"If" ғылыми-фантастикалық журналының тарихы

American science fiction magazine

If was an American science fiction magazine launched in March 1952 by Quinn Publications, owned by James L. Quinn. The magazine was moderately successful, though for most of its run it was not considered to be in the first tier of American science fiction magazines. It achieved its greatest success under editor Frederik Pohl, winning the Hugo Award for best professional magazine three years running from 1966 to 1968. If published many award winning stories over its 22 years, including Robert A. Heinlein's novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress and Harlan Ellison's short story "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream". The most prominent writer to make his first sale to If was Larry Niven, whose story "The Coldest Place" appeared in the December 1964 issue. If was merged into Galaxy Science Fiction after the December 1974 issue, its 175th issue overall.

Although science fiction had been published in the United States before the 1920s, it did not begin to coalesce into a separately marketed genre until the appearance in 1926 of Amazing Stories, a pulp magazine published by Hugo Gernsback. By the end of the 1930s, the field was undergoing its first boom, but World War II and its attendant paper shortages led to the demise of several titles. By the late 1940s, the market began to recover. From a low of eight active magazines in 1946, the field expanded to 20 in 1950, and a further 22 had commenced publication by 1954. If was launched in the middle of this second publishing boom.

The new editor was Ejler Jakobsson, though Pohl continued to be listed as editor emeritus on the masthead until the July–August 1970 issue. In May 1973, Judy Lynn Benjamin (Judy Lynn del Rey since her 1971 marriage to Lester del Rey) resigned. She was briefly replaced by Albert Dytch, but within four months, Dytch in turn left, and in August 1973, James Baen joined UPD. He was made managing editor of If with effect from the January 1974 issue, and full editor one issue later; Jakobsson was listed as editor emeritus until the August 1974 issue. Baen had little opportunity to work with If, however, as financial problems at UPD combined with the increasing cost of paper (a consequence of the rising price of oil) led to a decision to combine If with Galaxy. Despite the fact that in 1974, If's circulation had exceeded Galaxy's for the first time, Galaxy was retained and If was merged with it beginning with the January 1975 issue.

In 1986, an attempt was made to revive If as a semiprofessional magazine. The only issue, dated September–October 1986, was edited by Clifford Hong. Worlds of IF was relaunched again in February 2024 by Starship Sloane Publishing, with Justin T. O'Conor Sloane as editor, and Robert Silverberg as a contributing editor. The first issue included reprinted fiction by Silverberg and David Brin.

Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec1952 1/1 1/2 1/3 1/4 1/5 19531/6 2/1 2/2 2/3 2/4 2/5 19542/6 3/1 3/2 3/3 3/4 3/5 3/6 4/1 4/2 4/3 4/419554/5 4/6 5/1 5/2 5/3 5/4 5/5 5/6 6/11956 6/2 6/3 6/4 6/5 6/6 7/11957 7/2 7/3 7/4 7/5 7/6 8/11958 8/2 8/3 8/4 8/5 8/6 9/11959 9/2 8/6 9/4 9/5 19609/6 10/1 10/2 10/3 10/4 10/5 196110/6 11/1 11/2 11/3 11/4 11/5 Issues of If from 1952 to 1961, showing volume/issue number. Editors werePaul W. Fairman (yellow), James L. Quinn (blue), Larry T. Shaw (pink), Quinnagain (blue), Damon Knight (purple) and H. L. Gold (green). The first issue of If, dated March 1952, went on sale on 7 January of that year. The lead story was Howard Browne's "Twelve Times Zero", a murder mystery with a science fictional resolution; other stories were from Ray Palmer, Richard Shaver, and Rog Phillips, all writers associated with the Ziff Davis magazines. Browne was the editor of Ziff Davis's Amazing Science Fiction, a leading magazine of the time, and had given Fairman his start in the field in the late 1940s. In addition to the fiction and the editorial by Fairman, it had a letter column, a profile of Wilson Tucker, a selection of science news, a guest editorial by Ken Slater, a well known British fan, and an approving review of the TV show Tales of Tomorrow. The dominant science fiction magazines of the 1950s American market were Astounding, Galaxy, and Fantasy and Science Fiction, but If was in the next rank in terms of quality: SF historian Frank M. Robinson, for example, describes If as the "most major of the minors". Well known writers who appeared in If in the 1950s include Harlan Ellison and Arthur C. Clarke: the original short story version of Clarke's novel The Songs of Distant Earth appeared in the June 1958 issue. Isaac Asimov's widely reprinted story "The Feeling of Power" appeared in February 1958. Frank Robinson commented that "Pohl was the only one who was surprised when he won three Hugos in a row for editing IF. It had been fun, and the fun had showed." Niven's "Neutron Star" appeared in October 1966, and Harlan Ellison's "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" appeared in March 1967; both won Hugo Awards. Pohl also managed to secure a new Skylark novel, Skylark DuQuesne, from E. E. Smith; the series had been started in the 1920s and was still popular with readers. Pohl also bought A. E. van Vogt's "The Expendables"; the story was van Vogt's first sale in 14 years and attracted long time readers to the magazine. Another coup was the serialization of three novels by Robert A. Heinlein, including the award winning The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, which ran in five parts from December 1965 to April 1966. Gardner Dozois also made his first sale to If, with "The Empty Man", about a man possessed by an alien, in the September 1966 issue, and Gene Wolfe's "Mountains Like Mice", about an abandoned group of colonists on Mars, appeared in the May 1966 issue. Technically this was not Wolfe's first sale, as he had already had "The Dead Man" published in the October 1965 issue of Sir!, but "Mountains Like Mice" had been written earlier. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction describes the late 1960s as If's "heyday": Galaxy was considered the senior magazine for most of the fifteen years the two magazines were stablemates. Ashley has suggested that If was attempting to acquire readership from the many new fans of science fiction who had been introduced to the genre through television, in particular via the popular 1960s shows Doctor Who and Star Trek. If also ran a friendly letter column, with more fan oriented discussions than the other magazines, and between 1966 and 1968 a column by Lin Carter introduced readers to various aspects of science fiction fandom. These features are also likely to have appealed to a younger audience. It was priced at 35 cents to begin with, and increased to 40 cents with the March 1963 issue, to 50 cents with the December 1964 issue, to 60 cents with the August 1967 issue, and finally to 75 cents with the September–October 1970 issue. If was originally subtitled Worlds of Science Fiction, but in November 1961 the cover logo was changed to Worlds of If Science Fiction. UPD formally changed the title to Worlds of If in the January/February 1972 issue and in September 1974, officially registered the title of the magazine as Worlds of If with the USPTO. The magazine was bimonthly until the March 1954 issue, which was followed by April 1954, inaugurating a monthly period that ran until June 1955. This was followed by August 1955, resuming a bimonthly schedule that ran until July 1964, with only one irregularity, when the February 1959 issue was followed by July 1959. After July 1964, If ran a monthly schedule until April 1970, with three omissions: there were no issues dated September 1964, June 1969, or August 1969. From May–June 1970, the issues were bimonthly and bore the names of two months. This bimonthly sequence ran through the last issue at the end of 1974. The date the magazine printed on the cover reverted to a single month with the June 1971 issue, though the contents page still used two months to identify the issue. The volume numbering began with six issues to a volume: there were three errors on the magazine contents page, with volume 8 number 1 incorrectly printed as volume 7 number 6; volume 9 number 3 printed as volume 8 number 6; and volume 10 number 1 printed as volume 10 number 6. Volume 14, which began in March 1964, ran through the end of the year, with seven numbers; the remaining volumes had 12 numbers each except for volume 19 which had 10 and volume 22 which had 8. Several British editions of If were produced. In 1953 and 1954, Strato Publications reprinted 15 issues, numbering them from 1 to 15; another 18 were reprinted between 1959 and 1962, with the issue numbers started at 1 again. Between January and November 1967 a UK edition appeared from Gold Star Publications; these were identical to the US edition dated ten months previously. Between 1972 and 1974, 15 of the UPD editions of If were imported, renumbered and repriced for UK distribution. The numbering, inexplicably, ran from 1 to 9, and then 11, 1, 13, 3, 4 and 5. In addition, two anthologies drew all their contents from If without mentioning the magazine: The 6 Fingers of Time and 5 Other Science Fiction Novelets (1965) and The Frozen Planet and Other Stories (1966). Both were edited by Samuel H Post, who was not credited.