Search Results for: Astounding

Vintage Treasures: The Astounding-Analog Reader edited by Harry Harrison and Brian W. Aldiss

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The Astounding-Analog Reader (Sphere 1972 and 1973). Covers by unknown (left) and Chris Foss (right) I used to scoff at the idea of online bookstores. How will you browse for books?, I demanded to know. You’ll never replace that wonderful moment of discovery, of serendipity, finding a treasure you weren’t looking for, which happens all the time in great bookstores. Of course, these days I find books online all the time. I’m a huge fan of Harry Harrison and Brian W. Aldiss’s…

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The Astounding Life of John W. Campbell

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Every now and then, amid your fevered cries for net neutrality, free soil and free silver, the restoration of the house of Stuart, more episodes of Firefly, or whatever other hopeless cause gets your blood racing and your family members fleeing (they recognize a wind-up to a full fledged rant when they hear one), against all odds the universe actually hears, takes note, and gives you precisely what you’ve asked for — not often, dammit, but sometimes. Thus it was…

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The Strange and Happy Life of The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology

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The lifecycle of a modern anthology ain’t that complicated. It comes out in hardcover or trade paperback from a small press, stays in print for 5-6 years or so — or until the small press suffers a horrible death, whichever comes first — and then vanishes, popping up thereafter only on eBay and at SF conventions, like a Star Trek action figure. It didn’t always used to be this way. Used to be that anthologies would appear originally in hardcover, just…

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Hubert Rogers’ Astounding Covers — And His Fascinating Correspondence with Robert A. Heinlein and L. Sprague de Camp

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At IlluxCon this past October, one of our major purchases was a pulp painting by artist Hubert Rogers. Rogers was Astounding Science Fiction’s primary cover artist from late 1939 to early 1952, with a break from 1943 through 1946 due to World War II (which he spent in Canada painting war posters and other paintings related to the war). We’d made arrangements over the summer to buy it from a friend of ours, who had owned it for many years,…

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Barry N. Malzberg and Bill Pronzini on Astounding Science Fiction in the 1950s

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We’ve had some discussion here in the last week on the relative merits of the top science fiction digests of the 1950s. Bob Silverberg offered his opinion that Galaxy magazine took the lead in the field virtually with its very first issue in October 1950, saying “That first year of Galaxy left us all gasping.” And in his Astounding Science Fiction Testimonial, John Boston generally concurs, saying that 1958 was the last good year under editor John W. Campbell. Over…

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An Astounding Science Fiction Testimonial

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I started reading Astounding with the February 1958 issue. 1958 was the last good year under editor John W. Campbell. Consider the short fiction: L. Sprague de Camp’s “Aristotle and the Gun” Charles V. de Vet and Katherine MacLean’s “Second Game” Fritz Leiber’s “Try and Change the Past” Jack Vance’s “The Miracle Workers” Clifford D. Simak’s “The Big Front Yard” Rog Phillips’s “The Yellow Pill” Katherine MacLean’s “Unhuman Sacrifice” J.F. Bone’s “Triggerman” (Also Randall Garrett’s “The Queen Bee,” but we…

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Astounding Science Fiction, February and March 1953: A Retro-Review

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I thought it might be worthwhile to take a look at John Campbell’s Astounding, from the early ’50s, after its dominance of the market had been shaken by Galaxy and F&SF. So here are two 1953 issues. I bought these two issues because the March issue has John Brunner’s first story for a major market, “Thou Good and Faithful.” I noticed that that issue also has the second part of a Piper serial that I hadn’t read, so I bought…

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The Original Bug-Eyed Monster: Astounding Stories, May 1931

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Pulps are my weakness. I discovered them when I was just 12 years old, in Jacques Sadoul’s marvelous art book 2000 A.D. Illustrations From the Golden Age of Science Fiction Pulps (which I discussed back in May). That book sparked a lifetime interest in pulp magazines, where American science fiction was born. Of course, I was too young to have purchased or read any pulp magazines myself in 1976. Pulps died out in the 1950s, killed off by wartime paper…

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Kirkus Looks at Astounding Science Fiction

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Andrew Liptak at Kirkus Reviews has posted a nice retrospective of one of the most influential figures in the history of our genre: John W. Campbell, editor of Astounding Science Fiction and the short-lived Unknown magazine. Here’s a snippet: In 1938, science fiction would run into another personality who would change science fiction again: When 28-year-old author John Campbell Jr. was hired to edit Astounding Magazine. Campbell’s influence in the magazine market is commonly cited as the beginning of the…

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Adventures in Pulp Awesomeness: The Clayton Astounding

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Over at Dark Worlds, editor G.W. Thomas has completed the first of three planned reprints of the Clayton Astounding, the first incarnation of the grand old lady of science fiction. Astounding changed its name to Analog in 1960 and continues to publish today, 80 years after its first issue hit the stands in January, 1930. In an era when most genre magazines last only a handfull of issues, that’s an incredible run. During most of that time it’s been the…

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