Научная фантастика и фэнтези: История журнала Science Fantasy/Impulse

British science fiction magazine (1950–1964)
the mixed genre

Science Fantasy, which also appeared under the titles Impulse and SF Impulse, was a British fantasy and science fiction magazine, launched in 1950 by Nova Publications as a companion to Nova's New Worlds. Walter Gillings was editor for the first two issues, and was then replaced by John Carnell, the editor of New Worlds, as a cost saving measure. Carnell edited both magazines until Nova went out of business in early 1964. The titles were acquired by Roberts & Vinter, who hired Kyril Bonfiglioli to edit Science Fantasy; Bonfiglioli changed the title to Impulse in early 1966, but the new title led to confusion with the distributors and sales fell, though the magazine remained profitable. The title was changed again to SF Impulse for the last few issues. Science Fantasy ceased publication the following year, when Roberts & Vinter came under financial pressure after their printer went bankrupt. Gillings had an inventory of material that he had acquired while editing Fantasy, and he drew on this for Science Fantasy, as well as incorporating his own fanzine, Science Fantasy Review, into the new magazine. Once Carnell took over, Science Fantasy typically ran a long lead novelette along with several shorter stories; prominent contributors in the 1950s included John Brunner, Ken Bulmer, and Brian Aldiss, whose first novel Nonstop appeared (in an early version) in the February 1956 issue. Fantasy stories began to appear more frequently during the latter half of the 1950s, and in the early 1960s Carnell began to publish Thomas Burnett Swann's well received historical fantasies. Carnell felt that the literary quality of Science Fantasy was always higher than that of New Worlds, and in the early 1960s his efforts were rewarded with three consecutive Hugo nominations for best magazine. Under Bonfiglioli more new writers appeared, including Keith Roberts, Brian Stableford and Josephine Saxton. In the opinion of science fiction historian Mike Ashley, the final year of Impulse, as it was titled by that time, included some of the best material ever published in a British science fiction magazine.

Spring Summer Autumn Winter Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec 1950 1/1 1/2 1951 1/3 1952 2/4 2/5 1953 2/6 1954 7 (nd) 8 9 10 111955 12 13 14 15 16 1956 17 18 19 201957 21 22 23 24 25 261958 27 28 29 30 31 321959 33 34 35 36 37 38Issues of Science Fantasy in the 1950s, showing volume/issue number, andcolor coded to show who was editor for each issue. Walter Gillings was theeditor for the first two issues; John Carnell took over for the remainder of the1950s. Underlining indicates that the magazine was titled with the season (e. g."Summer 1950") for that issue. Issue 7 was only dated with the year, 1954. In early 1946, John Carnell launched a new science fiction magazine titled New Worlds, published by Pendulum Publications. The first issue appeared in July 1946 and failed to sell well. The second issue, that October, sold better, but Pendulum went out of business before the end of 1947 with only one more issue released. A group of sf fans, including Carnell and Frank Cooper, decided to restart the magazine under their own control, and formed Nova Publications Ltd. The fourth issue appeared in April 1949. At the same time that the first issue of New Worlds appeared, a separate British magazine called Fantasy was launched by Walter Gillings, a science fiction fan and a reporter by profession. Fantasy lasted for only three issues before closing in 1947, but Gillings had accumulated a substantial inventory of stories—enough to fill nine issues. Gillings followed the demise of Fantasy by publishing a fanzine, titled Fantasy Review, beginning in March 1947. In 1950, with New Worlds on a stable quarterly schedule, Nova Publications decided to launch a companion, Science Fantasy. After the Spring 1953 issue, Nova Publications decided to switch printers, in order to cut costs and bring the cover price down from 2/ (10 p) to 1/6 (7.5 p). The new printers, The Carlton Press, failed to keep to the agreed printing schedule, and produced poor quality work; there were also printers' strikes, and this disruption caused extended delays in the appearance of the seventh issue. In 1958, Nova decided to launch a British reprint of the American magazine Science Fiction Adventures, under the same title. The British Science Fiction Adventures lasted until May 1963, when it was felled by declining sales.#tag:ref|Warburton's partner, Godfrey Gold, published pin up magazines, and was also interested in the magazines for the same reason. Bonfiglioli often bought material from writers without an established reputation; he did not make any special effort to acquire stories from well known names. He was known for writing long and helpful rejection letters to newcomers, but he also had a reputation for laziness, and much of the day to day editorial work was done by assistants—first James Parkhill Rathbone, and then Keith Roberts. Despite the setback from Bonfiglioli's title change, the magazine was still profitable, but in July 1966 Roberts & Vinter's distributor, Thorpe & Porter, went bankrupt while owing Roberts & Vinter a substantial sum. The resulting financial pressure led Roberts & Vinter to decide to focus on their more profitable magazines, and the February 1967 issue of SF Impulse was the last, though New Worlds, the sister magazine, survived via an Arts Council grant obtained by Brian Aldiss's efforts. Stories in the first issue, drawn from Gillings' inventory of material acquired for Fantasy, included "The Belt", by J. M. Walsh; "Time's Arrow", by Arthur C. Clarke; and "Monster", by John Christopher, writing as Christopher Youd. There were also three book review columns: two by Gillings, writing under pseudonyms, and one by John Aiken, the son of poet Conrad Aiken. Stories that would not have suited New Worlds began to appear, such as William F. Temple's "Eternity" (February 1955), in which aliens mysteriously provide haloes to thousands of people, and Dal Stiven's "Free Will", which featured robot ghosts. Stories in the whimsical fantasy tradition that had been started by Unknown did not often appear in Science Fantasy. His efforts were rewarded by frequent appearances of stories from Science Fantasy in the annual Year's Greatest SF anthology series edited by Judith Merril. Carnell occasionally used reprints, often selecting stories in line with the magazine's focus on offbeat fantasy, such as Fritz Leiber's "Space Time for Springers", and Theodore Sturgeon's "The Graveyard Reader". Towards the end of the 1950s Carnell began to reintroduce non fiction, and starting in 1959 he printed a series of articles by Sam Moskowitz on key figures in the early history of science fiction, such as Edgar Allan Poe; these articles, which had first appeared in American magazines such as Satellite Science Fiction, were later collected as Explorers of the Infinite.

In the early 1960s, Thomas Burnett Swann became strongly associated with Science Fantasy. Swann's speciality was historical fantasy, and Where Is the Bird of Fire?, his retelling of the Romulus and Remus myth, which was serialised in Science Fantasy in 1962, "received more praise than any other [novelette] in recent years", according to Carnell. Swann was one of the three mainstays of Science Fantasy in the early 1960s: the others were Michael Moorcock and J. G. Ballard. Ashley regards the early 1960s as one of the high points of the magazine; it was nominated for the Hugo Award for each of the last three years in which Carnell edited it, from 1962 to 1964, but it never won. When Kyril Bonfiglioli took over in 1964, he complained in his first editorial that he had "just read through a quarter of a million words of ms [manuscript] and half of it was so bad it made me blush". He asked Brian Aldiss to help; the only unsold stories Aldiss had were from his early days, "written before I got the hang of things", but Bonfiglioli told Aldiss, "They can't possibly be worse than the rubbish that's being submitted". The Day of the Minotaur, another historical fantasy by Thomas Burnett Swann, began serialisation in the same issue under the title The Blue Monkeys. Swann's novel The Weirwoods was also serialised in the magazine, with no change of title. Other new writers who began to appear under Bonfiglioli's editorship included Josephine Saxton and Brian Stableford. At the World Science Fiction Convention in 1965, held in London, Bonfiglioli persuaded several well known writers to appear in an "all star issue with specially written stories round the theme of 'sacrifice. The issue in question was the first one under the new title of Impulse, in March 1966; it included fiction by James Blish, Brian Aldiss, Harry Harrison, J. G. Ballard, Poul Anderson, Jack Vance, and Keith Roberts, who contributed "The Signaller", the first story in his Pavane sequence. The second issue was also high quality, with another Pavane story and a short story by John Brunner from his "Traveller in Black" series. Subsequent issues did not sustain this high level, but overall, in Ashley's opinion, the twelve issues of Impulse contained "some of the best SF and fantasy ever published in British magazines". Walter Gillings: Summer 1950 – Winter 1950. John Carnell: Winter 1951–1952 – April 1964. Kyril Bonfiglioli: June–July 1964 – September 1966. Harry Harrison and Keith Roberts: October 1966 – February 1967. The publisher was Nova Publications until April 1964, and Roberts & Vinter Ltd thereafter.