Showing posts with label Cele Goldsmith. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cele Goldsmith. Show all posts

Monday, August 1, 2022

Fantasy/Horror/SF fiction magazine issues from the 1950s fantastica "End of Summer": THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION April 1958 edited by "Anthony Boucher"; FANTASTIC April 1959 edited by Cele Goldsmith; FANTASTIC UNIVERSE April 1958 edited by Hans Stefan Santesson; TALES OF THE FRIGHTENED August 1957 edited by Lyle Kenyon Engel; SCIENCE FANTASY April 1958 edited by John Carnell (and INSIDE SF's F&SF/Mercury Press parody issue/September 1958, edited by Ron Smith, and MACABRE, Summer 1958, edited by Joseph Payne Brennan)

Key and/or rare and/or early stories from Kit Reed, Kate Wilhelm, Margaret St. Clair, Fritz Leiber, Harlan Ellison, Avram Davidson, Robert Arthur, Richard Wilson, Mack Reynolds, C. B. Gilford, Gordon Dickson, Victoria Lincoln, Poul Anderson, Mark Van Doren, Jack Williamson, Katherine MacLean, Harry Harrison, Brian Aldiss, Chad Oliver, James Gunn, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Rog Phillips, Nelson Bond, E. C. Tubb, David R. Bunch and others...Cover illustrations by Kelly Freas, Virgil Finlay, Brian Lewis, Dan Adkins, not really Mondrian and a sloppy typesetter, and a bonus by Hannes Bok...

As occasionally with these extensive "multimedia" posts I attempt, not only is the current pre-analysis text+ lengthy (and I need to get the analysis done!), but it's taxing Blogspot's per-post interface...at least with the aging Mac Air I'm currently working with.

So, this will be The Apparatus post, with the reviews post to come!

Part 2: reviews of stories from the F&SF and Fantastic Universe issues.

slightly (or more) revised/updated contents lists from ISFDB.com and The FictionMags Index offered below:

Can be read here.

Can be read here.

Can be read here.

  • Tales of the Frightened, August 1957
     (View All Issues) (View Issue Grid)
  • Editor: Lyle Kenyon Engel
  • Date: 1957-08-00
  • Publisher: Republic Features Syndicate, Inc.
  • Price: 
    $0.35
  • Pages: 132
  • Format: 
    digest
  • Type: MAGAZINE
  • Notes: Vol 1, No 2. The cover contains no artwork, just a listing of the stories in rectangular colored boxes. 'The Queen's Bedroom' is listed as 'The Queen's Bedchamber' on the table of contents. The cover manages to ascribe Poul Anderson's story to Mack Reynolds's pseudonym, and the "Mallory" story to a "Paul" Anderson.
Can be read here.


  • Science Fantasy, April 1958 
  • (View All Issues) (View Issue Grid) 
  • Editor: John Carnell
  • Date: 1958-04-00
  • Publisher: Nova Publications Ltd.
  • Price: 2/-
  • Format: digest
  • Type: MAGAZINE
  • Cover: Science Fantasy, April 1958 (1958) • by Brian Lewis
  •  2  •  Web of the Norns • novella by Harry Harrison and Katherine MacLean (as noted at the FictionMags Index, 'revised from “Web of the Worlds”, Fantasy Fiction Nov ’53'; I've submitted an update accordingly to ISFDB, after checking the texts of the two very similar-looking forms. The novella has been reprinted by Armchair Fiction under the older title, and presumably from the older edit.)
  • 59 • The Locusts • short story by R. Whitfield Young
  • 75 • An Affair of Gravity • [Hek Belov] • short story by Edward Mackin
  • 89 • Return Visit • short story by E. C. Tubb
  • 107 • The Carp That Once... • short story by Brian W. Aldiss
  • 112 • Out of Control • short story by Kenneth Bulmer

    • Can be read here.

    General observations:
    Somewhat randomly gathered issues, with a focus on April 1958 issue dates, built up around having my attention drawn to the F&SF issue again in a Facebook discussion (mostly focused on the Aldiss and to a slight extent the Leiber  cover story), and a desire to look at four US and the sole UK fantasy-oriented newsstand magazines of the latest '50s...though Tales of the Frightened only had two issues, thus was barely a presence on the newsstands (along with its sf and espionage-fiction stablemates, similar two-issue mayflies). F&SF and Fantastic Universe and Science Fantasy by default eschewed interior illustration, and Tales in its two issues mostly did (extending to the cover on this second and last issue); Fantastic usually had about half the fiction or so illustrated, and I wonder if the tumult around former editor Paul Fairman leaving, and former assistant Cele Goldsmith (not yet married and Cele Lalli and then Cele Goldsmith Lalli in her subsequent Ziff-Davis editorial career) taking the editorial reins led to the sparseness of the illustration in this issue and those produced shortly before and after. And while Lyle Kenyon Engle's editing (if he was, and not simply leaving the task to Michael Avallone, who presumably wrote at least some of the stories not yet credited to him but to utterly obscure writers/bylines) was as casual as Paul Fairman's, his magazines did manage to snag some work from talented writers who weren't quite--or usually--in the yardgoods business (as in, I want your stories/copy Tuesday more than I want them good) that Fairman had encouraged his core stable of reliable (in fact, pretty brilliant: Harlan Ellison, Robert Silverberg, Milton Lesser just about to legally change his name to Stephen Marlowe, Randall Garrett and Henry Slesar) young writers to engage in. As they did, apparently, for Fairman's three 1957 issues of the Fantastic spin-off Dream World: Stories of Incredible Powers, which Jerry House (in the comments) has previously warned us are rather dire to trudge through, so I've saved myself the wear and tear (though the first has a minor, then-new P. G. Wodehouse story)...and chose issues with rare/unreprinted (and often early) stories by the likes of Kate Wilhelm (a sort of Goldsmith "discovery" in her role as assistant editor at Fantastic) and Margaret St. Clair and C. B. Gilford.  The MacLean/Harrison novella in the Science Fantasy issue was in fact essentially a reprint, from the November 1953 (and final) issue of the US magazine Fantasy Fiction, an issue edited by Lester Del Rey (apparently) as "Cameron Hall" (some sources credit Harrison as editor "Hall"; Del Rey had quit before it was published, but perhaps it was already "put to bed"; the previous issues of the short run were edited by Del Rey in the clear), and has been reprinted by the small press  Armchair Fiction, presumably from the earlier edit, under the original title and in a double volume with Damon Knight's novella "Rule Golden".
    And it dawned on me that there were at least two "semi-pro" magazines in 1958 in English devoted in whole or in part to fantasy fiction, Joseph Payne Brennan's Macabre and Ron Smith, et al.'s, Inside Science Fiction; Inside is coming close to being completely online; Macabre, alas, hasn't even had a best-of anthology nor other reprint package created, even though it published some interesting work in its nearly two-decade run. (Such other major labors of love 'zines as Amra weren't publishing much or anything in 1958, though soon would make up for that.)
    The FictionMags Index listing for this issue of Fantasy Fiction.
    This issue can be read here.














      Inside [#53, September 1958] ed. Ron Smith (25¢/30¢, 64pp, digest s/s, cover by Dan Adkins; cover as by “Mel Humdrum” after Mel Hunter). Back cover by Neil Austin. Details supplied by Ned Brooks, as revised by TM here.
      • · “The Magazine of Science Fiction Fantasy And” with spoof contents page/colophon/house ads; parody headnotes and ad copy throughout F&SF lampoon by Dave Foley and Ron Smith
      • _5 · Shadrach, Meshach and Abednigo · Dave Foley as Henna Zenderson (Zenna Henderson) · ss
      • _8 · Through Time and Space with Ferdinand Fakeout · Dave Foley as Grundoon Briarpatch (Grendel Briarton aka Reginald Bretnor) · ss
      • _9 · Bleak Fate Intervenes · Bob Leman as Thomas Hardy · ss
      • _10 · The Night After We Land on Mars · Ron Smith as R. S. Dickson (R. S. Richardson) · hu
      • _11 · The Story More Dull Than the Dullest Story Ever Written ·  Ron Smith as Pocahontas Smith (perhaps meant to riff on "Cordwainer Smith"/Paul Linebarger) · vi
      • _12 · Recondemned Reading · Dave Foley as Anthony Twin (Anthony Boucher) · hu
      • _13 · The Man from Out There ·  Dave Foley as Nonah McClunkrak (Winona McClintic)  · pm
      • _14 · Platitudes · Dave Foley as Walter Jose Alverez (Philip Jose Farmer) · ss
      • _18 · House ad for other Quicksilver Publications and "Gone Last Issue" · Dave Foley and Ron Smith · hu
      • _19 · Song of the Spaceways · Dave Foley as Fredric Beige (Fredric Brown) · ss
      • _20 · Censured (parody of F&SF sibling magazine Venture Science Fiction) house ad: “The Same Old Story…” · Dave Foley and Ron Smith · hu (illustrated by Dan Adkins)
      • 21 · Book Reviews · [Various] · br
      • 21 · Review: The Third Level by Jack Finney · review by James E. Gunn · br
      • Novels:
      • 22 · Review: The Cosmic Puppets by Philip K. Dick and Sargasso of Space by "Andrew North" (Ms. Andre Norton) · review by Bob Leman · br
      • 22 · Review: A Case of Conscience by James Blish · review by Larry Harris (aka Laurence Janifer) · br
      • 23 · Review: Man of Earth by Algis Budrys · review by Larry Harris · br
      • 23 · Review: Cycle of Fire by Hal Clement · review by Larry Harris · br
      • 23 · Review: VOR by James Blish · review by Larry Harris · br
      • 23 · Review: Who? by Algis Budrys ·  review by Larry Harris · br
      • 24 · Review: Slave Ship by Frederik Pohl · review by Dave Foley · br
      • 25 · Review: Occam's Razor by David Duncan · review by Robert E. Briney · br
      • 25 · Review: Doomsday Morning by C. L. Moore · review by Dick Ellington · br
      • 25 · Review: World Without Men by Charles Eric Maine · review by Martin Jukovsky · br
      • 25 · Review · Big Planet and Slaves of the Klau by Jack Vance · review by Dan Adkins · br
      • 26 · Review · High Vacuum by Charles Eric Maine · review by Bill Donaho · br
      • 26 · Review · Twice Upon a Time by Charles L. Fountenay and The Mechanical Monarch by E. C. Tubb · review by Bill Donaho ·  br
      • 26 · Review · An Elephant for Aristotle by L. Sprague de Camp · review by Lin Carter · br
      • Short Stories:
      • 26 · Review · The Graveyard Reader edited by Groff Conklin · review by Ron Smith · br
      • 27 · Review · The Third Galaxy Reader edited by H. L. Gold · review by Ron Smith · br
      • 27 · "Joe sent me." · Gene McIntyre · cartoon
      • 28 · Review · On an Odd Note by Gerald Kersh · review by Ron Smith · br
      • 28 · Review · The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction (Seventh Series) edited by Anthony Boucher · review by Larry Harris · br
      • 28 · Review · The Variable Man and Other Stories by Philip K. Dick · review by Larry Harris · br
      • 29 · Review · The Earth is Room Enough by Isaac Asimov · review by Larry Harris · br
      • 29 · Review · Robots and Changelings by Lester Del Rey · review by Larry Harris · br
      • 29 · Review · Starburst by Alfred Bester · review by Larry Harris · br
      • 30 · Review · Those Idiots from Earth by Richard Wilson · review by Larry Harris · br
      • 30 · Review · Time in Advance by William Tenn · review by Larry Harris · br
      • 30 · Review · Pilgrimage to Earth by Robert Sheckley · review by Dave Foley · br
      • 30 · Review · Fantastic Memories by Maurice Sandoz · review by Lin Carter · br
      • 30 · "To the greatest goddam mother on Earth." · Bob Miller · cartoon
      • Nonfiction:
      • 31 · Review · Theories of the Universe: From Babylonian Myth to Modern Science edited by Milton K. Munitz · review by Robert Silverberg · br
      • 31 · Review · Discovery of the Universe by G. de Vancouleurs · review by Larry Harris · br
      • 31 · Review · The Sun by Giorgio Abetti (translated from Italian by J. G. Sidgwick) · review by Larry Harris · br
      • 31 · Review · Guided Weapons by Eric Burgess · review by Larry Harris · br
      • 32 · Review · Satellite! by Erik Bergaust and William Beller · review by Larry Harris · br
      • 32 · Review · The World in Space by Alexander Marshak · review by Larry Harris · br
      • 32 · Review · Once Around the Sun by Ronald Fraser · review by Larry Harrisx · br
      • 32 · Review · The Inexplicable Sky by Arthur Constance · review by Lin Carter · br
      • Reprints:
      • 32 · Review · Children of the Atom by Wilmar H. Shiras · review by Dave Foley · br
      • 33 · Review · Earthlight by Arthur C. Clarke · review by Dave Foley · br
      • 33 · Review · Satellite E-One by Jeffery Lloyd Castle · review by Larry Harris · br
      • 34 · Review · 2nd Foundation: Galactic Empire (vt. of Second Foundation) by Isaac Asimov · review by Larry Harris · br
      • 34 · Review · The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov · review by Larry Harris · br
      • 34 · Review · The Martian Way by Isaac Asimov · review by Larry Harris · br
      • 34 · Review · City by Clifford D. Simak · review by Larry Harris · br
      • 34 · Review · The Short Reign of Pippin IV by John Steinbeck · review by Bill Donaho · br
      • 34 · Review · Worlds Apart by J. T. McIntosh · review by Bill Donaho · br
      • 34 · Review · Invaders from Earth by Robert Silverberg and Across Time by "David Grinnel" (Donald A. Wollheim) · review by Bill Donaho · br
      • 34 · Review · City on the Moon by Murray Leinster and Men on the Moon edited by Donald A. Wollheim · review by Bill Donaho · br
      • 34 · Review · The Skylark of Space by E. E. Smith · review by Bill Donaho · br
      • 35 · Blurb Happy · Bob Tucker · hu (illustrated by Jerry Prueitt)
      • 40 · Sound the Anti-Tocsin · Walt Willis · hu (illustrated by Art Castillo)
      • 42 · Letters Found in an Author’s Drawers · Robert Bloch · hu
      • 46 · The Slitherer from the Slime · (as by H. P. Lowcraft) Lin Carter & Dave Foley · hu; satire
      • 51 · Miller by Moonlight · Bob Miller · cartoons
      • 56 · How They Did the Doggie at the Curbside · David R. Bunch · ss (illustrated by Cindy)
      • 62 · Khartoum · Anthony Boucher · vi ("a prose limerick")   Stefantasy August 1955
    Can be read here.
    Previous Sweet Freedom post on this issue.


    Can't be read online (and barely can be found otherwise)...but the (at least as impressive) Summer 1959/fifth issue can be read here.

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    Saturday, February 8, 2014

    correction and update: FFB/S/M: Shirley Jackson's stories first published in fantasy-fiction magazines

    Shirley Jackson, author of one of the most unpopular stories ever published in The New Yorker ("The Lottery", of course, which has utterly outlived most of its outraged critics and subscription cancellers, and, perhaps sadly, sustained a readership that most of Jackson's work has not), and one of the pivotal figures in the creation of the new horror fiction, and the allied suspense fiction (such as that clangorous short), that was emerging in the 1940s, with Jackson along with John Collier one of its progenitors who only infrequently contributed to the fantasy-fiction magazines (unlike Robert Bloch or Fritz Leiber or Margaret St. Clair, whose careers orbited initially around those titles, or Cornell Woolrich or Algernon Blackwood, who were fairly frequent contributors even if their primary markets were elsewhere). As far as I know at the moment (thanks to Matthew Davis's comment below, I've added one--in fact her first for F&SF), only five of her stories were first published in the fantasy markets, somewhat unsurprisingly in the two most sustained fantasy magazines to fully establish themselves in the 1950s, Fantastic (as founded in 1952 and edited by crime-fiction writer Howard Browne) and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (as co-founded in 1949 and co-edited, then solely edited, by crime-fiction among much else writer Anthony Boucher, born William White).

    Jackson's "Root of Evil" appeared in the March-April 1953 issue of Fantastic, and publishers Ziff-Davis were feeling cocky enough about their packaging to have a wraparound cover, with Jackson's story advertised only on the back. Richard Powers's unusually non-abstract imagery is fine, and having both B. Traven and John Collier (and, for no compellingly good reason, Billy Rose the Gypsy Rose Lee promoter, who is credited with fiction in other markets at about this time as well) made Ziff-Davis feel they didn't need to properly advise the newsstand browser. Fantastic in those early years was paying very well, indeed, and stunts such as having stories as by Billy Rose and Mickey Spillane in those issues seemed to be paying off, but Ziff-Davis lost their nerve, and Fantastic soon would be hitting a pretty low point by the mid-'50s, though it was still in its way entertaining, as authorities on the scene such as Bill Crider and Mike Ashley can attest (and even under the darkest days of Paul Fairman's editorship, the run of routine stories mostly by Robert Silverberg, Harlan Ellison, Randall Garrett, Henry Slesar and Milton Lesser [before he started publishing most of his best work as Stephen Marlowe]--routine stories by intention, these talented writers were there to deliver it Tuesday rather than good, though if good, no problem--would be supplemented by the finds that Fairman's assistant [and eventual vastly better successor] Cele Goldsmith would pull from the slushpile, such as Kate Wilhelm's first published story, "The Pint-Sized Genie"). ZD's purchase of all rights in those years meant that Jackson's story was also reprinted in one of Ted White's early issues of the magazine, a rather better reprint than most he was offered from the same storehouse at the turn of the '70s (albeit the others in that 1969 issue were pretty solid, as well).

     Courtesy ISFDB: 

     Publication: Fantastic, March-April 1953
    Publication: Fantastic, June 1969
    Much of what I was surprised about in the packaging of F&SF issues with Jackson stories below becomes even more surprising when one considers Jackson's first appearance in the magazine, with (as Matthew Fox reminds us in the comments) "Bulletin," part of a very star-studded issue indeed, with impressive stories by Alfred Bester, Manly Wade Wellman, Ray Bradbury and others...and Jackson's name deservedly on the cover. Even though I have this issue, I don't believe I've read "Bulletin" yet...something I should remedy.  (This would be Jackson's only story in an issue while J. Francis McComas was still co-editor; cover is at top of post.)

    Publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 1954

    Jackson's second story for the less "slick" and less stunt-driven, more "literary" (in the same sense that sibling magazine Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine strove to be the most elegant and literate of the cf magazines) F&SF was apparently one she had trouble placing with other markets; as Laurence Jackson Hyman or Sarah Hyman Stewart put it in the clumsily titled collection Just an Ordinary Day, "One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts" sold for peanuts (comparatively...Fantastic at its commercial height was paying 5c/word as a standard rate, and probably a little more to Jackson, while F&SF was more likely to pay 2c/word, again with a bit of a bump--pay rates somewhat reminiscent of the little magazines, as well...this at a time when The New Yorker was paying several hundred 1950s dollars for its short fiction, and The Saturday Evening Post paid five to ten times what TNY chose to afford). 

     "Peanuts" is a fine story, even though it's not a fantasy so much as a charming story about people causing varying sorts of mischief; Jerome Bixby's vignette "Trace" would take the same sort of framework and make it unadulterated fantasy, but Boucher rather doubted, apparently, that his readers would mind a not-quite-fantasy by Jackson in their pages. This set up a precedent for two further Jackson stories in Boucher's F&SF, "The Missing Girl" and "The Omen". Though it's notable that Jackson's name is again not on the front cover for the January, 1955 issue, with William Sansom (a rather slick writer of sf and fantasy, who would contribute to The Saturday Evening Post or Playboy at least as often as to fantasy magazines), J. T. McIntosh (once a great F&SF favorite), Isaac Asimov and John Dickson Carr getting the lines instead...
    At least by her third appearance, Jackson's credited on the cover...and her fourth and last original publication in F&SF was given an almost solo credit, along with Jane Roberts (most famous for "Seth" "nonfiction" but a fairly prolific contributor to the magazine in the 1950s).

     Publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 1955

     Publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1957
    This less impressive cover also a wraparound...or at least a duplicate.

     Publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 1958
    Though it's notable that when F&SF readers were polled for their favorite contributions from the history of the magazine, for an all-reprint-fiction 30th Anniversary issue, they chose the non-fantasy, non-sf story by Jackson over the later entries...it would be further reprinted by the fantasy magazine Twilight Zone a half-decade later, and Richard Lupoff would include it in his first volume of stories that probably should've won the Hugo Award...but, then, her heirs almost managed to name the collection of her uncollected stories after "One Ordinary Day..." as well.

    For more of today's Jackson and non-Jackson FFB entries, please see Patti Abbott's blog.
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