THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

   US DIGEST-size magazine; published Fall 1949-Feb 1958 by Fantasy House, Inc., a subsidiary of Mercury Press, then by Mercury Press; Lawrence Spivak was credited as Publisher Fall 1949-July 1954, Joseph W. FERMAN Aug 1954-Oct 1970, Edward L. FERMAN from Nov 1970; ed Anthony BOUCHER and J. Francis MCCOMAS Fall 1949-Aug 1954, then by Boucher alone until Aug 1958, by Robert P. MILLS Sep 1958-Mar 1962, by Avram DAVIDSON Apr 1962-Nov 1964, by publisher Joseph W. Ferman Dec 1964-Dec 1965, by Edward L. Ferman Jan 1966-June 1991, and by Kristine Kathryn RUSCH from July 1991. To May1995FSF had published 528 issues. \#1 (Fall 1949) was titled The Magazine of Fantasy. The magazine began as a quarterly, became a bimonthly in Feb 1951, and has maintained a monthly schedule since Aug 1952. A rathershort-lived companion magazine was VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION.FSF - the abbreviation, taken from the words "Fantasy and Science Fiction" on the spine, being in almost universal use by its readers - won HUGOS for Best Magazine in 1958, 1959, 1960, 1963, 1969, 1970, 1971 and 1972; after thatcategory was dropped, Edward L. Ferman won the Hugo for Best Editor in 1981, 1982 and 1983. There was then a long gap until Kristine KathrynRusch won the same award in 1994. FSF's editorial policy has always placed the main emphasis on short stories. Its editors abandoned the standards of PULP-MAGAZINE fiction and asked for stylish sf/fantasy that was up to theliterary standards of the "slick" magazines that had shaped US short-story writing between the wars; they also abandoned interior illustrations. FSF published a great deal of light and humorous material, and used occasional reprints of stories by prestigious writers, including Robert GRAVES, Eric LINKLATER, Robert NATHAN, Robert Louis STEVENSON, James Thurber(1894-1961), Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) and P.G. WODEHOUSE. It also attracted such writers as Kingsley AMIS, Gerald HEARD and C.S. LEWIS to write for its pages. Despite the various changes of editorship the personality of the magazine has been consistent, although since the 1970s it has been a more orthodox sf magazine than in earlier days. It used serials only occasionally, and most of the novels appearing in it are substantially cut; they have included BRING THE JUBILEE by Ward MOORE (Nov 1952; 1953), ROGUE MOON by Algis BUDRYS (Dec 1960; 1960) and STARSHIP TROOPERS (Oct-Nov1959 as "Starship Soldier"; exp 1959) by Robert A. HEINLEIN. Several notable series have been associated with the magazine, including Zenna HENDERSON's People, Manly Wade WELLMAN's John the Ballad Singer, PoulANDERSON's Time Patrol and Reginald BRETNOR's Papa Schimmelhorn. Walter M. MILLER's classic A Canticle for Leibowitz (fixup 1960) was developed from 3 novelettes published in FSF 1955-7.Starship Troopers and A Canticle for Leibowitz were two of FSF's many award-winning stories. Others were Robert BLOCH's "That Hellbound Train" (Sep 1958; Hugo), Daniel KEYES's "Flowers for Algernon" (Apr 1959; Hugo; the novel version, Flowers for Algernon (1966), won a NEBULA), Brian W. ALDISS's Hothouse series (1961; Hugo; fixup as Hothouse 1962; vt The Long Afternoon of Earth) and "The Saliva Tree" (Sep 1965; Nebula), Poul Anderson's "No Truce with Kings" (June1963; Hugo), "The Queen of Air and Darkness" (Apr 1971; Hugo and Nebula) and "Goat Song" (Feb 1972; Hugo and Nebula), Fritz LEIBER's "Ship of Shadows" (July 1969; Hugo), "Ill Met in Lankhmar" (Apr 1970; Hugo) and"Catch that Zeppelin" (Mar 1975; Hugo and Nebula), Roger ZELAZNY's "The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth" (Mar 1965; Nebula) and "And Call Me Conrad" (Oct-Nov 1965; Hugo; exp vt This Immortal 1966), Frederik POHL's and C.M. KORNBLUTH's "The Meeting" (Nov 1972; Hugo), Harlan ELLISON's "The Deathbird" (Mar 1973; Hugo), "Adrift Just Off the Islets of Langerhans" (Oct 1974; Hugo) and "Jeffty is Five" (Jul 1977; Hugo and Nebula), "Pages from a Young Girl's Journal" (Feb 1973; World Fantasy Award) by Robert Aickman (d1981), Robert SILVERBERG's "Born with the Dead" (Apr 1974; Nebula), Tom REAMY's "San Diego Lightfoot Sue" (Aug 1975; Nebula), Frederik Pohl's MAN PLUS (Apr-June 1976; Nebula), Charles L. Grant's "A Crowd of Shadows" (June 1976; Nebula), Edward BRYANT's "Stone" (Feb 1978; Nebula), John VARLEY's "The Persistence of Vision" (Mar 1978; Hugo and Nebula) and "The Pusher" (Oct 1981; Hugo), C.J. CHERRYH's "Cassandra" (Oct 1978; Hugo), Lisa TUTTLE's "The Bone Flute" (May 1981; Nebula), Joanna RUSS's "Souls" (Jan 1982; Hugo), John KESSEL's "Another Orphan" (Sep 82; Nebula), Kim Stanley ROBINSON's "Black Air" (March 1983; World Fantasy Award), Nancy KRESS's "Out of All Them Bright Stars" (Mar 1985; Nebula), Ursula K. LE GUIN's "Buffalo Gals Won't You Come Out Tonight" (Nov 1987; Hugo), Michael D. RESNICK's "Kirinyaga" (Nov 1988; Hugo), Alan BRENNERT's "Ma Qui" (Feb 1991; Nebula), Mike CONNER's "Guide Dog" (May 1991; Nebula, Joe HALDEMAN's "Graves" (Nov 1992; Nebula) and Jack CADY's "The Night We Buried Road Dog" (Jan 1993; Nebula). Other excellent stories have been contributed by Alfred BESTER, Boucher himself, Samuel R. DELANY, Philip Jose FARMER, Richard MATHESON, James TIPTREE Jrand many others.Under Rusch's editorship many readers claimed to detect a change in the "feel" of the magazine, which is hardly surprising, since she is very much younger than her predecessor had become. Publication settled to 11 issues a year, one of them a double issue. As with most sf magazines, paid circulation dropped between 1986 and 1994, in this case from c56,500 to c51,800, comparatively stable for the period.From Nov 1958 to Feb 1992, 399 issues, every issue of FSF featured a science article by Isaac ASIMOV; he collected these essays, which ceased not long before hisdeath, into many books. His replacements have been Gregory BENFORDand Bruce STERLING. Early book-review editors were Boucher, Damon Knight,Alfred Bester and Avram Davidson; the lead reviewer 1975-92 was Algis Budrys. John Kessel followed, and leaving in 1995 will be followed in turn by Robert Killheffer. Baird Searles has reviewed films. Another feature was the long series (1958-64) of punning shaggy-dog stories known as Feghoots, written by Reginald BRETNOR as Grendel Briarton. In 1968 themagazine sponsored a novel-writing contest won by Piers ANTHONY with Sos the Rope (July-Sep 1968; 1968).FSF has published a "special all-star anniversary issue" every October since the mid-1960s, and a series of special issues celebrating particular authors, each featuring a new story, a checklist of the author's work and articles about the author. The first of these was devoted to Theodore STURGEON (Sep 1962), and subsequent special issues featured Ray BRADBURY (May 1963), Isaac Asimov (Oct 1966), Fritz Leiber (July 1969), Poul Anderson (Apr 1971), James BLISH (Apr1972), Frederik Pohl (Sep 1973), Robert Silverberg (Apr 1974), Harlan Ellison (July 1977) and Stephen KING (Dec 1990), the Anderson, Leiber and Silverberg stories being among the award winners listed above. The first 6 of these stories, with abridged checklists and biographical articles, were published as The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction: A Special 25th Anniversary Anthology (anth 1974), ed Edward L. Ferman, which, though notso titled, is assumed to be \#21 of the Best series, as its successor was \#22. The Best series, beginning with The Best from Fantasy and ScienceFiction (anth 1952) ed Boucher and McComas, ran 1952-82, amounting to 24 anthologies (counting the 25th-anniversary volume). These at first appeared annually, but none appeared in 1970, 1972, 1974-6, 1978-9 and 1981 (for details Anthony BOUCHER, Robert P. MILLS, Avram DAVIDSON andEdward L. FERMAN). Other book spin-offs from FSF have been A Decade of Fantasy and Science Fiction (anth 1960) ed Robert P. Mills, Once and Future Tales from the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (anth 1968) ed Edward L. Ferman, Twenty Years of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (anth 1970) ed Edward L. Ferman and Robert P. Mills, The Magazineof Fantasy and Science Fiction: A Thirty Year Retrospective (anth 1980) ed Edward L. Ferman, reprinting the stories from the Oct 1979 retrospectiveissue, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1965 (anth 1981) ed Edward L. Ferman and Martin H. GREENBERG, The Best Fantasy Stories from the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (anth 1986) ed Edward L. Ferman, The Best Horror Stories from the Magazine of Fantasy and ScienceFiction (anth 1988; in 2 vols US 1989; vt The Best of Modern Horror: Twenty-Four Tales from the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction 1989 UK) ed Edward L. Ferman and Anne Jordan, and The Best from Fantasy \& Science Fiction: A 40th Anniversary Anthology (anth 1989) ed Edward L. Ferman.UK editions of the magazine ran Oct 1953-Sep 1954 (12 issues) from Mellifont Press, and Dec 1959-June 1964 (55 issues) from Atlas Publishing \& Distributing Co. These did not reprint whole issues, but selected and recombined stories from the US edition. The UK reprint magazine VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION (1963-5), also from Atlas, carried material from FSF aswell as from the US Venture. There was a selective reprint edition of FSF in Australia 1954-8 (14 issues, undated) from Consolidated Press.

   BS/PN

   See also: GOLDEN AGE OF SF.