The story of the science–fiction magazines during the seventies has been long and complicated. The decade was one of so much change and uncertainty that at the time it was not clear in what direction it was heading. We have already seen Bruce Sterling's rather dismissive assessment that by the end of the seventies sf had become ‘confused, self–involved and stale’. It was certainly confusing, and one reason why this book is so long is in order to unravel that confusion. More recently, Roger Luckhurst reassessed the seventies from two opposing viewpoints: first that it was a period of breakthrough in the aftermath of the New Wave revolution and as a result of the emergence of academic appreciation; and secondly that it was one of shutdown and anarchy. This caused him to reassess the decade as an ‘interregnum’ between the New Wave of the sixties and the Cyberpunk movement of the eighties.

The problem in assessing the seventies is the large number of different initiatives moving in different directions under the control of different editors and publishers. During previous decades, despite growing rivalry from comic books and paperbacks, the sf magazines had remained firmly on course, directed chiefly by John W. Campbell, along with, from the fifties, Horace Gold and Frederik Pohl. There was a main highway which everyone found easy to navigate, and even if they wandered off down the byways, the highway was always there to return to, solid and reliable.

But a number of factors from the sixties and early seventies, not least the upheaval caused by theNew Worldsbrigade and Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions, plus the death of John W. Campbell, Jr., had fragmented that highway into many minor roads and it was difficult to know which to follow. Many readers lost their way altogether and abandoned the field, while others found a favoured route, stayed with it and did not explore further.

Thus the science–fiction market fractured. We have seen how a separate Star Trekfandom grew, originally an offshoot of core sf fandom, but very rapidly taking on a distinct identity and with evidence that many Star–Trek fans did not read other forms of sf.