The Pocketbook Factor

Before considering the boom years there is another factor that has to be considered to assess its impact upon the growth of science fiction, and it was a factor in which Horace Gold also had a hand.

We have seen that during the 1940s the pulp magazine had been challenged not only by the comic-books, which eventually took over the heropulp formula, but by the growth in the paperback pocketbook. Since these have become universally called paperbacks, I shall continue to use that word in its general sense, but I shall retain the term ‘pocketbook’ to distinguish the standard 6.5 х 4 inch paperback from its digest (7.5 х 5 inch) counterpart.

The pocketbook had been around in various forms for several decades, but had not been seen as a significant part of publishing until the success of Penguin Books in Britain (and its later American outlet), and Pocket Books in the States. As we have already mentioned, Pocket Books were soon joined by Avon Books and others. Few of these published science fiction as a recognized genre, although it must be said that the very first Pocket Books volume was James Hilton's Lost Horizon in 1939. The significant sales of this helped establish paperbacks. However, apart from The Pocket Book of Science Fiction from Pocket Books in 1943, little in the way of genre science fiction was published. It was clearly the domain of the pulps. Significantly, that anthology had been edited by Donald A. Wollheim, and he would play a crucial role in the emergence of science-fiction paperbacks.

F. Orlin Tremaine, the former editor of Astounding Stories and Comet, became editorial director of the small New York publisher Bart House in 1944. The company specialized in film novelizations, but Tremaine's sci-ence-fiction connections caused him to release four sf paperbacks. Two of these were by H. P. Lovecraft, The Weird Shadow Over Innsmouth (1944) and The Dunwich Horror (1945), and in hindsight are less surprising volumes. What is surprising are the other two: Rebirth by Thomas Calvert McClary, originally serialized in Astounding Stories in 1934 (when it was purchased by Tremaine), and The Waltz of Death by P. B. Maxon, serialized in Wonder Stories in 1935.