The previous three chapters have dealt primarily with the period 1970 to 1977, passing occasionally beyond those years to complete discussion of a few individual threads. The period coincided with the economic depression in the United States and Britain but also coincided, give or take a year, with Ben Bova's editorship at Analog, the rise and fall of Roger Elwood, and most of the original anthologies, and the fall from grace of Galaxy. There was too much that continued on beyond these years to treat it as a self–contained period, but there was enough that began and ended during that time to see it as a distinct period of transition.

The years 1976 to 1978 saw a recovery in the economic situation and with it a change in the fortunes of the science–fiction magazines. With the economy it was a false dawn – the light at the end of the tunnel extinguished again after a few years – but with the sf magazines it was the start of a new era, one that was almost as complicated as the previous era, but now squeezed into four or fi ve years. The period from 1977 to 1982 would see the rise and, in some cases, fall of a surprising number of new magazines, all of which underwent a variety of rapid changes. It was as if, following the transitional post–Campbell years, the field felt ready to regenerate itself. In this chapter we shall see how well it managed.

The Rise and Fall of Galileo

As the American economy began to recover in the second half of the seventies, and as the spate of original anthologies ran their course, so the sf magazines showed signs of resurgence. In late 1975 there had been plans from publisher Ed Goldstein, with his editor Larry Shaw, for a new magazine, originally called Alpha, to appear in January 1976. At the last minute, plans fell through because of distribution problems and Goldstein subsequently satisfi ed his desire for an all–fiction magazine by acquiring Mike Shayne's Mystery Magazinefrom Cylvia Margulies. There had also been two issues of Elwood's Odysseyin 1976, but the two important magazines appeared towards the end of the year – Galileoin September and Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazinein December.