. The beginning of Campbell's particular GOLDEN AGE OF SF can be pinpointed as the summer of 1939. The July ASF (later reproduced as Astounding Science Fiction, July, 1939 anth 1981 ed Campbell and Martin H.GREENBERG) contained A.E.VAN VOGT's first sf story, Black Destroyer, and Isaac ASIMOV's Trends (not his first story, but the first he had managed to sell to Campbell); the Aug issue had Robert A.HEINLEIN's debut, Life-Line; in the Sep issue Theodore STURGEON's first sf story, Ether Breather, appeared. During the same period Hubert ROGERS became established as ASF's major cover artist. The authors that he published have frequently attested to Campbell's dynamic editorial personality. Certainly he fed them ideas, but it was the coincidental appearance of a number of prolific and imaginative writers which gave ASF its remarkable domination of the genre-sf field during the WWII years - when, to begin with, a boom in sf-magazine publishing meant there was more competition than ever before. The key figure in 1940 and 1941 was Heinlein. His stories alone would have made the magazine notable, as a partial listing will indicate. In 1940 there were Requiem (Jan), If This Goes On - (Feb-Mar), The Roads Must Roll (June), Coventry (July) and Blowups Happen (Sep); in 1941 Sixth Column (Jan-Mar; 1949), And He Built A Crooked House (Feb), Logic of Empire (Mar), Universe (May), Solution Unsatisfactory (May), Methuselah's Children (July-Sep; 1958), By His Bootstraps (Oct), Common Sense (Oct). At the same time there were a number of stories by van Vogt, notably SLAN (Sep-Dec 1940; 1946; rev 1951), and by Asimov, including Nightfall (Sep 1941) and the early ROBOT series. Although Campbell lost Heinlein to war work in 1942, he gained Anthony BOUCHER, Fritz LEIBER and Lewis Padgett (Henry KUTTNER and C.L.MOORE). In Jan 1942 the magazine switched to bedsheet size - which gave more wordage while saving paper - but it reverted to pulp size in 1943 for a few months before becoming the first digest-size sf magazine in Nov 1943 as paper shortages (which killed off Unknown) became more acute. William Timmins replaced Rogers as ASF's regular cover artist. ASF's leadership of the field continued through the 1940s. Most of its regular authors had popular series to reinforce their appeal: Asimov's Robot and Foundation stories; van Vogt's Weapon Shops tales and his two Null-A novels; George O.SMITH's Venus Equilateral stories; Jack Williamson's Seetee stories (as by Will Stewart); Padgett's Gallegher stories; and E.E.Smith's epic Lensman series, the last two novels of which marked the last throes of the superscience epic in ASF. The only serious challenge to ASF's superiority came from Sam MERWIN Jr's vastly improved STARTLING STORIES, which by 1948 was publishing much good material. However, Startling Stories was a particularly garish-looking pulp while ASF became more sober and serious in appearance as the decade went on; the covers featuring Chesley BONESTELL's astronomical art contributed to this effect. The word Astounding was reduced to a small-size italic script, often coloured so as to be virtually invisible. At a casual glance it looked as if Campbell had achieved his ambition of retitling the magazine. But, with the appearance of The MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION in 1949 and GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION in 1950, ASF's leadership was successfully challenged. It continued on an even, respectable keel, but the exciting new authors of the 1950s, by and large, made their mark elsewhere. The May 1950 issue of ASF featured Hubbard's first article on DIANETICS, which launched the PSEUDO-SCIENCE that would later become SCIENTOLOGY. This was symptomatic of Campbell's growing wish to see the ideas of sf made real, a wish that led him into a fruitless championing of backyard inventors' space drives and PSIONIC machines. His editorials - idiosyncratic, deliberately needling, dogmatic, sometimes uncomfortably elitist and near-racist - absorbed much of the energy which had previously gone into the feeding of ideas to his authors. Many of the notions propounded in the editorials were duly reworked into fiction by a stable of unexceptional regular authors such as Randall GARRETT and Raymond F.JONES. ASF's new contributors included Poul ANDERSON, James BLISH, Gordon R.DICKSON, Robert SILVERBERG and many others, and its new artists included, notably, Ed EMSHWILLER (Emsh), Frank Kelly FREAS and H.R.VAN DONGEN. It had settled into respectable middle age. Still popular with sf fans, it won HUGO awards in 1953, 1955, 1956 and 1957. During 1960 the magazine's title was gradually altered to Analog Science Fact Science Fiction, Astounding fading down as Analog became more visible. That little symbol.. is a home-invented one, wrote Campbell (Jan 1964): In all mathematics, etcetera, there is.. no symbol meaning 'is analogous to'. We invented one.. We do not expect our readers to enunciate our title as clearly as 'ANALOG - Science Fact is analogous to Science Fiction' but we thought you might be interested in why we did not use the traditional ampersand - \&. (With the Apr 1965 issue the order of the two elements changed, without explanation, so that it became sf analogous to science fact.) Street \& Smith expired and the magazine was taken over by Conde Nast in Feb 1962. This was an important change, because it assured ASF of excellent distribution (as one of a group which included such titles as Good Housekeeping) at a time when its rivals faced increasing difficulties in getting distributed and displayed. In Mar 1963 the magazine adopted a very elegant bedsheet-size format but, lacking the advertising support such an expensive production required, it reverted to digest size in Apr 1965. The large issues are most notable for Frank HERBERT's first two Dune serials: Dune World (Dec 1963-Feb 1964) and The Prophet of Dune (Jan-May 1965), combined as DUNE (fixup 1965); both were superbly illustrated by John SCHOENHERR, who became one of the magazine's regular artists of the 1960s. Other authors who became frequent contributors included Christopher ANVIL, Harry HARRISON and Mack REYNOLDS. The magazine won further Hugos in 1961, 1962, 1964 and 1965. Although it maintained a circulation above 100, 000 (nearly twice that of its nearest rival) it continued on a slow decline into predictability. Campbell died in July 1971, being replaced as editor by Ben BOVA (the first issue credited to Bova was that for Jan 1972). Not surprisingly, the magazine gained considerably in vitality through having a new editor after nearly 34 years. Authors such as Roger ZELAZNY, who would not readily have fitted into Campbell's magazine, began to appear. While the editorial policy remained oriented towards traditional sf, a more liberal attitude prevailed, leading to some reader protest over stories by Joe HALDEMAN and Frederik POHL, which, though mild by contemporary standards, were not what some old-time readers expected to find in ASF. New writers like Haldeman and George R.R.MARTIN established themselves. The range of artists was widened with the addition of Jack GAUGHAN and the discovery of Rick STERNBACH and Vincent DI FATE. A first for ASF was the special women's issue (June 1977), which contained a HUGO winner, Eyes of Amber by Joan D.VINGE, and a NEBULA winner, The Screwfly Solution, by Raccoona Sheldon (better known as James TIPTREE Jr). Bova won the Hugo for Best Editor (which had replaced the award for Best Magazine) every year 1973-7 and again in 1979. The magazine's circulation remained extremely healthy. Bova resigned in 1978, soon afterwards joining OMNI as fiction editor. His replacement, Stanley SCHMIDT, was a HARD-SF writer whose debut had been in ASF in 1968 with A Flash of Darkness. His editing style is quieter and more modest than Campbell's and Bova's, but he has continued the magazine with dignity. Magazine publishing, however, was becoming a less important component of the sf-publishing business (ANTHOLOGIES; SF MAGAZINES), and, while subscription sales continued to hold up through the 1970s and 1980s, newsstand sales were dropping. In 1980 Conde Nast decided ASF no longer fitted their list, but they had no trouble finding a buyer. Davis Publications (whose owner, Joel Davis, was son of B.G.Davis, a partner in ZIFF-DAVIS, publisher of AMZ) had already begun publishing sf digest periodicals in 1977 with ISAAC ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE. In 1980 Davis bought ASF, and soon changed the publication schedule from 12 to 13 issues a year, presumably in a bid to gain more newsstand space. Increasingly during the 1980s there was a feeling that ASF, with its image as the last magazine bastion of the hard-sf problem story, was becoming a dinosaur: a still formidable anachronism, but an anachronism nevertheless. The paid circulation oscillated, but the general direction was down, from 104,000 in 1980 to 83,000 in 1990; newsstand sales dropped from 45,000 to 15,000 during the same period. In 1990 ASF nevertheless retained the highest circulation of the pure sf magazines. Though fewer of its stories were now appearing in Best of the Year anthologies and lists of award winners, it still produced occasional very good work: award winners during the 1980s included The Cloak and the Staff (1980) by Gordon R.Dickson, The Saturn Game (1981) by Poul Anderson, Melancholy Elephants (1982) by Spider ROBINSON, Cascade Point (1983) by Timothy ZAHN, Blood Music (1983) by Greg BEAR, The Crystal Spheres (1984) by David BRIN and The Mountains of Mourning (1989) by Lois McMaster BUJOLD. A Nebula-winning novel first serialized in ASF was Falling Free (1987-8 ASF; 1988) by Bujold, one of ASF's most popular writers in recent years. Other writers often associated with ASF in the 1980s (and after) include Michael FLYNN, Charles SHEFFIELD and Harry TURTLEDOVE. Campbell, Bova and Schmidt all edited a number of anthologies drawn from ASF (see their entries for further details). Many other anthologies have drawn extensively on the magazine; indeed, of the 35 stories contained in the first major sf anthology, Adventures in Time and Space (1946) ed Raymond J.HEALY and J.Francis MCCOMAS, all but three were from ASF. The 2 vols of The Astounding-Analog Reader (anths 1972 and 1973) ed Harry HARRISON and Brian W.ALDISS provide an informative chronological survey of ASF's history. The flavour of ASF's first two decades is nostalgically, if uncritically, captured in Alva ROGERS's A Requiem for Astounding (1964). A useful index is The Complete Index to Astounding/Analog (1981 US) by Mike ASHLEY. The UK edition, published by Atlas, appeared Aug 1939-Aug 1963. The contents were severely truncated during the 1940s, and the magazine did not appear regularly, adopting a variable bimonthly schedule. It became monthly from Feb 1952; from Nov 1953, when it changed from pulp to digest, it was practically a full reprint (four months behind in cover date) of the US edition, although some stories and departments were omitted.