fantasy fiction magazine edited by H. L. Gold, with only ten issues published from 1953 to 1955. The last two issues carried the cover title of Beyond Fiction, but the publication's name for copyright purposes remained as before.[1]
Although not a commercial success, it included several short stories by authors such as Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury and Philip K. Dick.[2] The publication has been described by critics as a successor to the tradition of Unknown, a fantasy magazine that ceased publication in 1943. It was noted for printing fantasy with a rational basis such as werewolf stories that included scientific explanations. A selection of stories from Beyond was published in paperback form in 1963, also under the title Beyond.
James E. Gunn, a historian of science fiction, regarded the magazine as the best of the fantasy magazines launched in the early 1950s, and science fiction encyclopedist Donald H. Tuck contended it printed very good material. Not every critic viewed Beyond as completely successful, however; P. Schuyler Miller, in a 1963 review, commented that the stories were most successful when they did not try to emulate Unknown.
History and significance
Beyond Fantasy Fiction was a fantasy-oriented companion to the more successful
Sam Merwin, who had recently quit as editor of Fantastic Universe, to help in editing, though the masthead of both magazines listed Gold as editor.[3] A typical issue of Beyond included several stories that were long enough to be listed as novellas or novelettes, with the contents augmented with shorter works, usually for a total of at least seven stories.[1]
Five of the ten covers were surrealist, which was an unusual artistic choice for a genre magazine. The cover painting for the first issue was by Richard M. Powers; Gold was one of the very few American magazine editors to use his work, though Powers was prolific in providing artwork for paperback covers.[5] In addition to Powers, René Vidmer and Arthur Krusz (among others) contributed cover art. The magazine also carried interior artwork, usually multiple illustrations, for almost every story; in addition, each story included a facsimile of the author's signature, set at the end of the text. The best-known interior artist Beyond used was Ed Emshwiller, though there were several other regular artists. The magazine carried almost no non-fiction, though there were occasional "filler" pieces to occupy spaces at the end of stories.[6] The publication contained no book reviews, and only the first issue carried an editorial.[1]
The magazine was not commercially successful: at that time circulation figures were not required to be published annually, as they were later,[7] so the actual circulation figures are not known. However, Fred Pohl, who was editor of Galaxy Publishing Co. from 1960-1969,[8] stated in 1967 that the magazine showed a loss of $40,000 (equivalent to $365,509 in 2023) during its publication.[9] Its demise after less than two years can be attributed in part to the decreasing popularity of fantasy and horror fiction.[3] In a 1958 advertisement in Galaxy for complete sets of the magazine for $3.50, the publisher described Beyond as "a princely experiment to determine whether there were enough readers to support a truly handsome, fantastically high-quality fantasy fiction magazine. There weren't, and so BEYOND had to cease publication after ten (10) hang-the-expense issues."[10]