When the first science–fiction magazines emerged, they did not have much competition for their readership. Those who enjoyed science fiction would find some amongst the other pulps, and occasionally in book form – usually in comparatively expensive hardcovers – but in terms of reading matter there was not much about. They could turn to the cinema, and by the 1930s the talkies were of sufficient quality for sf films to be of interest – especially once such classics as Frankensteinand King Konghit the screens. But this did not really dent the readership for the magazines – if anything it enhanced it.

But over the years more and more has emerged to capture the attention of readers and to divert them away from the magazines. Indeed, most of the history of the sf magazine has been a war of attrition against these other temptations. If we leave aside the cinema, radio and television for the moment and concentrate on the printed page, the first major rivals were the sf comic books, especially the superhero comics which seriously rivalled the lower–level hero pulps and eventually defeated them.

The main enemy of the sf magazine, however, was the growth of the pocketbook from the late forties onwards and particularly by the early sixties. By then there was sufficient top–quality science fiction appearing in cheap paperbacks – especially novels – that readers did not need to turn to a science–fiction magazine at all. There were more than enough books to absorb their time. The growth of the short–story anthology – both those that selected from old magazines and those that chose the best from each year – must have superseded the magazine in the hearts and minds of many readers. Even so, there was at least a symbiosis between these publications, the magazine providing the raw material and the anthology reprinting the best.

Then came the threat of the original anthology. That is, the anthology that ran all new fiction, rather than any selected from earlier sources. This was riding right into the heart of magazine territory and threatening to lure away not only their readers but their writers too.