Showing posts with label fantasy and sf magazines. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fantasy and sf magazines. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 20, 2024

SSW/FFB: some August 1968 magazines, including memorials (intentional and indirect) for Anthony Boucher:

















William Anthony Parker White, aka Anthony Boucher, among other pennames. But most of his associates called him "Tony"...August 21, 1911 – April 29, 1968...a lot done in 56 years and change.

review of his last volume (of six) in this annual series:  BEST DETECTIVE STORIES OF THE YEAR: 23rd Annual Collection, edited by Anthony Boucher (Dutton, 1968); and a book detailing the origins and editorial correspondence around (as well as anthologizing from) The Magazine of Fantasy (and Science Fiction, as it's title was extended with the second issue), THE EUREKA YEARS: Boucher and McComas's Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction 1949-1954, edited by Annette Pelz McComas reviewed here; Boucher generally on the blog.

And for what made these magazines relevant to him and his career when they didn't include explicit tribute to him...well, White/Boucher was the first (as far as I've been able to ascertain) to place an English translation of Borges fiction anywhere, in this case "The Garden of the Forking Paths", in EQMM in 1948, indicative of his continuing interest in international literature, particularly from Spanish...and he drew fiction from all the cited magazines for one project or another over his years (including for his radio and television work)...I really should double-check to find the ghost(?) memory of his reprinting or long-listing/recommending fiction from The Paris Review. 

With the mild exception of  the UK magazine Argosy and a typically striking, if simple, cover on The Paris Review, not a great month for cover design on our samples below, even if the F&SF Gahan Wilson is distinctive and the AHMM has a better cover than usual for that often-dowdy magazine (the cover of the July issue was particularly amateurish, as their July 4th-related red and white-striped covers tended to be during the first publisher's run):


This issue can be read here.

This issue can be read here.

This issue can be read here.

 
TriQuarterly 13-14, Fall-Winter 1968-69; edited by Charles Newman; Jose Donoso, guest co-editor of this issue. Published by Northwestern University, usually in Fall, Winter and Spring. "Contemporary Latin American Literature" issue. 506pp (excluding "contributors" credit text beginning on back cover) + ii pages

ii * Editor's Note * Charles Newman * ed
6 * Commentary
6 * A Literature of Foundations * Octavio Paz * es translated by Lysander Kemp; illustration: etching by Sergio Gonzalez-Tornero
more to come...

This issue can be read here...or could, but this file apparently still as of today hobbled by Archive.org's hacker attack and aftermath. The Dick Gregory excerpt can be read for free here at this time, and the issue with subscription.

    • Cover * Bill Huehnergarth * il
    • 3 * From the Editor * William A. Emerson, Jr. * ed
    • 4 * Humphrey for President? * unsigned (Otto Friedrich?) * ed
    • 4 * Watch Out for Wallace * unsigned * ed
    • 12 * Speaking Out!: Uncle Tom Is Dead · Dick Gregory · ex Write Me In!, Bantam Books, 1968
    • 16 * Points West: On Becoming a Cop Hater · Joan Didion · column
    • 21 * Hubert Horatio Humphrey · Stewart Alsop · ar (illus. Stan Mack)
    • 26 * Mayor Daley: Can the Ringmaster Keep the Show Going · Milton Viorst · ar
    • 28 * Cockfight · Peter S. Beagle · essay
    • 30 * Will This Man Conquer Cancer? · Richard Armstrong · bi/profile (photo by Fred J. Maroon; of Dr. Robert Huebner)
    • 33 * Fighting Cancer: Where We Stand Now * Steven Spencer * ar
    • 34 * The Stomach, Heart and Spirit of the House · James Beard · ar (photos by Michael Bry)
    • 39 * The Man Who Fooled the World · Warner Law · nv (illus. Erik Blegvad)
    • 52 * Is John Kenneth Galbraith Really That Good? * John Skow * bi/profile 
    • 57 * Would You Buy a Used Car from This Man? · Lawrence Dietz · bi/profile of Ralph Williams (photos Bill Bridges)
    • 60 * Best Wishes to a Former Mistress and Carl Sandburg and a Dead Armenian and Other People I Lost Track Of · William Saroyan · ex from Letters from 74 Rue Taitbout or Don't Go But If You Must Say Hello To Everybody (World Publishing Co., 1969) illus. Lou Glanzman  
    • 70 * My Kind of People * Charles Barsotti * cartoons
    • 73 * cartoon * Russell Myers * ct
    • 74 * cartoon * Jack Tippit * ct
    • 76 * cartoon * uncredited * ct
    • 80 * cartoon * Jack Tippit * ct
    • 82 * cartoon * Charles Barsotti * ct
    • 84 * America, America * Mischa Richter * ct
    • 86 * Hazel * Ted Key * ct
    • 88 * PostScripts * 3 cartoons, by Orlando Busino, Edward Koren & Don Orehek * ct

Links below to opening page of prose works cited (subscription for complete text). Fall 1968:

TABLE OF CONTENTS



For more of today's short fiction reviews, and more, 

Posted by at 5 comments:
Labels: , , , , , ,

Wednesday, January 3, 2024

Guest SSW: Paul Di Filippo on SPACE SCIENCE FICTION magazine, September 1952, edited by Lester Del Rey: Short Story Wednesday (1 of 2)

It took me months to work my way thru this 'zine at a page or two per night.  If I seem hazy on the earlier stories in the TOC, that might be why!  But I think I have given good valuations of them all. Overall, a decent issue with lots of entertainment but no classics and only one or two stinkers.


First the cover, then the TOC, with my brief comments interlineated:



1). The Del Rey lead-off story would have made a great Twilight Zone episode. A lone astronaut is sent to the Moon, and his promised return-trip vessel never shows. He manages (shades of Andy Weir) to survive and return to Earth, but back on Earth no one knows of him or his mission. The bulk of the story is an exercise in paranoia and weirdness, and the hurried conclusion—some unknown force is erasing all traces of any attempt by mankind to attain the stars—is weak by comparison. Basically never reprinted.
2). Simak’s piece has been much reprinted. In a post-scarcity world, our hero feels useless—and even more so when he discovers that mankind is part of a zoo exhibit of some sort.
3). Conan!  What more need be said!  [Uncredited "posthumous collaborator"] L. Sprague De Camp’s short intro opines that this must’ve been “one of the first Conan stories to be written.”  A satisfying amount of gratuitous slaughter.
4). “Michael Sherman” was really R.A.W. Lowndes. Never reprinted. This is the worst thing I have read in a long time. In trawling thru old zines, I try to read every word and not skim, but I had to skip sections here after a while, as the story goes on for what seems an infinite span without anything happening. Our hero has some kind of secret, and is pursued on a cultish planet by authorities, until he isn’t, because he joins the establishment, but is always at risk of falling afoul of the strange customs. The kicker is that—like the Star Trek episode where the natives are reciting a garbled U.S. Declaration of Independence—the three rival planets here derive their culture from three forms of office shorthand! “Gregg, Pittman and Speedwriting.”
5). "Leinster" gives us a competent but perfunctory tale.  A basically Asperger’s-type hero sacrifices love to achieve FTL travel. Basically never reprinted.
6). Jakes’s tale was about his 18th short fiction sale. A vignette about the sad fate a mutant boy. Never reprinted.
7). Pratt’s story has some sardonic humor and satire, as it chronicles a reconnaissance expedition into the territory of a former enemy that had been blockaded for decades while a deliberately deployed war virus has been allowed to run rampant. Some nice biopunk ideas still topical today. Of course, the “superior” invaders are quickly bamboozled and the table is turned. Sparsely reprinted.
8). Society is ruled by a Van Vogtian system that tests all citizens for their moral qualities. Thomas depicts the ramifications of this nicely—imagine politicians who are altruistic and trustworthy!—but then wraps the conceit in the notion that omnipotent aliens secretly watching Earth will utilize the system to deem humanity worth saving or needing destruction. This part seems unnecessary and at odds with the core conceit. Never reprinted.
And, elsewhere, John Boston was moved to comment on the Lowndes-story assessment:
Sherman/Lowndes's "A Matter of Faith" was later booked by Avalon in 1961 as BELIEVERS' WORLD, presumably with some expansion, even allowing for the large type and wide margins that publisher favored.  Interestingly (well, not very), Lowndes was editing their SF line at the time.  I had a similar reaction to yours 60-plus years ago, though unencumbered by any self-imposed obligation to finish it, and I didn't.   

Posted by at 2 comments:
Labels: , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)