Science Fantasy (magazine)
Once Carnell took over, Science Fantasy typically ran a long lead novelette along with several shorter stories; prominent contributors in the 1950s included John Brunner, Ken Bulmer, and Brian Aldiss, whose first novel Nonstop appeared (in an early version) in the February 1956 issue.
Carnell felt that the literary quality of Science Fantasy was always higher than that of New Worlds, and in the early 1960s his efforts were rewarded with three consecutive Hugo nominations for best magazine.
A group of sf fans, including Carnell and Frank Cooper, decided to restart the magazine under their own control, and formed Nova Publications Ltd.
[3] At the same time that the first issue of New Worlds appeared, a separate British magazine called Fantasy was launched by Walter Gillings, a science fiction fan and a reporter by profession.
Paper rationing delayed the third issue to Winter 1951, but before it appeared, Nova decided that it could no longer afford to have separate editors for New Worlds and Science Fantasy, and Gillings was let go.
[5][note 1] After the Spring 1953 issue, Nova Publications decided to switch printers, in order to cut costs and bring the cover price down from 2/- (10 p) to 1/6 (7.5 p).
Maclaren's legal department was helpful in resolving the dispute with The Carlton Press, and the seventh issue of Science Fantasy finally appeared with a cover date of March 1954.
[1][note 2] In September Nova decided to close down both remaining titles,[1] and in preparation for the change Carnell signed a contract in December 1963 to edit an original anthology series, New Writings in SF, for publisher Dennis Dobson.
[1] In early 1964, David Warburton of Roberts & Vinter, an established publisher, heard from the printer of Science Fantasy and New Worlds that the magazines were going to fold shortly.
[8][note 3] Carnell did not want to continue to edit the magazines in addition to New Writings in SF, and recommended Moorcock to Warburton; Kyril Bonfiglioli, an Oxford art dealer who was a friend of Brian Aldiss, also expressed an interest.
[9] Bonfiglioli often bought material from writers without an established reputation; he did not make any special effort to acquire stories from well-known names.
He was known for writing long and helpful rejection letters to newcomers, but he also had a reputation for laziness, and much of the day-to-day editorial work was done by assistants—first James Parkhill-Rathbone, and then Keith Roberts.
Bonfiglioli attempted to repair the damage by changing the name to SF Impulse starting in August 1966, but the result was a dramatic drop in circulation.
[12] In the first issue, Gillings declared that he was interested in science fantasy "in all its forms: with its significant ideas, its surprising prophecies, its sheer fictions, its evolution as a fascinating literature".
[5][15] The acquisition of Nova Publications by Maclaren gave Carnell access to the publishing facilities of a well-established company, and to established distribution channels, which freed him to focus on his editorial duties.
[1][16] Stories that would not have suited New Worlds began to appear, such as William F. Temple's "Eternity" (February 1955), in which aliens mysteriously provide haloes to thousands of people, and Dal Stiven's "Free Will", which featured robot ghosts.
[18] His efforts were rewarded by frequent appearances of stories from Science Fantasy in the annual Year's Greatest SF anthology series edited by Judith Merril.
Carnell occasionally used reprints, often selecting stories in line with the magazine's focus on offbeat fantasy, such as Fritz Leiber's "Space-Time for Springers", and Theodore Sturgeon's "The Graveyard Reader".
[21] Ashley regards the early 1960s as one of the high points of the magazine;[17] it was nominated for the Hugo Award for each of the last three years in which Carnell edited it, from 1962 to 1964, but it never won.
[22] When Kyril Bonfiglioli took over in 1964, he complained in his first editorial that he had "just read through a quarter of a million words of ms [manuscript] and half of it was so bad it made me blush".
[1][note 5] The Day of the Minotaur, another historical fantasy by Thomas Burnett Swann, began serialisation in the same issue under the title The Blue Monkeys.
[24] At the World Science Fiction Convention in 1965, held in London, Bonfiglioli persuaded several well-known writers to appear in an "all-star issue ... with specially written stories round the theme of 'sacrifice'".
The issue in question was the first one under the new title of Impulse, in March 1966; it included fiction by James Blish, Brian Aldiss, Harry Harrison, J.G.
Other stories listed by Ashley include Thomas Disch's "The Roaches" and "The Number You Have Just Reached", and Aldiss's "The Eyes of the Blind King".
[11] Stableford also praises the covers for the last few issues, which were mostly done by Keith Roberts in a semi-abstract style unlike conventional genre art.
[1][11] There have been no anthologies drawn solely from the pages of Science Fantasy, but Weird Shadows From Beyond, edited by John Carnell, and published by Corgi Books in 1965, drew eight of its ten stories from the magazine.
[1] In 2013, a 371-page volume written by John Boston and curated by Damien Broderick, titled Strange Highways: Reading Science Fantasy, 1950–1967 was published by Borgo/Wildside in the US.
