Currently, I’m on a kick of plowing through old fantasy
magazines, cover to cover. I’m now reading this title, Worlds of Fantasy. These were the absolute tail end of the pulp
era. I wish they were a more triumphant last hurrah. The pulps of the 20s-50s
era are masterpieces of the printer’s art compared to the “modern, now,
a-go-go” years. Also, they were difficult to find among the digest-sized
pockets on the newsstand shelf, where they may have been tucked behind
less-promising, but probably better-selling titles of that size like Fate and the astrology magazines.
An online reference called The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction points out that this is the
entire run, and that it even changed publishers after the first issue. Sure
enough, the first issue is published by the Galaxy Publishing Corporation,
responsible then for both Galaxy Science
Fiction and If (a.k.a. Worlds of If). As an adolescent, I
responded to Frederik Pohl’s Galaxy
and If because they seemed to be the
only science-fiction magazines that acknowledged that there was a
counterculture.
The first two issues of Worlds
of Fantasy were edited by Lester del Rey, the last two by Ejler Jakobsson.
To quote the Encyclopedia, “It…might
well have succeeded had it had better distribution. The standard was good. Worlds
of Fantasy published The Tombs of Atuan (Winter 1970-1971 #3) by Ursula K. LeGuin…and early
stories by Michael Bishop and James Tiptree, Jr.”
I suspect a lot of things would succeed with “better
distribution,” but why argue with a nameless but well-intentioned Encyclopedia entry author?
It had a companion magazine of sorts called Worlds of Tomorrow, a straight-up
science-fiction title, with an even more complicated history.
These covers are all by Jack Gaughan, a familiar illustrator
to sf readers. More about his work another time.
