FOUNDATION: THE REVIEW OF SCIENCE FICTION

   UK semi-academic journal, published by the SCIENCE FICTION FOUNDATION of North East London Polytechnic (now known as the University of East London) from Mar 1972, and more recently, since 1993 when the SFF moved, of the University of Liverpool, current, 61 numbers to summer 1994, 3 numbers ayear. \#1-\#4 ed Charles BARREN, \#5-\#13 ed Peter NICHOLLS, \#14-\#19 ed Malcolm EDWARDS, \#20-\#36 ed David PRINGLE, \#37 onwards ed Edward JAMES.Much of the journal's flavour has resulted from the work of long-running features editor Ian WATSON, who held that position from \#10 (1976) to \#51 (1991). The most influential reviews editors have perhaps been John CLUTE(\#20-\#47) followed by Colin GREENLAND (from \#47). Other members of the editorial board have included Kenneth BULMER, George HAY and Christopher PRIEST. Under James's editorship the editorial address has been theUniversity of York, where he teaches.F:TROSF has a distinctive flavour regarded by US readers as typically UK, though in fact some of its editors have been foreigners. After a shaky beginning, it soon became perhaps the liveliest and indeed the most critical of the big three critical journals - the others being EXTRAPOLATION in the USA and SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES inCanada - though lacking the academic authority of at least the latter. Since there is very little formal use of sf in UK universities, there is no academic base to provide a rigidly scholarly features section. The real strengths of F:TROSF have always been its book reviews and its willingness to publish articles about current sf; it has been weaker in theoretical and historical studies. Nevertheless, it has provided a platform for serious sf criticism in the UK. Its contributors - often professional writers of fiction rather than academics - have tended to be more aggressively judgmental, and more intent upon defining a critical canon for sf, than their politer US colleagues. All of this may explain why its readership appears to be less academic than that of the other scholarly journals, consisting more of fans and sf writers. The US scholar Gary K. WOLFE sees F:TROSF, not wholly unadmiringly (and only in partincorrectly), as partaking of "certain traditions of fan scholarship". From the beginning a feature of F:TROSF has been the Profession of ScienceFiction series (45 to date) of autobiographical pieces by sf writers; a selection of Profession essays appeared later as The Profession of Science Fiction (anth 1992) ed Edward James and Maxim JAKUBOWSKI. The first 8issues of F:TROSF were republished in book form as Foundation, Numbers 1 to 8: March 1972-March 1975 (1978) with intro by Peter Nicholls.

   PN