Imagination (magazine)
Encyclopedia
Imagination was an American fantasy and science fiction magazine
first published in October 1950 by Raymond Palmer's Clark Publishing Company. The magazine was sold almost immediately to Greenleaf Publishing Company, owned by William Hamling
, who published and edited it from the third issue, February 1951, for the rest of the magazine's life. Hamling launched a sister magazine, Imaginative Tales, in 1954; both ceased publication at the end of 1958 in the aftermath of major changes in US magazine distribution due to the liquidation of American News Company
.
The magazine was more successful than most of the numerous science fiction titles launched in the late 1940s and early 1950s, lasting a total of 63 issues. Despite this success, the magazine had a reputation for low-quality space opera
and adventure fiction, and modern literary historians refer to it in dismissive terms. Hamling consciously adopted an editorial policy oriented toward entertainment, asserting in an early issue that "science fiction was never meant to be an educational tour de force". Few of the stories from Imagination have received recognition, but it did publish Robert Sheckley
's first professional sale, "Final Examination", in the May 1952 issue, and also printed fiction by Philip K. Dick
, Robert A. Heinlein
and John Wyndham
.
American science fiction magazines first appeared in the 1920s with the appearance of Amazing Stories
, a pulp magazine
published by Hugo Gernsback
. The beginnings of science fiction as a separately marketed genre can be traced to this time, and 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 again. 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. Imagination was launched in the middle of this publishing boom.
The groundwork was laid in 1947, when Clark Publishing, the company that would publish the first issue of Imagination, was incorporated in Evanston, Illinois
, by Raymond Palmer. He worked for Ziff-Davis as the editor of Amazing Stories
and did not leave until the end of 1949, but he launched two magazines under the Clark name before that date: Fate, in the spring of 1948, and Other Worlds
, the first issue of which was dated November 1949. Both of these magazines listed their editor as "Robert N. Webster", a pseudonym Palmer adopted while he was still at Ziff-Davis because of the conflict of interest. The second issue of Other Worlds reported that Webster and Palmer were going to edit together; by the third issue, dated March 1950, the pretense had been dropped and although there was no masthead
listing the editor, the editorial was simply signed "Rap" (for "Raymond A. Palmer"). At the 1949 World Science Fiction Convention
in Cincinnati, held over the weekend of 3–5 September, Palmer announced that he had left Ziff-Davis and described his plans for Clark Publishing. He also met and hired Bea Mahaffey, a 21-year-old science fiction fan attending her first convention, as his assistant editor.
With Fate and Other Worlds launched, Palmer began to plan for a new magazine, to be called Imagination. Material for the first two issues had been assembled by mid-1950, but in the early summer Palmer fell down his basement stairs and was left paralyzed from the waist down. While he was hospitalized, much of the work of editing both Other Worlds and Imagination was done by Mahaffey, who coped well, despite her inexperience. An assistant, Marge Budwig Saunder, was hired to read the slush pile
and help out. The magazine's first issue, dated October 1950 on a planned bi-monthly schedule, appeared on news stands 1 August 1950. However, in September that year, Ziff-Davis made the decision to move to New York from Chicago; Palmer promptly contacted William Hamling
, who did not want to relocate and suggested that Hamling take over Imagination. Like Palmer, Hamling had made preparations to leave Ziff-Davis by establishing a separate publishing company, Greenleaf Publishing, and in November 1950 Hamling left Ziff-Davis and became Imaginations editor and publisher.
In 1954 Hamling started a companion magazine, Imaginative Tales
; in addition, his company Greenleaf Publishing was the publisher of Rogue
, a men's magazine modelled after Playboy
. In 1957 the liquidation of American News Company
, a major distributor, meant that many magazines had to scramble to find new distributors. Independent distributors often required that the magazines be monthly, and that they be in a larger format than the digest-size common in science fiction magazines. The larger format required higher revenue to be profitable, but in many cases it proved impossible to attract the additional advertising income that would have kept the magazines afloat. By the end of 1958, many titles had disappeared as a result, with Imagination one of the victims; Hamling closed down both Imagination and its sister magazine to invest the money in Rogue instead. The last issue of Imagination was October 1958, the 63rd issue, while Imaginative Tales, retitled Space Travel, ceased with the November 1958 issue. There was no indication in either magazine that the end had come, though the last issue of Imagination omitted its letter, book review and pen-pal columns, all of which had appeared regularly in prior issues.
Circulation figures were not required to be published annually until the 1960s, so the actual circulation figures are not known. For comparison, the more successful Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, which had been launched the previous year, is known to have had a circulation of just under 60,000 copies for its first issue, dated Fall 1949.
and Fantastic Adventures
. The story was a science fantasy
tale of Leeta, a beautiful woman from another dimension stealing the souls of men to try to save her father. The cover illustration, by Hannes Bok
, showed Leeta on her flying steed. Other contributors included Rog Phillips
, another prolific magazine author, and Kris Neville, whose first story had been published only the year before. Neville's work appeared regularly in the first few years of the magazine; other prolific contributors included Dwight V. Swain
, Daniel F. Galouye
and Milton Lesser. Edmond Hamilton
's work also appeared frequently towards the end of the magazine's life. The magazine often contained a long novel as the lead attraction.
In addition to less well-known regulars, some more prominent writers occasionally appeared. Ray Bradbury
's "The Fire Balloons" was published in the April 1951 issue, under the title "'…In This Sign'"; the story was later incorporated into Bradbury's fixups, The Martian Chronicles
and The Illustrated Man
. Robert Sheckley
's first story, "Final Examination", appeared in the May 1952 issue. Other well-known authors who were published in Imagination include Poul Anderson
, John Wyndham (as "John Beynon"), James Blish
, Philip K. Dick
, Harlan Ellison
, Robert A. Heinlein, Frederik Pohl
and Robert Silverberg
.
Imagination is generally thought of by historians of science fiction as one of the weaker magazines of the 1950s, despite its relative longevity. Donald Tuck
, in his Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy, dismissed the novels it published, saying, "not many were noteworthy, most being in the interplanetary/space opera/adventure field", and Brian Stableford
, a science fiction writer and critic, described it as dealing "primarily in routine space opera." James Blish
, writing under the pseudonym "William Atheling, Jr.", which he used for some of his critical writing, remarked that it was a "widely unread" magazine. Hamling's editorial policy was consciously slanted against intellectualism. In the November 1951 issue he commented that "science fiction was never meant to be an educational tour de force. The so-called adult story is nothing more than an attempt to show the reader how dumb he is and how smart the editor is." Imaginations approach, he said, was to publish entertainment: "What we need is a little relaxation. And entertaining reading is one way to get it." Some readers agreed with Hamling; a 1952 issue of Rhodomagnetic Digest, a fanzine
, contains approving commentary on Hamling's editorial by Gregg Calkins, a fan of the period.
Starting with the April 1951 issue, a regular column on science fiction fandom began, titled "Fandora's Box". It was written by Mari Wolf, an active fan, for five years, and was taken over by Robert Bloch
from June 1956 through the end. The column had an excellent reputation, and was one of the few such columns in the professional magazines. Every issue carried an editorial, and a letter column appeared in every issue but the very last. A book review column began in June 1953, and appeared in every issue except the last one. It was initially by Mark Reinsberg, and was taken over by Henry Bott in May 1954 after two months in which both reviewers contributed to the column. A "Cosmic Pen Club" column, where fans could post requests for pen-pals, began in February 1957; as with the book reviews it appeared regularly, excepting only the last issue. Beginning in September 1951, the inside front cover was often used for an "Introducing the Author" feature, with short pieces by and about a writer or artist who appeared in the issue. These included photographs of the authors in question, a feature not typically found in other magazines. Among the better-known authors featured were Heinlein, Evan Hunter and Philip K. Dick. "Introducing the Author" skipped four issues from October 1954 to January 1955, and ceased altogether with the April 1956 issue. One issue, May 1953, included pictures from that year's World Science Fiction in Chicago, rather than a feature about an author. The most frequently appearing cover artists were Harold W. McCauley, Lloyd Rognan, Malcolm Smith
and William Terry.
(7.5 × 5.5 inches or 19.1 × 14.0 cm) for its first 17 issues, and then shrank slightly to a short digest size (7.25 × 5.5 inches or 18.4 × 14.0 cm) for the rest of its run, a further 46 issues. The volume number rose by one at the start of each calendar year, regardless of the number of issues. Volume 1, 1950, contained only two issues; subsequent volumes contained five to twelve issues, depending on frequency of publication. The overall issue number was printed on the spine (an unusual practice) along with the volume number. The first issue had a publication date of October 1950, and the schedule was bimonthly through the September 1952 issue except that June 1951 was followed by September 1951. The next four issues were dated October 1952, December 1952, January 1953 and February 1953, and then a monthly run began with April 1953 that lasted without a break until the July 1955 issue. The next issue was October 1955, which inaugurated another bimonthly period that ran with perfect regularity until the last issue, October 1958. The price remained at 35 cents throughout.
The title of the magazine was initially "Imagination: Stories of Science and Fantasy"; it changed with the October 1955 issue to "Imagination: Science Fiction", though this change was only on the cover and spine and was never reflected on the masthead.
The first 28 issues were 166 pages long. The page count dropped to 134 with the April 1954 issue and stayed at that length for the remainder of the run. The cover layout initially strongly resembled that of Other Worlds but was changed with the fifth issue, June 1951, to have a white background banner for the title. This format was retained for the rest of the magazine's life, with occasional slight variations such as using a different color for the banner background. The spine also changed from a colored spine with pale lettering, which was similar to the spine style used by Other Worlds, to a white spine with red or blue lettering.
The publisher was Clark Publishing Company for the first two issues. The editor for those issues was Raymond Palmer, but as he was hospitalized much of the work was done by Bea Mahaffey. As a result these two issues are sometimes indexed with Mahaffey as editor. With the third issue, Greenleaf Publishing Company became the publisher and William Hamling took over as editor, a position he retained throughout the magazine's life.
Science fiction magazine
A science fiction magazine is a publication that offers primarily science fiction, either in a hard copy periodical format or on the Internet....
first published in October 1950 by Raymond Palmer's Clark Publishing Company. The magazine was sold almost immediately to Greenleaf Publishing Company, owned by William Hamling
William Hamling (publisher)
William Lawrence Hamling was a Chicago-based publisher active from the 1950s into the 1970s.Hamling began as an author. His Shadow of the Sphinx is a horror novel about an ancient Egyptian sorceress. First published during the 1940s in Fantastic Adventures, it was described by Lin Carter as "the...
, who published and edited it from the third issue, February 1951, for the rest of the magazine's life. Hamling launched a sister magazine, Imaginative Tales, in 1954; both ceased publication at the end of 1958 in the aftermath of major changes in US magazine distribution due to the liquidation of American News Company
American News Company
American News Company was a magazine distribution company founded in 1864 by Sinclair Tousey, which dominated the distribution market in the 1940s and 1950s...
.
The magazine was more successful than most of the numerous science fiction titles launched in the late 1940s and early 1950s, lasting a total of 63 issues. Despite this success, the magazine had a reputation for low-quality space opera
Space opera
Space opera is a subgenre of science fiction that emphasizes romantic, often melodramatic adventure, set mainly or entirely in outer space, generally involving conflict between opponents possessing advanced technologies and abilities. The term has no relation to music and it is analogous to "soap...
and adventure fiction, and modern literary historians refer to it in dismissive terms. Hamling consciously adopted an editorial policy oriented toward entertainment, asserting in an early issue that "science fiction was never meant to be an educational tour de force". Few of the stories from Imagination have received recognition, but it did publish Robert Sheckley
Robert Sheckley
Robert Sheckley was a Hugo- and Nebula-nominated American author. First published in the science fiction magazines of the 1950s, his numerous quick-witted stories and novels were famously unpredictable, absurdist and broadly comical.Sheckley was named Author Emeritus by the Science Fiction and...
's first professional sale, "Final Examination", in the May 1952 issue, and also printed fiction by Philip K. Dick
Philip K. Dick
Philip Kindred Dick was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments and altered...
, Robert A. Heinlein
Robert A. Heinlein
Robert Anson Heinlein was an American science fiction writer. Often called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was one of the most influential and controversial authors of the genre. He set a standard for science and engineering plausibility and helped to raise the genre's standards of...
and John Wyndham
John Wyndham
John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris was an English science fiction writer who usually used the pen name John Wyndham, although he also used other combinations of his names, such as John Beynon and Lucas Parkes...
.
History
Amazing Stories
Amazing Stories was an American science fiction magazine launched in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback's Experimenter Publishing. It was the first magazine devoted solely to science fiction...
, a pulp magazine
Pulp magazine
Pulp magazines , also collectively known as pulp fiction, refers to inexpensive fiction magazines published from 1896 through the 1950s. The typical pulp magazine was seven inches wide by ten inches high, half an inch thick, and 128 pages long...
published by Hugo Gernsback
Hugo Gernsback
Hugo Gernsback , born Hugo Gernsbacher, was a Luxembourgian American inventor, writer, editor, and magazine publisher, best remembered for publications that included the first science fiction magazine. His contributions to the genre as publisher were so significant that, along with H. G...
. The beginnings of science fiction as a separately marketed genre can be traced to this time, and by the end of the 1930s the field was undergoing its first boom, but World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
and its attendant paper shortages led to the demise of several titles. By the late 1940s the market began to recover again. 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. Imagination was launched in the middle of this publishing boom.
The groundwork was laid in 1947, when Clark Publishing, the company that would publish the first issue of Imagination, was incorporated in Evanston, Illinois
Evanston, Illinois
Evanston is a suburban municipality in Cook County, Illinois 12 miles north of downtown Chicago, bordering Chicago to the south, Skokie to the west, and Wilmette to the north, with an estimated population of 74,360 as of 2003. It is one of the North Shore communities that adjoin Lake Michigan...
, by Raymond Palmer. He worked for Ziff-Davis as the editor of Amazing Stories
Amazing Stories
Amazing Stories was an American science fiction magazine launched in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback's Experimenter Publishing. It was the first magazine devoted solely to science fiction...
and did not leave until the end of 1949, but he launched two magazines under the Clark name before that date: Fate, in the spring of 1948, and Other Worlds
Other Worlds (magazine)
Other Worlds Science Stories was an American science fiction magazine, edited by Raymond A. Palmer with Bea Mahaffey. It was published by Palmer's Clark Publishing in Evanston, Illinois beginning in the late 1940s...
, the first issue of which was dated November 1949. Both of these magazines listed their editor as "Robert N. Webster", a pseudonym Palmer adopted while he was still at Ziff-Davis because of the conflict of interest. The second issue of Other Worlds reported that Webster and Palmer were going to edit together; by the third issue, dated March 1950, the pretense had been dropped and although there was no masthead
Masthead (publishing)
The masthead is a list, published in a newspaper or magazine, of its staff. In some publications it names only the most senior individuals; in others, it may name many or all...
listing the editor, the editorial was simply signed "Rap" (for "Raymond A. Palmer"). At the 1949 World Science Fiction Convention
Worldcon
Worldcon, or more formally The World Science Fiction Convention, is a science fiction convention held each year since 1939 . It is the annual convention of the World Science Fiction Society...
in Cincinnati, held over the weekend of 3–5 September, Palmer announced that he had left Ziff-Davis and described his plans for Clark Publishing. He also met and hired Bea Mahaffey, a 21-year-old science fiction fan attending her first convention, as his assistant editor.
With Fate and Other Worlds launched, Palmer began to plan for a new magazine, to be called Imagination. Material for the first two issues had been assembled by mid-1950, but in the early summer Palmer fell down his basement stairs and was left paralyzed from the waist down. While he was hospitalized, much of the work of editing both Other Worlds and Imagination was done by Mahaffey, who coped well, despite her inexperience. An assistant, Marge Budwig Saunder, was hired to read the slush pile
Slush pile
In publishing, the slush pile is the set of unsolicited query letters or manuscripts sent either directly to the publisher or literary agent by authors, or to the publisher by an agent not known to the publisher....
and help out. The magazine's first issue, dated October 1950 on a planned bi-monthly schedule, appeared on news stands 1 August 1950. However, in September that year, Ziff-Davis made the decision to move to New York from Chicago; Palmer promptly contacted William Hamling
William Hamling (publisher)
William Lawrence Hamling was a Chicago-based publisher active from the 1950s into the 1970s.Hamling began as an author. His Shadow of the Sphinx is a horror novel about an ancient Egyptian sorceress. First published during the 1940s in Fantastic Adventures, it was described by Lin Carter as "the...
, who did not want to relocate and suggested that Hamling take over Imagination. Like Palmer, Hamling had made preparations to leave Ziff-Davis by establishing a separate publishing company, Greenleaf Publishing, and in November 1950 Hamling left Ziff-Davis and became Imaginations editor and publisher.
In 1954 Hamling started a companion magazine, Imaginative Tales
Imaginative Tales
Imaginative Tales was an American fantasy and science fiction magazine launched in September 1954 by William Hamling's Greenleaf Publishing Company. It was created as a sister magazine to Imagination, which Hamling had acquired from Raymond A. Palmer's Clark Publishing in 1951...
; in addition, his company Greenleaf Publishing was the publisher of Rogue
Rogue (magazine)
This article is about a magazine, for other uses of the term see Rogue.Rogue was a Chicago-based men's magazine published by William Hamling from December 1955 until 1967. Founding editor Frank M...
, a men's magazine modelled after Playboy
Playboy
Playboy is an American men's magazine that features photographs of nude women as well as journalism and fiction. It was founded in Chicago in 1953 by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. The magazine has grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc., with...
. In 1957 the liquidation of American News Company
American News Company
American News Company was a magazine distribution company founded in 1864 by Sinclair Tousey, which dominated the distribution market in the 1940s and 1950s...
, a major distributor, meant that many magazines had to scramble to find new distributors. Independent distributors often required that the magazines be monthly, and that they be in a larger format than the digest-size common in science fiction magazines. The larger format required higher revenue to be profitable, but in many cases it proved impossible to attract the additional advertising income that would have kept the magazines afloat. By the end of 1958, many titles had disappeared as a result, with Imagination one of the victims; Hamling closed down both Imagination and its sister magazine to invest the money in Rogue instead. The last issue of Imagination was October 1958, the 63rd issue, while Imaginative Tales, retitled Space Travel, ceased with the November 1958 issue. There was no indication in either magazine that the end had come, though the last issue of Imagination omitted its letter, book review and pen-pal columns, all of which had appeared regularly in prior issues.
Circulation figures were not required to be published annually until the 1960s, so the actual circulation figures are not known. For comparison, the more successful Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, which had been launched the previous year, is known to have had a circulation of just under 60,000 copies for its first issue, dated Fall 1949.
Contents and reception
The cover story for the first issue was "The Soul Stealers" by Chester S. Geier, a regular in the Ziff-Davis magazines Amazing StoriesAmazing Stories
Amazing Stories was an American science fiction magazine launched in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback's Experimenter Publishing. It was the first magazine devoted solely to science fiction...
and Fantastic Adventures
Fantastic Adventures
Fantastic Adventures was an American pulp science fiction magazine, published from 1939 to 1953 by Ziff-Davis. It was initially edited by Ray Palmer, who was also the editor of Amazing Stories, Ziff-Davis's other science fiction title. The first nine issues were in bedsheet format, but in June 1940...
. The story was a science fantasy
Science fantasy
Science fantasy is a mixed genre within speculative fiction drawing elements from both science fiction and fantasy. Although in some terms of its portrayal in recent media products it can be defined as instead of being a mixed genre of science fiction and fantasy it is instead a mixing of the...
tale of Leeta, a beautiful woman from another dimension stealing the souls of men to try to save her father. The cover illustration, by Hannes Bok
Hannes Bok
Hannes Bok, pseudonym for Wayne Francis Woodard , was an American artist and illustrator, as well as an amateur astrologer and writer of fantasy fiction and poetry. He painted nearly 150 covers for various science fiction, fantasy, and detective fiction magazines, as well as contributing hundreds...
, showed Leeta on her flying steed. Other contributors included Rog Phillips
Rog Phillips
Roger Phillips Graham was an American science fiction writer who most often wrote under the name Rog Phillips, but also used other names. Although of his other pseudonyms only Craig Browning is notable in the genre. He is most associated with Amazing Stories and is best known for short fiction...
, another prolific magazine author, and Kris Neville, whose first story had been published only the year before. Neville's work appeared regularly in the first few years of the magazine; other prolific contributors included Dwight V. Swain
Dwight V. Swain
Dwight Vreeland Swain , born in Rochester, Michigan, was an American writer.His first published story was "Henry Horn's Super Solvent", which appeared in Fantastic Adventures in 1941. He contributed stories in the science fiction, mystery, Western, and action adventure genres to a variety of pulp...
, Daniel F. Galouye
Daniel F. Galouye
Daniel Francis Galouye was an American science fiction writer. During the 1950s and 1960s, he contributed novelettes and short stories to various digest size science fiction magazines, sometimes writing under the pseudonym Louis G...
and Milton Lesser. Edmond Hamilton
Edmond Hamilton
Edmond Moore Hamilton was an American author of science fiction stories and novels during the mid-twentieth century. Born in Youngstown, Ohio, he was raised there and in nearby New Castle, Pennsylvania...
's work also appeared frequently towards the end of the magazine's life. The magazine often contained a long novel as the lead attraction.
In addition to less well-known regulars, some more prominent writers occasionally appeared. Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury
Ray Douglas Bradbury is an American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer. Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 and for the science fiction stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man , Bradbury is one of the most celebrated among 20th...
's "The Fire Balloons" was published in the April 1951 issue, under the title "'…In This Sign'"; the story was later incorporated into Bradbury's fixups, The Martian Chronicles
The Martian Chronicles
The Martian Chronicles is a 1950 science fiction short story collection by Ray Bradbury that chronicles the colonization of Mars by humans fleeing from a troubled and eventually atomically devastated Earth, and the conflict between aboriginal Martians and the new colonists...
and The Illustrated Man
The Illustrated Man
The Illustrated Man is a 1951 book of eighteen science fiction short stories by Ray Bradbury that explores the nature of mankind. While none of the stories has a plot or character connection with the next, a recurring theme is the conflict of the cold mechanics of technology and the psychology of...
. Robert Sheckley
Robert Sheckley
Robert Sheckley was a Hugo- and Nebula-nominated American author. First published in the science fiction magazines of the 1950s, his numerous quick-witted stories and novels were famously unpredictable, absurdist and broadly comical.Sheckley was named Author Emeritus by the Science Fiction and...
's first story, "Final Examination", appeared in the May 1952 issue. Other well-known authors who were published in Imagination include Poul Anderson
Poul Anderson
Poul William Anderson was an American science fiction author who began his career during one of the Golden Ages of the genre and continued to write and remain popular into the 21st century. Anderson also authored several works of fantasy, historical novels, and a prodigious number of short stories...
, John Wyndham (as "John Beynon"), James Blish
James Blish
James Benjamin Blish was an American author of fantasy and science fiction. Blish also wrote literary criticism of science fiction using the pen-name William Atheling, Jr.-Biography:...
, Philip K. Dick
Philip K. Dick
Philip Kindred Dick was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments and altered...
, Harlan Ellison
Harlan Ellison
Harlan Jay Ellison is an American writer. His principal genre is speculative fiction.His published works include over 1,700 short stories, novellas, screenplays, teleplays, essays, a wide range of criticism covering literature, film, television, and print media...
, Robert A. Heinlein, Frederik Pohl
Frederik Pohl
Frederik George Pohl, Jr. is an American science fiction writer, editor and fan, with a career spanning over seventy years — from his first published work, "Elegy to a Dead Planet: Luna" , to his most recent novel, All the Lives He Led .He won the National Book Award in 1980 for his novel Jem...
and Robert Silverberg
Robert Silverberg
Robert Silverberg is an American author, best known for writing science fiction. He is a multiple nominee of the Hugo Award and a winner of the Nebula Award.-Early years:...
.
Imagination is generally thought of by historians of science fiction as one of the weaker magazines of the 1950s, despite its relative longevity. Donald Tuck
Donald H. Tuck
Donald Henry Tuck was a bibliographer of science fiction, fantasy and weird fiction. His works were "among the most extensive produced since the pioneering work of Everett F...
, in his Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy, dismissed the novels it published, saying, "not many were noteworthy, most being in the interplanetary/space opera/adventure field", and Brian Stableford
Brian Stableford
Brian Michael Stableford is a British science fiction writer who has published more than 70 novels. His earlier books were published as by Brian M. Stableford, but more recent ones have dropped the middle initial and appeared under the name Brian Stableford...
, a science fiction writer and critic, described it as dealing "primarily in routine space opera." James Blish
James Blish
James Benjamin Blish was an American author of fantasy and science fiction. Blish also wrote literary criticism of science fiction using the pen-name William Atheling, Jr.-Biography:...
, writing under the pseudonym "William Atheling, Jr.", which he used for some of his critical writing, remarked that it was a "widely unread" magazine. Hamling's editorial policy was consciously slanted against intellectualism. In the November 1951 issue he commented that "science fiction was never meant to be an educational tour de force. The so-called adult story is nothing more than an attempt to show the reader how dumb he is and how smart the editor is." Imaginations approach, he said, was to publish entertainment: "What we need is a little relaxation. And entertaining reading is one way to get it." Some readers agreed with Hamling; a 1952 issue of Rhodomagnetic Digest, a fanzine
Fanzine
A fanzine is a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon for the pleasure of others who share their interest...
, contains approving commentary on Hamling's editorial by Gregg Calkins, a fan of the period.
Starting with the April 1951 issue, a regular column on science fiction fandom began, titled "Fandora's Box". It was written by Mari Wolf, an active fan, for five years, and was taken over by Robert Bloch
Robert Bloch
Robert Albert Bloch was a prolific American writer, primarily of crime, horror and science fiction. He is best known as the writer of Psycho, the basis for the film of the same name by Alfred Hitchcock...
from June 1956 through the end. The column had an excellent reputation, and was one of the few such columns in the professional magazines. Every issue carried an editorial, and a letter column appeared in every issue but the very last. A book review column began in June 1953, and appeared in every issue except the last one. It was initially by Mark Reinsberg, and was taken over by Henry Bott in May 1954 after two months in which both reviewers contributed to the column. A "Cosmic Pen Club" column, where fans could post requests for pen-pals, began in February 1957; as with the book reviews it appeared regularly, excepting only the last issue. Beginning in September 1951, the inside front cover was often used for an "Introducing the Author" feature, with short pieces by and about a writer or artist who appeared in the issue. These included photographs of the authors in question, a feature not typically found in other magazines. Among the better-known authors featured were Heinlein, Evan Hunter and Philip K. Dick. "Introducing the Author" skipped four issues from October 1954 to January 1955, and ceased altogether with the April 1956 issue. One issue, May 1953, included pictures from that year's World Science Fiction in Chicago, rather than a feature about an author. The most frequently appearing cover artists were Harold W. McCauley, Lloyd Rognan, Malcolm Smith
Malcolm Smith (artist)
Malcolm Smith was an American artist identified with the retro-futurist tradition.-Biography:Malcolm Hadden Smith was born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1910. He displayed a talent for drawing and painting at an early age. He also enjoyed reading pulp sci-fi books and was a world class target archer,...
and William Terry.
Bibliographic details
Imagination was digest sizeDigest size
Digest size is a magazine size, smaller than a conventional or "journal size" magazine but larger than a standard paperback book, approximately 5½ x 8¼ inches, but can also be 5⅜ x 8⅜ inches and 5½ x 7½ inches. These sizes have evolved from the printing press operation end...
(7.5 × 5.5 inches or 19.1 × 14.0 cm) for its first 17 issues, and then shrank slightly to a short digest size (7.25 × 5.5 inches or 18.4 × 14.0 cm) for the rest of its run, a further 46 issues. The volume number rose by one at the start of each calendar year, regardless of the number of issues. Volume 1, 1950, contained only two issues; subsequent volumes contained five to twelve issues, depending on frequency of publication. The overall issue number was printed on the spine (an unusual practice) along with the volume number. The first issue had a publication date of October 1950, and the schedule was bimonthly through the September 1952 issue except that June 1951 was followed by September 1951. The next four issues were dated October 1952, December 1952, January 1953 and February 1953, and then a monthly run began with April 1953 that lasted without a break until the July 1955 issue. The next issue was October 1955, which inaugurated another bimonthly period that ran with perfect regularity until the last issue, October 1958. The price remained at 35 cents throughout.
The title of the magazine was initially "Imagination: Stories of Science and Fantasy"; it changed with the October 1955 issue to "Imagination: Science Fiction", though this change was only on the cover and spine and was never reflected on the masthead.
The first 28 issues were 166 pages long. The page count dropped to 134 with the April 1954 issue and stayed at that length for the remainder of the run. The cover layout initially strongly resembled that of Other Worlds but was changed with the fifth issue, June 1951, to have a white background banner for the title. This format was retained for the rest of the magazine's life, with occasional slight variations such as using a different color for the banner background. The spine also changed from a colored spine with pale lettering, which was similar to the spine style used by Other Worlds, to a white spine with red or blue lettering.
The publisher was Clark Publishing Company for the first two issues. The editor for those issues was Raymond Palmer, but as he was hospitalized much of the work was done by Bea Mahaffey. As a result these two issues are sometimes indexed with Mahaffey as editor. With the third issue, Greenleaf Publishing Company became the publisher and William Hamling took over as editor, a position he retained throughout the magazine's life.