- Fantasy Magazine [v1 #1, March 1953] (35¢, 160pp+, digest, cover by Hannes Bok) []
- 2 · Things That Go Foomp · Lester del Rey · ed
- 4 · The Black Stranger [Conan] · Robert E. Howard, L. Sprague de Camp & Lester del Rey · na; illustrated by Orban
abridged, edited by de Camp and rewritten by Del Rey from “The Black Stranger” by Howard (Echoes of Valor ed. Karl Edward Wagner, Tor, 1987). - 73 · Too Gloomy for Private Pushkin · Richard Deming · ss; illustrated by Kelly Freas
- 82 · The Demons · Robert Sheckley · ss; illustrated by Ebel
- 93 · Ashtaru the Terrible · Poul Anderson · nv; illustrated by Emsh
- 112 · Feeding Time · Finn O’Donnevan (Robert Sheckley) · ss; illustrated by M. Berwin
- 117 · The Night Shift · Frank Robinson · ss; illustrated by H. R. Smith
- 126 · Dragon Fires · Steve Frazee · nv; illustrated by H. R. Smith
Given as February 1953 in the Table of Contents.
One of the more promising fantasy fiction magazines to arise in the early '50s post-F&SF/Galaxy boom of fantastic-fiction magazines was the (sadly, four-issue run only) of Fantasy Magazine, which with its second issue changed its title to Fantasy Fiction, presumably due to legal pressure from one party or another--not the best way to help readers find the next issue (an even more short-lived and less impressive magazine called Fantasy Fiction had published two issues in 1950; it also leaned a bit on crime-fiction amphibians in its first issue, particularly). With a Robert Howard/Conan cover story "completed" by old hands L. Sprague de Camp and editor del Rey, and otherwise filling the first issue with young lions from fantastic fiction (and, as hinted above. a couple, Frazee and Deming, already more famous for their western and/or crime fiction) and with a striking Bok cover, the magazine couldn't overcome the crowding of the newsstands, and undercapitalization will and did out.
The stories I've read so far are more promising than brilliant, but I'm not sorry I've spent the time. Richard Deming's "Too Gloomy for Private Pushkin" has excellent detail in its WW2 setting, and Deming is game to introduce the fantasticated elements sparingly, even if the climax might feel a bit rushed vs. the build-up. Frank Robinson's "The Night Shift" lays its hardboiled-reporters-and-cops patter on a bit thick, and rushes its ending, but is clever enough. "Feeding Time", the shortest story in the issue, isn't quite clever enough for most readers not to see the punch coming; one guesses that's why Robert Sheckley chose to employ his pseudonym on this one, albeit it has a nice attention to detail, in describing a particularly odd, surprisingly large old bookshop.
For more of today's Short Story Wednesday entries (two shots of Jerry House this week), please see Patti Abbott's blog.
6 comments:
for those who saw the email, here's the Mary Gaitskill Substack blog: https://marygaitskill.substack.com/
Foolishly overlooked by me in that same mail: https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=90302 --Steve Lewis's review and discussion of the sole (1967) issue of WHODUNIT? MYSTERY MAGAZINE...
One of four somewhat interesting and underfunded magazines del Rey edited for John Raymond in the early Fifties. Del Rey never really developed his editing chops (even with a year as managing editor of IF under Fred Pohl in the late Sixties, and five BOTY volumes from 1972 to 1976) until the late Seventies with the establishment of Del Rey Books from Ballantine, and even then he was outperformed by his wife, Judy-Lynn. But he was responsible for the execrable THE SWORD OF SHANARRA and sequels by Terry Brooks.
Yes...by the time Del Rey was established as an imprint at Ballantine, Lester del Rey was definitely not worried about delivering the Good so much as the Marketable, and did so with a vengeance. Ms. del Rey might've had more of an artistic success (while also very demotic in all appeal, all the time) with the sf they published, but Mr. del Rey racked up at least as much in terms of sales with his fantasy books. Seems there's some persistent confusion in some circles whether "Cameron Hall", the editorial pseudonym of the last issues of the fantasy and sf magazine group of which this magazine was a part, was actually del Rey (I'd suspect not) or Harry Harrison (I tend to agree with those who suspect so). Two wide-ranging editors afterward, including having "competing" Best of the Year annuals in the '70s.
Considering the hundreds of used bookstores I've visited over the decades, I have never seen a copy of FANTASY MAGAZINE. Whenever I see one of the great covers like the one you feature, I wished I'd found a few...
Well, George (as signed in as Ms. Kelley), aside from FANTASY getting not nearly as much distribution as as could've used, the combination of Bok and (theoretically) Howard and Conan on the cover of this issue would've made it rather a collector's item even in the '50s, much less since...the typical 2ndhand store would be very lucky indeed to have it at all, and probably not for long, even before it became too much an item of antiquity...
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