Prozines
Science fiction has been a big part of my life ever since I was a child, and my collection is about evenly split between books (1,247) and prozines (1,233). Books actually came first, via trips to the local library to take out as many books with little rockets on the spine as I could find there. Next came Tom Swift, Jr. books which I devoured as soon as a new one was published.
Prozines came next, beginning with the January, 1963 issue of Worlds of IF. Through the 1960s, I bought both IF and its two companions Galaxy (those issues are still my favorite prozines) and Worlds of Tomorrow. In 1969 though, all three magazines were sold to a new publisher, and Frederik Pohl took the opportunity to resume full-time writing, and was replaced by the incredibly incompetent Ejler Jakobsson. I continued all three magazines until their demises at various times in the decade (and Galaxy did have a brief resurgence under Jim Baen’s editorship), but I expanded to Analog when Ben Bova took over as editor, and Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1974 (when IF died).
When Stanley Schmidt took over Analog, it became boring to me, so I switched to Asimov’s early in the 1980s and read it and F&SF through the late-1990s when I gave up reading all science fiction for about two years, including letting my subscriptions lapse. Since then I have renewed F&SF recently, but I have found myself falling far behind in reading it, partly because it seems to be leaning a lot more towards fantasy than science fiction. I would not mind so much if it were historical fantasy or fantasy set in created worlds, but it seems to be largely contemporary fantasy or slipstream, both of which bore me considerably.
So in a few months I will be without any prozine subscriptions, although fortunately I still have a backlog of magazines to read or re-read, probably more than I can read the rest of my life considering how many books I also have to read. Here’s what will keep me busy awhile:
Amazing / 21 issues
Analog / 56 issues
Asimov’s / 207 issues
Black Gate / 1 issue
Chinese Literature / 17 issues
Fantasy & Science Fiction / 407 issues
Fantastic / 1 issue
Galaxy / 247 issues
International SF / 2 issues
Interzone / 5 issues
Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet/ 4 issues
On Spec / 1 issue
Paradox / 5 issues
Postscripts / 8 issues
Realms of Fantasy / 6 issues
Science Fiction Age / 13 issues
Subterranean / 1 issue
The Third Alternative / 1 issue
Tomorrow / 19 issues
The Twilight Zone / 1 issue
Ultimate titles (miscellaneous) / 22 issues
Venture / 5 issues
Worlds of Fantasy / 4 issues
Worlds of IF / 148 issues
Worlds of Tomorrow / 26 issues
Prozines came next, beginning with the January, 1963 issue of Worlds of IF. Through the 1960s, I bought both IF and its two companions Galaxy (those issues are still my favorite prozines) and Worlds of Tomorrow. In 1969 though, all three magazines were sold to a new publisher, and Frederik Pohl took the opportunity to resume full-time writing, and was replaced by the incredibly incompetent Ejler Jakobsson. I continued all three magazines until their demises at various times in the decade (and Galaxy did have a brief resurgence under Jim Baen’s editorship), but I expanded to Analog when Ben Bova took over as editor, and Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1974 (when IF died).
When Stanley Schmidt took over Analog, it became boring to me, so I switched to Asimov’s early in the 1980s and read it and F&SF through the late-1990s when I gave up reading all science fiction for about two years, including letting my subscriptions lapse. Since then I have renewed F&SF recently, but I have found myself falling far behind in reading it, partly because it seems to be leaning a lot more towards fantasy than science fiction. I would not mind so much if it were historical fantasy or fantasy set in created worlds, but it seems to be largely contemporary fantasy or slipstream, both of which bore me considerably.
So in a few months I will be without any prozine subscriptions, although fortunately I still have a backlog of magazines to read or re-read, probably more than I can read the rest of my life considering how many books I also have to read. Here’s what will keep me busy awhile:
Amazing / 21 issues
Analog / 56 issues
Asimov’s / 207 issues
Black Gate / 1 issue
Chinese Literature / 17 issues
Fantasy & Science Fiction / 407 issues
Fantastic / 1 issue
Galaxy / 247 issues
International SF / 2 issues
Interzone / 5 issues
Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet/ 4 issues
On Spec / 1 issue
Paradox / 5 issues
Postscripts / 8 issues
Realms of Fantasy / 6 issues
Science Fiction Age / 13 issues
Subterranean / 1 issue
The Third Alternative / 1 issue
Tomorrow / 19 issues
The Twilight Zone / 1 issue
Ultimate titles (miscellaneous) / 22 issues
Venture / 5 issues
Worlds of Fantasy / 4 issues
Worlds of IF / 148 issues
Worlds of Tomorrow / 26 issues
1 Comments:
I am jealous of your magazine collection. Even though I read many through the years, I did not hang on to many of them.
The names of the various magazines bring back many memories. Most of them are good ones (except for the dark period when Ejler was over the Galaxy line.
Once again you remind me of some great times I had reading science fiction.
By
Jim Black, At
6:54 PM
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