John Raymond science fiction magazines

Between 1952 and 1954, John Raymond published four

All four magazines were profitable, but Raymond did not reinvest the profits in improving the magazines and was late in paying contributors. Del Rey persuaded Raymond to invest some of the profits back into the magazines, but nothing came of this and, when del Rey discovered that Raymond was planning to cut rates instead, he resigned. Two of the magazines continued for a short time with Harry Harrison as editor, but by the end of 1954 all four magazines had ceased publication.

The magazines are well regarded by science fiction historians. They carried fiction by many names well known in the field or who later became famous, including Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, Robert E. Howard, and John Jakes.

Publication history

American

Del Rey used several pseudonyms for these magazines: he edited the last issue of Fantasy Magazine as "Cameron Hall", and edited Rocket Stories as "Wade Kaempfert"; for Science Fiction Adventures he edited as "Philip St. John"[4] and used another alias, "R. Alvarez", as the publisher's name.^[3] Del Rey hired Michael Shaara, later a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, as associate editor.^[3]

Raymond's management of the magazines was chaotic, according to del Rey. There was no fixed schedule; one day Raymond told del Rey that the magazines would be switching to a monthly schedule, but nothing came of this. Raymond would simply decide that copy was due the very next day for one of them, which meant that del Rey had to scramble to find material ready to use—since Raymond paid on publication, del Rey did not acquire an inventory of stories ahead of time to use when needed. This made it harder for him to keep to the plan of targeting each magazine to a particular readership. Del Rey sometimes had to write a story overnight to have a lead story for an issue: "it was a miserable way to run a magazine", he recalled.^[5] Raymond did give del Rey complete control of story purchasing; as a favor to del Rey, John Campbell, the influential editor of Astounding Science-Fiction, called Raymond and convinced him that it was necessary to let the editor make the fiction decisions.^[5]

All four magazines made money. The break-even circulation for each magazine was 45,000; Fantasy Magazine was selling about 70,000 an issue, and Science Fiction Adventures did nearly as well. Both Space Science Fiction and Rocket Stories had distribution problems, which harmed circulation, but they were still profitable. The money was not reinvested in the magazines, and del Rey proposed to Raymond that they increase the per-word rate paid to authors, pay earlier instead of on publication, and increase del Rey's own remuneration. Del Rey calculated the increased circulation that would be needed for these investments to show a net profit, and threatened to resign unless Raymond approved the changes. Raymond agreed, but did nothing to put the new plan into effect, and when del Rey went to the offices to complain because he had heard that some authors had not been paid, he was told by the art director that Raymond, who was not there, had decided to cut payment rates to one cent per word, only include art by the art director, and cut the page count on all the magazines to 144 pages. Del Rey resigned, and later recalled that "Raymond informed everyone that I'd been fired, and his lawyer threatened to sue me for slander and libel because I'd returned the manuscripts to authors, stating that the new rate was in effect. My reply convinced the lawyer to lay off."^[5]

Raymond hired

In his editorial for the first issue of Space Science Fiction, del Rey declared that the title did not restrict the magazine to fiction about space, interpreting space as "extension in all directions", including fantasy, though as it turned out Fantasy Magazine became the outlet for the fantasy stories del Rey acquired. "Our only taboo will be against dullness", del Rey claimed and, according to science fiction historian

A series of articles about science fiction appeared,[8] including William Tenn's "The Fiction in Science Fiction", described by Krulik and Tinkel as "one of the first to treat science fiction as a serious form of literature".^[7] Damon Knight, one of the most important literary critics of science fiction to emerge from within the genre, contributed a series of book reviews; he had begun the column, titled "The Dissecting Table", in 1950 in the short-lived magazine Worlds Beyond, and continued it in Science Fiction Adventures. Ashley considers that it although it took some time for the effects of Knight's reviews to appear, the column drove "a wedge into the [science fiction] world and [began] to separate what was good from what was bad". After Science Fiction Adventures folded, Knight's column continued, in Future Science Fiction and elsewhere, and Knight's criticism was later collected into In Search of Wonder, which won a Hugo Award in 1956.^[3]

In Ashley's opinion, the magazine quickly developed into one of the stronger science fiction (SF) magazines of the day, and Krulik and Tinkel agree, describing it as "one of the more interesting and better edited SF magazines to appear in the 1950s. It was a shame that the publisher did not care about the magazine; Science Fiction Adventures could have been one of the most successful magazines of the 1950s."^[7]

Rocket Stories

Rocket Stories was aimed at a more juvenile audience than Raymond's other science fiction magazines, and del Rey openly acknowledged the similarities between

For Fantasy Magazine, Del Rey declared an editorial policy focused on modern fantasy, rather than gothic horror: "Fantasy...is a game of logic. Like fairy chess, it should be a game of logic where the basic rules are flexible, filled with some delightful surprise to twist the mind out of the rut, and must be played with consummate skill to be at all interesting."[10] This approach placed Fantasy Magazine in the newer fantasy tradition begun by Unknown in 1939 and carried on by Beyond Fantasy Fiction, rather than the older gothic tradition then exemplified by Weird Tales.^[10] The first issue of Fantasy Magazine contained a Conan story by Robert E. Howard, edited by L. Sprague de Camp and rewritten by del Rey, based on Howard's story "The Black Stranger";^[3][11] another Conan story, also rewritten by de Camp, followed later in the year.^[10] Del Rey published work by Algis Budrys, L. Sprague de Camp, John Wyndham, Clark Ashton Smith, Philip K. Dick, Katherine MacLean, Harry Harrison and Robert Sheckley, and obtained covers from Hannes Bok for all four issues of the magazine.^[3] Ashley describes the magazine as "another high-quality product", and "highly collectible",^[3] and science fiction historian Russell Letson agrees: "[it] combined attractive appearance...with above-average fiction", and comments that it ceased publication "long before its potential was exhausted".^[10] It was popular with the readership of the day; science fiction historian David Kyle says that it "won considerable acclaim",^[12] and Donald Tuck, a science fiction bibliographer and encyclopedist, records that "many fantasy enthusiasts rated it the best fantasy magazine since Unknown".^[13]

Bibliographic details

Each issue of each of the four magazines was digest-sized, 160 pages, and priced at 35 cents, and the publisher in each case was John Raymond.^{[6][7][9][10]} The publishing company used was Science Fiction Publications for the first issue of Science Fiction Adventures,^[7] Future Publications for the remaining issues of Science Fiction Adventures^[7] and for Fantasy Magazine,^[10] and Space Publications for Space Science Fiction and Rocket Stories.^[6][9] The editorial succession is given in the table at right. Del Rey used a pseudonym for his editing work in some cases: the first two issues of Rocket Stories were edited under the house name "Wade Kaempfert",^[9] and the first six issues of Science Fiction Adventures were edited under one of del Rey's aliases, "Philip St. John".^[7] For the last issue of Fantasy Magazine del Rey used the house name "Cameron Hall" as the editor.^[10]

A British edition of Space Science Fiction was issued by Archer Press in 1952 and 1953; these were undated, but numbered from 1/1 to 2/3, with five issue numbers to a volume.^[6] These reprinted the US issues unchanged, except that the first US issue was printed as the British volume 2 number 3, and the second through eighth US issues were printed as the first through seventh UK issues.^[14]

References