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2: SCIENCE FANTASY, VOLUME 2 (ISSUES 4-6)

In issue 4 (Spring 1952), the inside front cover is occupied by another small-worldy artifact. The headline is “At the Pub of the Universe,” and it’s an ad for the White Horse Tavern, complete with photo captioned “Resident Manager Lew Mordecai in a familiar pose”—drawing a cold one, or I guess in the UK a lukewarm one. The other ads are generally similar to previous issues, with the addition of one for the Second International Science-Fiction Convention at the Royal Hotel. G. Ken Chapman joined the masthead as Assistant with issue 4.

Non-fiction this issue includes another Guest Editorial (these would go on for some time), this one by H. J. Campbell, editor of Carnell’s competition Authentic Science Fiction. Maybe he didn’t consider Authentic the competition at that point, since Authentic started out presenting nothing but complete novels—or, more likely, he didn’t care. As Campbell says, his presence is “a tribute to the camaraderie that exists among members of the science-fiction fraternity.” Just so. Summarizing or selecting cogent excerpts from his editorial is almost impossible because it is virtually content-free. I guess the best I can do is SF is good, and it’s good that we’re all here, and that we have this good SF, and it’s good that it’s getting better. It’s exasperating to read now, but back in the small and beleaguered world of UK SF circa 1952, this sort of after-dinner speech reassurance probably served an important purpose, on the order of keeping the wolves on the other side of the campfire.

The other non-fiction item is “Forecasts and Ratings,” equivalent to “The Literary Line-Up” in New Worlds, which appears in this issue but is not seen again in future issues. It contains ratings for the previous issue, which comfortingly put the more competent writers (McIntosh, Wyndham, Tubb, Temple) ahead of the less competent ones (Rayer, Hemming, James), and contains this interesting observation: “Readers had no doubts about the type of stories they preferred in Science-Fantasy, as the story ratings for the Winter issue show. The three fantasy stories in the issue were well ahead of the rest of the field.” In fact, the three most highly rated stories are about matter transmission to Mars (McIntosh), time travel (Wyndham), and rockets to the Moon (Tubb)—not much more fantastic, to my mind, than the alien invasion, interstellar exploration, and war by machines of the three stories at the bottom of the heap. The only outright fantasy was Temple’s farce about supernatural visitation, which came in squarely in the middle. Perhaps this reflects an extremely rigorous view of the line between SF and fantasy, or maybe Carnell was just confused. In any case, the notion that Science-Fantasy was for fantasy and New Worlds was for SF (if that was the idea) isn’t really borne out by Science Fantasy’s contents, at this point or well into the future.

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Issue 4’s fiction line-up begins with John Christopher’s lead novelette “Resurrection,” about a future in which the world has been taken over by alien machines, and people live under their domination. Sound familiar? This does indeed seem to be the prototype for the his later Tripods stories. The machines have three legs, though as yet they aren’t called Tripods. The mind-control caps do not appear. And the story ends with the central brain of the aliens killed by a human smuggling a bomb. It’s an unpretentious intelligent pulp story of the sort one would have been pleased to find in one of the better US pulp magazines of its time, though in fact it did not appear in the US until the March 1959 Satellite under the title “A World of Slaves.”

The short fiction includes “Next in Line,” a competent piece of yard goods by A. Bertram Chandler, in which the characters are shipwrecked on an island which proves to be dominated by mutant rats. “The Treasure of Tagor,” by the veteran Sydney J. Bounds, is an overripe epic that reads like a Planet Stories outtake. E.g.:

“You are an Earthman, an adventurer, a man hunted by the police of three planets,” Yagho said. “A bold man, without fear—and such a one is needed to steal the Tagor treasure. I am offering you the chance of great wealth, a chance such as no man has had before. With my knowledge and your daring, the jewel of Tagor will be ours!”

F. G. Rayer’s “Plimsoll Line” is a labored and gimmicky comedy about the rivalry between the canny space trader MacTavish, who of course travels with his beautiful daughter, and his obnoxious and humorless competitor Kennedy. Peter Hawkins’ “Outworlder” is about interstellar colonists menaced by infiltration from an expanding extraterrestrial empire, but the inexperienced author isn’t able to keep all the balls of the van Vogtian plot in the air. It also nicely illustrates the degree of amateurishness of a number of the stories Carnell published during this period, and apparently did not much editorially to help. It starts out with the viewpoint character having some last conversations before he leaves for his home world and retirement, then continues as he closes up his shop and packs his bags and heads off on foot towards the spaceport. As he approaches it, his steps falter, and he begins to have second thoughts, which prevail after several paragraphs, so he changes his mind, walks back and dumps his suitcase on his bed. Then the story begins, on the sixth page of 22. This story might have been rendered competent by throwing out the extraneous material, or telling the author to do so.

The interior illustrations look better this time, both those done by the previous suspects (Quinn, Clothier, and Hunter) and the illustrations for the Christopher story, by the praiseworthy Reina Bull. In this case Bull’s cover too is actually an illustration for the story. Bull’s interiors are not as impressive as her covers—a lot of what’s captivating about her work is her use of color—but they are certainly more interesting than the others.

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The fifth issue of Science-Fantasy, still in the large digest size, is dated Autumn 1952. No publication frequency is stated, appropriately for a magazine that has managed only four issues in two years.

The small-world theme continues on the inside front cover with another “At the Pub of the Universe” ad for the White Horse Tavern: “Science fiction personalities meet every Thursday throughout the year.” This time the photo caption reads “Editors H. J. Campbell (left) of Authentic Science Fiction, and John Carnell of New Worlds discuss contemporary artwork.” Carnell is showing Campbell a proof of one of Reina Bull’s New Worlds covers.

The cover of this issue is another striking one—nice composition and use of color, and refreshing in that the shapely woman in the center of things looks to be pushing forty.14 This one is by Quinn, who also does the best of the interior art (he seems to have been going to school on Virgil Finlay and Lawrence Stevens). The others are Hunter and Clothier, who remain nondescript.

This issue’s Guest Editorial, “The Last Fifty Years and the Next,” is by J. M. Walsh, veteran of Wonder Stories Quarterly, Tales of Wonder, and the first issue of Science-Fantasy, and currently, it says, serving as an Adjudicator of the International Fantasy Award. It’s almost as insubstantial as H. J. Campbell’s. Synopsis: I’ve been around for a while, and there was a lot of SF from Wells and the likes of George Griffith, then it faded out, then it came back. “Then like a thief in the night came the great recrudescence. The war of 1939-45, the coming of the atomic bomb, the vast strides made under the sheer pressure of necessity in almost all scientific achievements stimulated interest again.” A bit loud for a thief in the night, wasn’t it? “Anyway, the next fifty years are going to be a pretty interesting time. Human beings should still remain human beings, no matter in what situation they are cast.” Walsh died the same year; his obituary was the first of the “New Worlds Profiles” in Science-Fantasy’s companion magazine, issue 18 (November 1952).

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We are entering a period in Science-Fantasy in which J. T. McIntosh Rules, though Not Necessarily OK. In the next seven issues (5-11) he has five entries, four of them lead stories, and a Guest Editorial. The lead story in 5 (they’re all short stories in that issue) is McIntosh’s “Stitch in Time,” a time travel story of surpassing murkiness. If I understand it at all, it says that time travel to the past wouldn’t matter, because whatever changes would result have already resulted, similar to R. A. Lafferty’s much more lucid “Thus We Refute Charlemagne.” This is followed by E. E. Evans’ “Was Not Spoken,” involving telepathic contact with an inhabitant of Atlantis, her soul resident in a particularly sturdy coffin; Peter Hawkins’ “Circus,” a rather anti-climactic sequel to his earlier “Outworlder”; “Not As We Are,” another tone-deaf “Colin and Brocky” story by E. R. James, discursively mixing comic and solemn elements without apparently being able to tell the difference. The best of the lot is probably “Enemy in Their Midst” by Alan Barclay (pseudonym of George B. Tait), a reasonably competent suspense story about a Martian ambassador extorting Earth with a smuggled bomb.

Next issue, 6, dated Spring 1953 (another quarter skipped in the non-existent schedule) is fronted by the first serious turkey among this magazine’s covers; Quinn again.15 To figure out what’s going on, you have to read the lead novelette, J. T. McIntosh’s “The Volunteers,” in which there’s a galactic war on, but they only take volunteers. If you volunteer, you get the next five years to live like royalty with no one to say you nay. Then you show up for your service, and only 5% ever come back, and they won’t talk about what’s happened. The protagonist is a volunteer who falls in love with another volunteer. They try to contrive to avoid their service, but after an interval of hugger-mugger are caught.

Now the story proper starts, after three-quarters of its length has been consumed by prologue. Sent to the Moon, the volunteers learn that the war, and presumably the world, are really being run by a big computer called Solomon which can only work properly by having a series of human brains hooked up to it. Most people can’t tolerate this, hence the 5% survival rate. And the reason none of the survivors ever talk about it is they can’t remember it. He lives, she dies. And that is why the cover portrays, against a Lunar landscape, a man the top of whose head is bleeding into something vaguely mechanical-looking and who has a wire running from it into his high forehead—jacked-in, no less, long before cyberpunk.

The best of the rest are John Christopher’s “Mr. Kowtshook,” slight but characteristically professional, about a fugitive from interstellar justice, or vengeance, who takes up with a travelling circus until he gets caught, and Lan Wright’s “Insurance Policy,” an agreeably Clifford Simakesque story about a shipwrecked alien given sanctuary in a good-hearted farmer’s henhouse, illustrated in an agreeably Edd Cartieresque fashion by Hunter.

It’s downhill from there: E. C. Tubb’s “Confessional,” an uncharacteristically solemn and turgid alien culture story; Francis G. Rayer’s “Traders’ Planet,” another one about the insufferable Mactavish and Kennedy; “One in Every Port” by Richard Lawrence (pseudonym of Lawrence Edward Bartle) about the domestic travails of a space captain with families at both ends of the journey. And J(onathan) F. Burke’s “Time To Go Home,” about Earth types on a far planet, too uninteresting to finish.

In this issue, there is no Guest Editorial but an actual Host Editorial by Carnell himself—his first, called “Evolutionary Expansion,” which explains that New Worlds is about to shrink vertically, expand front to back, add 10,000 words, cost less, and stay bi-monthly. Science-Fantasy will go to the same format, but nothing is said about schedule. Carnell confesses some resentment and says he’d rather pay the authors more, but maybe this way their circulation will increase and they’ll be able to do that later. The Nova SF Novels, a brief and troubled series of paperback reprints, are announced.

One interesting thing about this issue is that advertising has fallen to almost nothing. The only outside ad (as opposed to house ads for New Worlds and the Nova Novels) is half the back cover for the BRE Astounding and Thrilling Wonder. By contrast, the second issue has a half back cover for the BRE Astounding, the full inside back cover for the Fantasy Book Centre, half a page of small ads, and half the inside front cover for another bookseller, Postal Preview. How much this loss of revenue amounted to and what if any impact it had for the magazine’s operations is lost to history.

14. See these covers at http://www.sfcovers.net/mainnav.htm or http://www.philsp.com/mags/sciencefantasy.html.

15. This is a case where Broderick disagrees with Boston, finding the image moderately okay, given the sort of thing it is.