SciFiMags

YOUR TIME MACHINE TO THE PAST!

MAGAZINES

THREE DECADES OF

THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

OCT/NOV 2009

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (later Fantasy & Science Fiction and usually referred to as just F&SF) is a digest-size American fantasy and science fiction magazine first published in 1949 by Mystery House and then by Fantasy House. Both were subsidiaries of Lawrence Spivak's Mercury Press, which took over as publisher in 1958. Spilogale, Inc. has published the magazine since 2001. With the April/May 2009 issue, it changed from monthly to bimonthly publication.^[1]

It began as The Magazine of Fantasy (Fall 1949), with Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas as editors. To encompass the full spectrum of speculative fiction, the title expanded into The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction with the second issue. Switching to an ampersand, it became The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction with the sixth issue (February 1951), returning to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction with issue 17 (October 1952). The ampersand reappeared in May 1979, and the title was finally shortened to just Fantasy & Science Fiction with the October 1987 issue.

In the mid-1940s, McComas was the co-editor, with Raymond J. Healy, of the pioneering anthology, Adventures in Time and Space (1946). The massive volume, a Modern Library Giant, introduced many readers to science fiction when it appeared on library shelves during the post-WWII years. Boucher was writing radio scripts in the late 1940s, but he left dramatic radio in 1948, as he explained to William F. Nolan, "mainly because I was putting in a lot of hours working with J. Francis McComas in creating what soon became The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. We got it off the ground in 1949 and saw it take hold solidly by 1950. This was a major creative challenge, and although I was involved in a lot of other projects, I stayed with F&SF into 1958."^[2]

^{MORE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magazine_of_Fantasy_&_Science_Fiction}