A[n Open, now] Note to Luis Ortiz:
Just reading the Gaughan article in
Illustration...and I will be picking up
that book sooner rather than later.
I note a reference to the sf-magazine field shrinking to
F&SF,
Analog,
Galaxy and
Amazing (the latter two staggering), and the advent of
Asimov's, by the end of the '70s...
Fantastic actually was still getting by till a ways into 1980, and my finances also were taxed a bit by the shortlived
Asimov's SF Adventure, the
Asimov's Anthology magazine Davis was also publishing, and
Destinies, albeit the last was usually purchased by my father and I'd read his issues...we couldn't find
Galileo too often, but it was still around, too. [I suppose it's almost a cheat to cite
Destinies, since it was a paperback magazine, in the manner of
Perry Rhodan or
American Review...this being one of few sentences ever to wed those two periodical books.]
Of course, I was also picking up
Whispers and
Short Story International and the crime-fiction magazines as I came across them, so it seemed like a fuller market.
What wasn't in the note to Luis:
I didn't get to see all the little magazines in those years, in sf and fantasy as well as eclectic titles...it would take until the '80s for me to find the back issues of
Evergreen Review, as I've mentioned here, and
Triquarterly and all, but it was always a thrill to find a new project had arrived on the newsstands to supplement my steady diet of my subscriptions to
The Atlantic (a better magazine in 1980 than it is today, and one with a short story or two in every issue, much as
Harper's and
The American Scholar essentially still provide today, though the last has only recently added fiction to its mix...perhaps in response to the
Atlantic essentially dropping fiction) and
Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine (I had bought a cheap 3-year subscription in 1978, but didn't approve of the post office's depredations upon the mailed copies, so usually bought everything else off the newsstand) and the others...such as when
Twilight Zone Magazine popped up in 1981, albeit the first issues weren't Too impressive...but the lack of
Fantastic left a hole in the heart, and there were some good portents about
TZ (and its shortlived companion,
Night Cry) that would prove out over the next eight years.
Omni and
Heavy Metal, where Ben Bova of
Analog and Ted White of
Fantastic and
Amazing landed, respectively, had some attraction, but not enough to keep me engaged and buying them regularly...and there was enough about both even at their best to turn me off (for every good short story, a credulous UFOlogy piece in
Omni or some of the duller comix in
HM). Also, the paper and ink
Omni was printed on and with would smear with the slightest touch...very annoying (you'd think the
Penthouse people, who published it, would know better)(or perhaps that was a bit of planned obsolescence...brings one back for another copy).
The terrible covers on Espionage didn't help. The Writer's Digest folks being behind the revived Story certainly did help that magazine's distribution profile.
Aboriginal SF arose eventually out of the ashes of
Galileo (the latter folded in 1980, the former began in '85), and the horror paperback boom meant that some of the horror little magazines, such as
Weird Tales' newest revival and
Grue, could find some rack space on the bigger newsstands, along with the revival of
Story, and such projects as
Espionage and the
Black Mask periodical book...and the insurgence of the big box bookstores at the turn of the '90s gave more little literary magazines more access to newsstand browsers than they had been getting...probably more than they had ever had gotten, outside the best newsstands in New York City and a very few other places.
Ah, well, enough nostalgic ramble for now. But Jack Gaughan, whose best work isn't quite represented on the covers above--though is on display inside Ortiz's book--can do that to me (I think
this cover and
this, and they not his best--buy the book, or at least read the article!--are more representative of what he could do). That, and a long week not improved by the day-long Blogspot crash.
For the actual, surviving links to this week's Friday Books, please see
Patti Abbott's blog here, and for
the index to titles, here.
