Wednesday, November 2, 2022

Short Story Wednesday: FANTASTIC, September 1974, edited by Ted White; THE PARIS REVIEW, Autumn 1974, edited by George Plimpton; THE ONTARIO REVIEW, Autumn 1974, edited by Raymond J. Smith; THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION, September 1974, edited by Edward Ferman: Late Summer 1974

Late Summer 1974

Remarkable what an almost random look backward can turn up. 45 years ago [in 2019]. Not too long before I first began reading the magazines, and had already read some stories from them, or would first read them in that year and the next. I had my tenth birthday in August of 1974, and while I wasn't too fond of how life in general was going, I was more than happy enough about what I was finding in literature of various sorts. 

As I consider the four magazines here now, it occurs to me that all four were eclectic in their remit to a greater degree than most of their peers, and openly so...two in making clear that they mixed fantasy (of all sorts, including horror fiction) and science fiction (and were certainly willing to publish some notable fiction that wasn't fantasy or sf by any reasonable standard on occasion, or impressive stories which could be considered truly fantasticated only by squinting very hard...in the 1970s, Stuart Dybek's "Horror Movie" or Edward Wellen's short novel Goldbrick in F&SF, or Bill Pronzini and Barry Malzberg's "Another Burnt-Out Case" or Jack Dann's "Days of Stone" in Fantastic come to mind), the other two in being open to a greater degree to all sorts of fiction than many of their little-magazine peers (perhaps only the Boston-based and not the CCNY Fiction, Antaeus and TriQuarterly were as eclectic in the '70s), and proclaiming their internationality in their very titles, an English-language magazine initially out of Paris, an intentionally interculturally Anglophone North American magazine initially out of border city Windsor, Ontario. All four were founded in a certain spirit of defiance as well as openness, ambition beyond simply attempting to produce good magazines, and all found themselves a matter of a certain degree of controversy as a result (though in The Paris Review's case, much of that controversy was generated by the ultimate source of some of its funding, as the facts of CIA involvement went from quietly rumored to documented and revealed).  The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction began publishing in 1949, Fantastic in 1952, The Paris Review in 1953...and while this was the first issue of The Ontario Review, the geist of the magazine was not too different from that of its not too elderly peers.

--much more to come--see indices below:





























Fantastic Stories [v23 #6, September 1974] Ted White, editor (75¢, 132pp, digest, cover by Jeff Jones)
can be read here. 

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction [v47 #3, #280, September 1974] edited by Edward Ferman (75¢, 164pp, digest, cover by Jeannine Guertin)
can be read here. 





























    The Paris Review #59 Fall, 1974 $1.95
      can be read online, at least in part, with a subscription.

      FICTION
      Frederick Busch: Widow Water
      Lamar Herrin: The Rio Loja Ring-Master
      Mike Kempton: Long Green
      Ray Russell: Rational Moments
      David Shaber: Progress Report

      INTERVIEW
      Gore Vidal: The Art of Fiction No. 50

      POETRY
      Ameen Alwan: Two Poems
      Paul Anderson: Falling
      Maxine Chernoff: Two Poems
      W. K. Engel: Two Poems
      Albert Goldbarth: Organization
      Thomas Johnson: Two Poems
      Erica Jong: Wrinkles
      Erica Jong: Becoming a Nun
      Greg Kuzma: Two Poems
      Naomi Lazard: Two Poems
      David Lehman: Greeting Where No Kindness Is
      Molly McKaughan: Ms. Delilah Hoffritz
      Rush Rankin: Poem
      Vern Rutsala: You
      Ira Sadoff: Five Poems
      Aram Saroyan: Two Poems
      Louis Simpson: Three Poems
      Albert Stainton: The Limestone Statue Boxing Factory
      Charles Webb: Two Poems

      FEATURE
      Peter Ardery: In Memoriam

      ART
      William Wegman: Portfolio of Drawings

    The Ontario Review #1 Fall 1974 $2.50
    can be read here.

    INTERVIEW
    A Conversation with Philip Roth by Joyce Carol Oates 9

    POETRY
    Stanley Cooperman, from The Jerusalem Poems 23 
    Conrad Hilberry, Two for Alfred North Whitehead 28 
    Miroslav Holub, Loneliness of the Minotaur 30 
    Ernest Sandeen, T wo Poems 31 
    J. Michael Yates, from Burn Tissue Cycle 47 
    John Ditsky, Three Poems 50 
    John R. Reed, Love Poem 53
    Derk Wynand, Snowscapes 54 
    Tom Wayman, Three Poems 67 
    William Heyen, Two Poems 71 
    Philip J. Klukoff, Deaf Mute 74 
    Carl Dennis, Prowlers 75 
    Robert Bringhurst, For Robert Grosseteste 76

    FICTION
    Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Lucca 33 
    Bill Henderson, Pop 56

    GRAPHICS
    A. G. Smith, Landscapes from Coastal Carolina 41

    ESSAY
    Paul Marx, Harvey Swados 62

    REVIEWS
    John R. Reed, Instructive Alchemies 78 
    Linda W. Wagner, Four Young Poets 89 
    Gloria Whelan, The Poem as Myth 98 
    Raymond Smith and Joyce Carol Oates, Briefly Noted 102 

    Notes on Contributors 107 





















A redux post, to be finally expanded
For more of today's stories, please see Patti Abbott's blog.
Posted by at

4 comments:

pattinase (abbott) said...

I always dreamed about getting a story in THE ONTARIO REVIEW. Is JCO on her third husband by now?

November 2, 2022 at 10:16 AM
Todd Mason said...

Yikes! I've not kept up with any reportage on her affiances--good for them, if so! OR became only the second eclectic fiction magazine I was making a point of gathering all the issues of, as they came out and casually picking up back issues when they crossed my path, after SHORT STORY INTERNATIONAL (CONJUNCTIONS was next). A bit late to get anything into FANTASTIC or ONTARIO, alas, and PARIS REVIEW isn't up to what it once was. A haiku, so far, in F&SF.

November 2, 2022 at 10:27 AM
George said...

I was still reading F&SF and FANTASTIC in 1974 but soon shifted to reading mystery fiction. I'm a Manly Wade Wellman fan and it's surprising he was still getting published in the 1970s. Wellman had a long writing career!

November 3, 2022 at 9:00 AM
Todd Mason said...

He did...long and diverse, at least challenging that of Will Jenkins/Murray Leinster and relatively few others.

A number of readers have left fantastic fiction at some point in favor of crime fiction...I'm not sure I ever hope to lose either, or my other interests. But it would be nice if my eyes hold up.

Also nice would be a good reason why this page looks reasonably good in Chrome and Safari, yet has a huge gap between the cover images and the indices in Firefox. Sigh.

November 3, 2022 at 5:21 PM

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