{"id":358,"date":"2015-12-28T18:15:30","date_gmt":"2015-12-28T18:15:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=358"},"modified":"2017-10-04T22:19:26","modified_gmt":"2017-10-04T22:19:26","slug":"galaxy-v01n01-october-1950","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=358","title":{"rendered":"Galaxy v01n01, October 1950"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Galaxy195010x600d\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Other Reviews:
\nMatthew Wuertz:\u00a0Black Gate<\/a>.
\nL\u00e4hett\u00e4nyt Tpi Klo: Tpi\u2019s Reading Diary<\/a><\/p>\n

Fiction:
\nTime Quarry<\/strong><\/em> (Part 1 of 3) \u2022 serial by Clifford D. Simak \u2665\u2665
\nThird from the Sun<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 short story by Richard Matheson \u2665
\nThe Stars Are the Styx<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 novelette by Theodore Sturgeon \u2665\u2665\u2665\u2665
\nLater Than You Think<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 short story by Fritz Leiber \u2665\u2665
\nContagion<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 novelette by Katherine MacLean \u2665\u2665
\nThe Last Martian<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 short story by Fredric Brown \u2665
\nDarwinian Pool Room<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 short story by Isaac Asimov \u2665<\/p>\n

Non-ficiton:
\nThe Hunting Asteroid<\/strong><\/em> scene of Time Quarry<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 cover by David Stone
\nInterior artwork<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 by David Stone, Paul Call\u00e9, Paul Pierre
\nFor Adults Only<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 editorial by H. L. Gold
\nFlying Saucers: Friend, Foe or Fantasy?<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 essay by Willy Ley
\nFlying Saucer Contest<\/strong><\/em>
\nGalaxy’s Five Star Shelf<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 reviews by Groff Conklin
\nForecast<\/strong><\/em>
\nYou’ll Never See It in Galaxy<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 essay by H. L. Gold<\/p>\n

Galaxy<\/em> is considered one of if not the<\/em> major SF title of the 1950s, and it appeared about a year after The Magazine of Fantasy and Science<\/em> Fiction<\/em> made its debut. <\/em>Unlike F&SF<\/em> it\u00a0contained SF only, and also departed from pulp format and production in that it was a digest, a format that hadn\u2019t yet caught on. Galaxy<\/em>\u00a0used slick cover stock, and offset printing for its interior.1<\/sup>
\nSurprisingly, given this emphasis on production values, the first issue has quite a poor cover by David Stone. It is a very flat muddy looking affair that, according to the editorial,2<\/sup> was probably an overreaction to many previous embarrassing SF magazine covers. The interior artwork looks fairly run of the mill as well, but it is hard to tell as I was reading this issue from a not particularly good scan.<\/p>\n

The fiction begins with Clifford Simak’s serial Time Quarry<\/em><\/strong>.3<\/sup> In the first part of this serial alone we have androids, robots, duelling, a man from the future, a protagonist who returns from space in a ship that could not have physically made the journey\u2014and who seems to have another person in his head\u2014and an enigmatic and unapproachable alien race. The only thing missing here is the kitchen sink. To give it some credit it does move along but as it does this by continuously adding plot devices, I suspect the whole overburdened structure will come crashing down at some point.<\/p>\n

The short fiction leads off with Richard Matheson’s Third From the Sun<\/em><\/strong>, whose title telegraphs the end of a story that tells of two families boarding a spacecraft to leave their planet for another. Surely this particular twist ending was old hat in the SF magazines by 1940 never mind 1950?<\/p>\n

This type of gimmick or twist ending is also apparent in two of the three other short stories. Fritz Leiber\u2019s Later Than You Think<\/em><\/strong> sets up a double twist in its conversation about a lost race that sounds very much like humanity, and Frederic Brown’s The Last Martian<\/em><\/strong>4<\/sup> has a newspaper reporter checking out a story about a man claiming to be what the title suggests\u2014and who has woken up in a human body. If I never read another \u2018Silly Season\u2019 journalist SF story it will be too soon.<\/p>\n

The final short story isn’t really one: Isaac Asimov\u2019s Darwinian Pool Room<\/strong><\/em> is a scientists\u2019 conversation about Genesis\/the creation of the universe, which stops at the end of their lunchtimes and, one suspects, at the beginning of the Good Doctor’s.<\/p>\n

In amongst the fiction there is a short article by Willy Ley about flying saucers that categorises the different types of encounters, followed by a naff competition to provide an over-arching explanation for these phenomena. There are some major prizes though: all expenses paid trips to Mt Wilson observatory, marine laboratories, atomic energy centres, trips in helicopters, dirigibles, sky-writing planes and in submarines\u2014the list goes on and on.5<\/sup>
\nWhile we are on the non-fiction, Horace Gold’s editorial is unremittingly dull: half the editorial is about the cover, the type of engraving used to produce it and the cover stock; and the rest is puff about the contents.
\nGalaxy’s Five Star Shelf<\/em><\/strong> is a book review column where Groff Conklin covers a trio of anthologies, a H. G. Wells omnibus and another couple of novels, including Judith Merril’s post-holocaust novel\u2014viewed from a domestic perspective\u2014Shadow on the Hearth<\/em>, which sounds promising.<\/p>\n

The first of the two novelettes is\u00a0Katherine MacLean’s Contagion<\/em><\/strong>. This tells of a spaceship landing on an alien planet to discover a primitive human settlement where all the men, and women, are alike. The women on the ship are strongly attracted to the alien men, one of whom comes aboard the ship and infects the shipboard men with a \u2018melting sickness\u2019. Much unconvincing biological hocus-pocus later all is resolved. An OK read as long as you don’t think too much about what is going on.<\/p>\n

The second novelette and final piece of fiction is\u00a0the Sturgeon, and it is an issue saver. The Stars Are The Styx<\/em><\/strong> tells of the selection, training and dispatch of what are effectively starship pilots to go ‘Out’. Based on Curbstone, an Earth-orbit space station, it is narrated by the Senior Release Officer, who makes the final decision about who can go \u2018Out\u2019, and who is at the centre of the five-way relationship difficulties that are the story: most ships go \u2018Out\u2019 crewed by couples who get married as part of the process.
\nI found this story striking for several reasons other than its quality: first, it seems way ahead of its time; second, it feels like you can draw a straight line from this story to the early work of Zelazny and Varley; finally, Curbstone struck me as the progenitor of Fred Pohl’s Gateway.<\/em><\/p>\n

To conclude, I felt that this issue was a very weak\u00a0start to the magazine’s run. This opinion, however, is at odds with a couple of people who I have spoken to,\u00a0and who insist Galaxy<\/em>\u00a0was a very big deal from the first issue.6<\/sup> \u00a0I don’t think the evidence in this first issue supports that but have a number of theories why this may have seemed so.
\nFirst, it was the first major magazine (except maybe\u00a0F&SF<\/em>) to appear in almost a decade.7<\/sup>
\nSecond, the magazine\u2019s appearance, and that of a well-paying second market apart from Astounding<\/em>, probably looms larger in the minds of writers who were there at the time and who were tiring of Campbell (anecdotal evidence suggests that he was becoming increasingly dogmatic, and the appearance of the Dianetics article convinced some that he had finally lost the plot).8<\/sup> Gold also paid significantly more than the competition, at least until they caught up, and his irritating editorial habits (as compared with Campbell\u2019s) were not yet manifest.9<\/sup>
\nThird, there was the physical appearance of the magazine. With its expensive glossy cover stock and interior paper I suspect it must have looked like the future to readers of pulp magazines.
\nFinally, it subsequently produced so much major fiction between 1951 and 1953 (and beyond) that this has probably been conflated with the magazine\u2019s first issue (or as we shall perhaps see, issues).<\/p>\n

It will be interesting to see how future numbers measure up.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The quality of the design and production was important to Gold and to the art directors.
    \n\u201cI asked for (…)\u00a0really good quality paper and printing, CromeKote covers\u2026\u201d Horace Gold, Galaxy: Thirty Years of Innovative Science Fiction<\/em>, ed. Frederik Pohl, Martin H. Greenberg and Joseph D. Olander p.5
    \n\u201cDuring the first dozen years of its existence, Galaxy<\/em> was expensively printed by offset on high-quality paper. The combination made much possible: soft shades of gray. Halftones. Type laid over the art, art integrated with the text. Galaxy<\/em>\u2019s two principal art directors, W. I. Van der Poel and Sam Ruvidich, understood the possibilities and exploited them well\u2014beautifully, in fact. Frederik Pohl, ibid.<\/em>\u00a0p.xii
    \n\u201cWe borrowed Harry and Evelyn Harrison\u2019s apartment, spread all these layouts over the walls, invited a bunch of editors, artists, writers, and fans, and had a secret ballot of which title, layout, and lettering they liked best. (We must have invited a couple of hundred people who trudged through the apartment before they voted. They all agreed that Galaxy<\/em> and the inverted-L layout were their own personal favourites, but they didn\u2019t think anyone else would like them.\u201d Horace Gold,\u00a0ibid. <\/em>p.6<\/li>\n
  2. \u201cThe cover, by David Stone, is the\u00a0resolution of several personal conflicts. Long a science fiction fan,\u00a0Stone is also an excellent artist who\u00a0was weary of tearing covers off magazines to avoid embarrassment. His\u00a0cover, he resolved, would not have\u00a0to be hidden from either parents or\u00a0friends. Having suffered thus ourselves, we agreed, and no reader will\u00a0be ashamed to carry Galaxy.\u201d \u00a0Horace Gold in his Editorial<\/i><\/b>, p.2<\/li>\n
  3. From the Forecast<\/strong><\/em> on p.107: \u201cTime Quarry<\/em><\/strong> will be published next year by Simon & Schuster in exactly the same form in which it appears in Galaxy<\/em>, with minor editing differences. Our policy will continue to be to publish all book-length novels complete.\u201d\u00a0How strange, given Gold’s widespread meddling with material submitted to him, that he left the novel length work largely unscathed.\u00a0In any event, the book form of the novel, Time and Again<\/em>, had a plot point in the final chapter that was different from the serial.<\/li>\n
  4. \u201cIn that first issue, he [Willy Ley] was fielding a contest that had been imposed on me\u2014something like \u201cAre Flying Saucers Real?\u201d He wrote a noncommittal article. I cut it down drastically before I printed it. He couldn\u2019t understand why I had done that after paying him for all of it, but I wanted as little as possible to do with flying saucers.\u201d Horace Gold, Ibid.<\/em>\u00a0p.7<\/li>\n
  5. Although Mike Ashley in Transformations<\/em>, p.29, states: \u201cGalaxy<\/em>‘s first major story was The Fireman<\/em> by Ray Bradbury (…) in the February 1951 issue.\u201d<\/li>\n
  6. \u201c[The appearance of a new magazine] was an uncommon event in those days. New science-fiction magazines were rarer than quintuplets\u2014there had been only one significant other in the better part of a decade\u2014so the first appearance of Galaxy<\/em> prompted both hope and doubt.\u201d Frederik Pohl,\u00a0Ibid.<\/em>\u00a0p.ix<\/li>\n
  7. \u201cAll this could have not happened at a better time, for in 1950 Campbell began to push the pseudoscience of \u201cdianetics.\u201d I disapproved of that so strongly that I wished to distance myself from Campbell. I did not stop selling to him, but welcomed the chance to sell to others.\u201d Isaac Asimov, I. Asimov<\/em>, Chapter 62. He also adds that Darwinian Pool Room<\/strong><\/em> was “a very weak effort.”<\/li>\n
  8. For chapter and verse on how infuriating an editor Gold could be, see the writer introductions to the stories in Galaxy: Thirty Years of Innovative Science Fiction<\/em>, ed. Frederik Pohl, Martin H. Greenberg and Joseph D. Olander<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\"rss\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Other Reviews: Matthew Wuertz:\u00a0Black Gate. L\u00e4hett\u00e4nyt Tpi Klo: Tpi\u2019s Reading Diary Fiction: Time Quarry (Part 1 of 3) \u2022 serial by Clifford D. Simak \u2665\u2665 Third from the Sun \u2022 short story by Richard Matheson \u2665 The Stars Are the Styx \u2022 novelette by Theodore Sturgeon \u2665\u2665\u2665\u2665 Later Than You Think \u2022 short story by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-galaxy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pcj7-5M","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=358"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3501,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358\/revisions\/3501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}

  9. The Brown and the MacLean stories were selected for the Everett F. Bleiler\u00a0& T. E.\u00a0Dikty Best Science-Fiction Stories: 1951<\/a><\/em>. The Sturgeon story wasn\u2019t, nor did it appear in a later ‘Best Of the Year’ from Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg, The Great SF Stories 12<\/a><\/em>.<\/li>\n