Strange Highways: Reading Science Fantasy, 1950-1967. Damien Broderick

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Strange Highways: Reading Science Fantasy, 1950-1967 - Damien  Broderick

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      BORGO PRESS BOOKS BY DAMIEN BRODERICK

      Adrift in the Noösphere: Science Fiction Stories

      Building New Worlds, 1946-1957 (with John Boston)

      Chained to the Alien: The Best of ASFR: Australian SF Review (Second Series) [Editor]

      Climbing Mount Implausible: The Evolution of a Science Fiction Writer

      Embarrass My Dog: The Way We Were, the Things We Thought

      Ferocious Minds: Polymathy and the New Enlightenment

      Human’s Burden: A Science Fiction Novel (with Rory Barnes)

      I’m Dying Here: A Comedy of Bad Manners (with Rory Barnes)

      New Worlds: Before the New Wave, 1958-1964 (with John Boston)

      Post Mortal Syndrome: A Science Fiction Novel (with Barbara Lamar)

      Skiffy and Mimesis: More Best of ASFR: Australian SF Review (Second Series) [Editor]

      Strange Highways: Reading Science Fantasy, 1950-1967 (with John Boston)

      Unleashing the Strange: Twenty-First Century Science Fiction Literature

      Warriors of the Tao: The Best of Science Fiction: A Review of Speculative Literature [Editor with Van Ikin]

      x, y, z, t: Dimensions of Science Fiction

      Zones: A Science Fiction Novel (with Rory Barnes)

      Borgo Press Books by John Boston

      Building New Worlds, 1946-1957 (with Damien Broderick)

      New Worlds: Before the New Wave, 1958-1964 (with Damien Broderick)

      Strange Highways: Reading Science Fantasy, 1950-1967 (with Damien Broderick)

      COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

      Copyright © 2012 by John Boston and Damien Broderick

      Published by Wildside Press LLC

      www.wildsidebooks.com

      DEDICATION

      As always, for Dori and the Guys

      J.B.

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      These books were first aired in more rudimentary form on the Fictionmags Internet discussion group, and benefited greatly from the robust and erudite commentary and correction customary among its members. In particular we thank Fictionmags members Ned Brooks, William G. Contento, Ian Covell, Steve Holland, Frank Hollander, Rich Horton, David Langford, Dennis Lien, Barry Malzberg, Todd Mason, David Pringle, Robert Silverberg, and Phil Stephensen-Payne, as well as David Ketterer, for the encouragement, insight, and information that they respectively provided.

      —J.B. and D.B.

      INTRODUCTION, by Damien Broderick

      Science fantasy is a blend, as you’d expect, of science fiction (the literature of drastic change precipitated by new phenomena and knowledge) and fantasy (the literature of unchecked imagination). So it tends to be bolder, more highly colored, than pure SF (as we’ll abbreviate “science fiction” or “speculative fiction”) but more disciplined than the exotic vapors or psychological uncanniness of pure fantasy.

      It can come as some surprise, then, that a parallel universe of science fantasy developed in Britain around the middle of last century, sometimes borrowing stories from the established US writers and magazines but also developing its own distinctive strains of fantasy narrative, most famously by new or accomplished writers such as Brian W. Aldiss, J. G. Ballard, John Brunner, Michael Moorcock and Thomas Burnett Swann. This book looks closely at the classic British science fiction magazine, Science Fantasy, that played a key role in this parallel-but-entwined history. From 1950 through mid-1964 it captured the sub-genre in its title, and often if not always in its contents, while for its last three years it appeared in rather different form, as Impulse and then SF Impulse, before shutting down in February, 1967 when its distributor was bankrupted.

      The voice Science Fantasy aimed for, at its best, is caught well by Kenneth Bulmer and John Newman, writing as “Kenneth Johns” on the magazine’s tenth anniversary:

      §

      John Boston, for his own amusement, found himself writing an extensive commentary on those early, foundational years of New Worlds, Science Fantasy, and Science Fiction Adventures. He posted his ongoing analysis in a long semi-critical series to a closed listserv devoted to enthusiasts of popular fiction magazines. The present extensive study, published in three parts due to the length of its exacting but entertaining coverage of these fifteen years of publication, is an edited and reorganized version of those electronic posts. This volume covers not only Carnell’s years with Science Fantasy, from the point at which it

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