THE
COLLECTION
Credit
where credit is due: There are four resources that have proven
invaluable to this project, three that graciously provided permission
to borrow their images and a fourth that provided historical data.
I strongly urge you to visit these sites:
Phil
Stephenson-Payne's Galactic Central
Press pulp magazine index. Phil has provided both image and
data support and is a fun guy to talk to. He also maintains a
complete publication history checklist for numerous important
titles.
Jacques
Hamon's Noosfere
visual guide to American science fiction pulps (most of it is
in French, but if you're familiar with the magazines this won't
present any barrier to enjoyment). This site has complete image
runs of selected magazine titles.
Terry
Gibbons's VISCO was an early
inspiration for these pages as the first 'visual' checklist of
SF magazine titles.
Locus
Magazine hosts the Stephen
T. Miller & William G. Contento Index of Science Fiction,
Fantasy and Weird Fiction magazines from 1890 on. Virtually
everyone collecting and researching these magazines uses this
list as a baseline.
I've
been collecting science fiction literature since about 1967-1968
(if I've done my sums correctly that's the school year I attended
4th grade and made my first visit to the bookmobile. If you want
to read more about that experience, please visit the articles
section of this website.) That's just about four decades of collecting
and during that time I've managed to acquire several thousand
books and several hundreds of magazines.
Such
is the avidness (?) of my yen for collecting that, had I been
able to devote all of my income over the years to the pursuit,
I'd have had to ask 4E Ackerman if he wanted to establish the
Ackermansion-East. I'll readily admit that my personal holdings
are not anywhere near the top ranks of SF collections - but it
hasn't been for lack of desire.
Early
on I particularly fell in love with both anthologies and the magazines.
My infatuation with anthologies I can trace to the acquisition
of one of the paperback reprints of the Astounding Science Fiction
Reader. The stories were top-flight (I made my first acquantance
with EF Russell in that collection) and became fascinated with
the idea that by picking up an anthology I was acquiring a host
of new authors - all for the same price as a single author's work.
To me this seemed something of steal and I ran around grabbing
as many as I could. My timing was fortunate as well since numerous
publishers were offering a host of anthologies: Carr & Wollheim
had started their 'Year's Best' in 1966; Merrill's series was
out, Galaxy Reader, F&SF reader, Orbit by Knight, not to mention
the regular offerings from Conklin, Boucher, Amis and others.
I
eventually became aware of the fact that there had to be a "first"
SF anthology and began delving into the history of this publishing
concept. Ultimately I managed to pick up BOTH a copy of Wollheim's
'Portable Novels of Science Fiction' and Healy & McComas'
'Adventures in Time & Space' (not to mention Conklin's 'Big
Book of Science Fiction' as well as a few other early offerings).
The
collecting of magazines represents a watershed moment of maturation
on my part. I first encountered them in a book stall at a local
farmer's market: 25 cents a copy (many of which had the top half
of the cover removed...). This happened within a year of my discovery
of SF and I probably had the same reaction to magazines that I
did to anthologies: multiple stories, multiple authors, all for
the same price as a paperback.
I
quickly became aware of the fact that there were hundreds of titles
(the first magazine I picket up happened to be an Amazing Stories,
which was not shy about mentioning its history) and that it was
going to be hard, expensive work to obtain every single one of
them.
After
becoming acquainted with Amazing's history, I quickly figured
out that I could save both time and money if I concentrated on
getting just the first copy of each new magazine; again, fortune
smiled on me as I was a stone's throw away from New York city
and hundreds of used bookstores - not to mention the other collector's
who sold off excess inventory to support their own habits.
Over
the years I've managed to amass a pretty substantial collection
of anthology and magazine "firsts"; I continue to fill
in the collection to this day.
The
remaining pages of this section of the website are devoted to
the Volume 1, Number 1 magazines in my collection - beginning
with cover scans in the order of their publication.
The
initial page is very image intensive (260+ scans of Vol 1 No 1
magazine covers) and may take a bit to load. There are numerous
links within the main page, although not all of them are completed
yet. When finished, viewers will be able to click on an image
or a variety of index links in order to find or look at various
magazine covers.
Additional
information on the nature of the interactivity of this page, the
nature of the collection and notes on organization can be seen
by clicking on the 'notes' link.
The
pages were originally put together for personal use so that I
could more easily identify issues from my want list. |