Showing posts with label Tales of the Frightened. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tales of the Frightened. 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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    Thursday, May 12, 2016

    Fantasy magazines in English, August 1957 cover-dates...

    Sadly, not a review I could write quite yet if I wanted to, since I don't have any of these issues so far, but August 1957 is one of those dates for which there were at least two more magazines available than would be the next month...and it's notable that all the magazines, as they usually did, feature at least some arguable science fiction along with the fantasy fiction, with the possible exception of Dream World. The sf audience had been somewhat more self-aware than the fantasy audience for some years among magazine readers, as sales figures for the magazines that emphasized sf or fantasy tended to suggest. Another 1957 issue I don't have is of the most famous little magazine devoted to fantasy of that year, Joseph Payne Brennan's Macabre, where the second issue is dated Winter and where none of the stories nor poetry gathered has been reprinted, any more than most of what's cited below, except Brennan's own contribution, in a small-press collection of his work, many years later. Perhaps it was an uninspired season....

     Cover images, indices and background information from the FictionMags Index and ISFDB. Click on cover images to enlarge.
    The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, in one of the last Anthony Boucher-edited issues, has a range of rarely-reprinted fiction in it, and may be one of the more heavily sfnal issues of Boucher's solo editorship. Robert Heinlein's "The Menace from Earth" is the most famous story here, and the only one I've read is Isaac Asimov's pun vignette "A Loint of Paw"...the Walter M. Miller, Jr., cover story, "The Lineman," took a while to be reprinted, and a while longer to be gathered finally in a Miller collection, his 1980 career Best-of. The one I'm most curious about is a collaboration between Damon Knight and Kenneth Bulmer, "The Day Everything Fell Down"...like most of the stories here, either not reprinted or reprinted only in the French edition of F&SF, Fiction. I'll look forward to reading Boucher's take on this set of books, and an instance of Joseph Samachson/William Morrison's "The Science Stage" theater reviews not paired with Charles Beaumont's "The Science Screen" (the other way around was far more common).
    Fantastic had for its August number one of the sleazier covers it could boast of, which, considering some of the competition thus, is pretty impressive. Also typically for a Paul W. Fairman issue, from his middle year as editor of sorts, this features an impressive set of writers producing what is probably not even close to their best work: three stories, under three bylines, by Henry Slesar, one each from Harlan Ellison, Robert Silverberg and G. Harry Stine. Not a single story so far reprinted except by the less discriminating issues of Sol Cohen's second-run magazines after he bought the Ziff-Davis rights. No obvious evidence that Ed Valigursky's cover painting illustrated any of the stories. Perhaps for the best, if so.
    Fairman also got to supervise word-lengths, if he didn't delegate that task to his eventual successor Cele Goldsmith, for the new and folded with this third, August, issue magazine, Dream World. Jerry House has warned readers here that there is no real reason to try to read this title at all, except perhaps for the two marquee items in the first issue, a Thorne Smith reprint and a P. G. Wodehouse original story, and I wouldn't be surprised if I was to agree if I try. More unreprinted stories by Harlan Ellison, Robert Silverberg and in this one Stephen Marlowe/Milton Lesser, under a less-remembered pseudonym "Adam Chase"...your guess is as good as mine who contributor "Forest Norton" might be (perhaps even a one-story writer by that name), though if G. F. Vandenberg was a pseud, it was a reasonably frequently-employed one by someone.  DW ran a sheaf of cartoons in the back pages of this issue. Jerry doesn't cite them in his regular bad jokes feature. 
    Also vanished with the August issue, its second, was Tales of the Frightened, which was tied up eventually with an abortive radio reading series featuring Boris Karloff (though what Karloff ended up reading to record were vignettes by Michael Avallone, who also was able to publish several editions of his texts in paperback, including two vignettes in the issues of the magazine, attributed in the issues to Karloff himself...the Karloff recordings were eventually released on a record album). A whole lot more unreprinted stories by notable writers, usually signing their usual bylines, in this magazine put together by book packager Lyle Kenyon Engel. Two of the other stories in this issue managed to get a reprint, the one Mack Reynolds put his usual byline on (he also wrote one as by "Mark Mallory") and one Avallone signed his name to was reprinted in Sam Moskowitz's anthology of stories involving Edgar Allan Poe as a character. First issue of Tales had a decent-enough cover...they didn't even try on the second...aside from typoing Poul Anderson's name on that cover. Despite a banner claim of All New fiction, one story here is a reprint, A. Bertram Chandler's, from the Scottish magazine Nebula Science Fiction. "Claude Ferrari" certainly sounds like a pseudonym...but so does "Sidney Porcelain," yet that apparently was that writer's usual byline, at very least.
    In England,  the one "open" fantasy-fiction magazine to have an August 1957 issue was Science Fantasy, the stablemate of the better-remembered sf magazine New Worlds, which also offers an apparently not-bad but unexceptional issue, with two stories reprinted from the U.S. magazine Future Science Fiction and one original story that got a little reprint attention, Brian Aldiss's (which also didn't make it into one of his own collections till decades later). John Boston, in his and Damien Broderick's critical study of the magazine, Strange Highways, notes that the Pressle cover story is pretty weak (despite a fine cover), while the Lowe story and the two American reprints are rather better.

    While not as durable as Science Fantasy, much less Fantastic nor the only survivor here, F&SF, Fantastic Universe did run through most of the 1950s, usually seen as a reasonable salvage market for material that didn't quite make the F&SF cut, and less disliked a magazine than at least the Fairman Fantastic was by many constant readers...even when editor Hans Stefan Santesson, as he does in this issue, thoroughly indulges his fascination with (and makes a commercial pitch via) UFOlogy articles. Meanwhile, there's one story in this issue which is wildly better remembered than any other with this month-date except the Heinlein, William F. Nolan's sf/horror story "Small World"; otherwise, a mix of work by eventual veterans in fantastic fiction and rather unprolific folks...and perhaps the ugliest cover of the five, despite being the work of a past master, Virgil Finlay. (As a magazine title, Fantastic Universe has been, with some justice, cited as one of the more ridiculous among the professional magazines in the field's history...but it does suggest both fantasy and sf...and it's an oddly cheerful phrase, taken one way...the more-cosmic sequel to It's a Wonderful Life...)
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