It was part of the explosion of science fiction magazine publishing in the 1950s in the United States, and was moderately successful, outlasting almost all of its competitors.

The magazine is not highly regarded by science fiction historians, but some well-received stories appeared, including "Who?

A collection of stories from the magazine, edited by Santesson, appeared in 1960 from Prentice-Hall, titled The Fantastic Universe Omnibus.

[1] This change was largely the work of the distributors, such as American News Company, who refused to carry the pulp magazines since they were no longer profitable;[2] the loss of profitability was in turn associated with the rise in mass-market science fiction publishing, with paperback publishers such as Ace Books and Ballantine Books becoming established.

[15] According to Donald Tuck, the author of an early SF encyclopaedia, the magazine kept a fairly high quality through Merwin's departure after a year, and through the subsequent brief period of caretaker editorship by Beatrice Jones.

[7] The quality of the fiction is thought by Tuck to have fallen during Santesson's period at the helm,[7] though this was not entirely his fault—there were a great many other magazines competing for stories by the top writers.

Santesson himself, despite a modicum of controversy over his heavy use of UFO and related material, was kind and helpful to writers, and was well liked as a result.

Santesson ran several articles by writers such as Ivan T. Sanderson, Kenneth Arnold, and Gray Barker.

Three of the stories were published in Fantastic Universe, two before the book, and one after:[7] Other notable and widely reprinted stories included: Other writers who appeared in the magazine included Harlan Ellison, Jorge Luis Borges, Clifford Simak, Harry Harrison, and Robert Bloch.

A fan column, by Belle C. Dietz, began, and Sam Moskowitz wrote two detailed historical articles about proto-sf.

Fredric Brown's "The Mind Thing" had begun serialization in that issue; it was eventually published in book form later that year.

This lasted until volume 10 was cut short at five numbers when the magazine returned to a bimonthly schedule at the end of 1958.