The British Wilderness

The end of the 1950s saw Britain with three regular science-fiction magazines. These were New Worlds, Science Fantasy and Science Fiction Adventures, all published by Nova Publications and edited by John Carnell. Authentic had folded in October 1957 when its publisher, Hamilton, had shifted the emphasis to pocketbooks, and the Scottish magazine Nebula had ceased publication in June 1959.

Britain also had reprint editions of many of the American magazines. Some, such as the editions of Future Science Fiction and Science Fiction Stories from Strato Publications, were exact reproductions except for changing the advertisements. At the other extreme, Atlas Publishing and Distributing's edition of F&SF frequently omitted stories and rearranged fiction, so there was little comparison with the original. Since Carnell also bought stories that had been sold to the US magazines it sometimes led to duplication. For instance, Robert Silverberg's story about a perfect retentive memory, ‘The Man Who Never Forgot’, first appeared in the US F&SF in February 1958. It subsequently appeared in the British edition of F&SF in January 1960, but had already been reprinted in Science Fantasy for December 1958. This was always frustrating for British readers.

The most consistent British reprint was Atlas's edition of Astounding, which had started in August 1939 and continued sporadically throughout the war, settling to a monthly schedule in February 1952. It was a familiar sight throughout the 1950s. These reprint editions ceased when import restrictions were lifted in Britain in 1963. The last British edition of Analog (as Astounding had then become) was dated August 1963, while the last British edition of F&SF was in June 1964. Atlas did continue to reprint stories from F&SF and the original US magazine Venture in a special British edition of Venture, which ran entirely independently of the US titles from September 1963 to December 1965.

One other magazine had surfaced briefly in the late 1950s. This was Phantom, a weird-fiction magazine issued by a publisher in Bolton in Lancashire. This publisher, Dalrow Publications, run by Leslie Syddall, normally issued pin-up magazines, but had arranged a deal to publish John Creasey Mystery Magazine in August 1956 and a companion war-fiction magazine, Combat, in November 1956.