Everything Old Is New Again!
Reprinting Science Fiction began right from the beginning of American Pulp Science Fiction. Farnsworth Wright, over at Weird Tales, brought in reprints from outside in 1925 and started reprinting older WT fiction in 1929 with the SF tale, ” “When the Green Star Waned” by Nictzin Dyalhis. The first issue of Amazing Stories was made up of six reprints: Verne, Poe, Wells, Wertenbaker, England and Hall. Hugo Gernsback claimed that he had to do this because there weren’t enough good writers doing SF. I don’t know if this true, when you consider Murray Leinster, Ray Cummings, Francis Stevens, A. Merritt, Charles Stilson, Paul L. Anderson and Garret Smith were busy at it in Argosy. Why should these writers work for so much less at Amazing Stories? Reprints are cheap.
Whatever Gernsback’s reasons, the idea of the reprint persisted. Thrilling Wonder Stories, Captain Future and Startling Stories all used reprints. Fantastic Story Quarterly and Famous Fantastic Mysteries (along with Fantastic Novels and A. Merritt’s Fantasy Magazine), Tops in Science Fiction, Two Complete Science-Adventure Books were basically reprint magazines using very little new material. SF fans wanted the old stories and anthologies were slow to appear with classic tales. This eventually became a new market after Adventures in Time and Space (1946) by J. Francis McComas and Raymond J. Healy began the trend in book format.
Starting in 1947, Avon Fantasy Reader and later Avon Science Fiction Reader began reprinting from the Pulpseven before the old magazines died out. Editor, Donald A. Wollheim picked from his favorites in Weird Tales and other Pulps. Each issue was a mix of Sword & Sorcery and SF, much as the publishing list of DAW Books would be starting in 1972. Robert A. W. Lowdnes would follow his example with The Magazine of Horror, Science Fiction Stories and many other blends of genres beginning 1963. These two small market magazines, almost booklets because they were saddle-stapled, filled an important gap in affordable reprints when Arkham House, Gnome Press and other Fantasy republishers were more expensive or hard to find.
Digest Sized Decision
Amazing Stories and Fantastic, August 1965 , dropped their brilliant editor, Cele (Goldsmith) Laili for a mostly reprint format. The new editor, Joseph Ross, took his material from the back pages of Amazing and Fantastic Adventures, royalty free. Only the features by Robert Silverberg were new. (The artwork was reprinted as well.) That fall they also launched Great Science Fiction From Fantastic. In 1966 they added Most Thrilling Science Fiction Ever Told, later retitled Thrilling Science Fiction Adventures.
The company went another way in 1967, bringing in Harry Harrison to revive Amazing Stories. The publisher’s unwillingness to lose the reprints saw Harry leave September 1968. Barry N. Malzberg replaced him, tried to get rid of the reprints, and left in 1969. Ted White would be the editor to succeed, eventually. Ted brought both Amazing Stories and Fantastic out of the reprint market and back into regular magazine circles, as low paying magazines but a real ones. Thus ended the half decade of reprints.
During that time, Ultimate Publishing gave us dozens and dozens of digests filled with good, old material. (I know, that’s an opinion. And probably wrong.) I have selected from these digests a rainbow of old stories worthy of your time.
Roy G. Biv!
“Danger. Red!” by O. H. Leslie (Henry Slesar) (from Fantastic, February 1958) appeared in The Most Thrilling Science Fiction Ever Told, No. 7, Winter 1967.
“Red Moon Rising” by Robert Bloch (from Amazing Science Fiction Stories, June 1958) appeared in Thrilling Science Fiction, October 1973.
“If The Red Slayer” by Robert Sheckley (from Amazing Science Fiction Stories, July 1959) appeared in The Most Thrilling Science Fiction Ever Told, No. 3, September 1966.
“The Red Telephone” by John Jakes (from Amazing Science Fiction Stories, April 1960) appeared in Great Science Fiction, Spring 1968.
“Secret of the Yellow Crystal” by Guy Archette (Chester S. Geier) (from Amazing Stories, April 1948) appeared in Science Fiction Adventures, March 1973.
“March of the Yellow Death” by Ellis Hart (Harlan Ellison) (from Fantastic, October 1957) appeared in The Most Thrilling Science Fiction Ever Told, No. 4, December 1966.
“Greenslaves” by Frank Herbert (from Amazing Stories, March 1965) appeared in SF Greats, Spring 1971.
“The Blue Plague” by Robert Silverberg (from Amazing Stories, July 1957) appeared in Science Fiction Greats, Winter 1969
Other Hues
“The Golden Amazon” by Thortnon Ayre (John Russell Fearn) (From Fantastic Adventures, July 1939) appeared in Science Fiction Adventures Classics, January 1974.
“The Golden Girl of Kalendar” by F. Orlin Tremaine (from Fantastic Adventures, September 1939) appeared in Science Fiction Adventures Classics, January 1974.
“Black and White” by Marion Zimmer Bradley (from Amazing Stories, November 1962) appeared in Thrilling Science Fiction, June 1972.
“Graygortch” by Don Wilcox (from Fantastic, April 1957) appeared in Great Science Fiction No. 6, March 1967.
“Greylorn” by Keith Laumer (from Amazing Science Fiction Stories, April 1959) appeared in Thrilling Science Fiction, July 1975.
“Valley of the Black Sun” by Leroy Yerxa (from Amazing Stories, April 1943) appeared in Science Fiction Adventure Classics, Fall 1971.
“Son of the Black Chalice” by Milton Lesser (from Amazing Stories, July 1952) appeared in Space Adventures, Spring 1971.
“The Lavender Talent” by Gerald Vance (Henry Slesar) (from Fantastic, March 1958) appeared in The Most Thrilling Science Fiction Ever Told, Spring 1968.
Conclusion
The presence of color in titles isn’t really important. They just add spice. Consider “The Valley of the Black Sun”. That could be “The Valley of the Sun” but then it would sound like a Louis L’Amour collection. Adding “black” makes that more unusual and more likely SF. Also consider what colors were not used. There is no “Orange” here. More unusual, no “Purple”, “Indigo” or “Violet”. Perhaps just a little too pulpy? Maybe but Leigh Brackett once bragged she could sell a story with the title “Purple Priestess of the Mad Moon” and to the most literary of SF magazines. Which she did when the story appeared in Fantasy & Science Fiction (October 1964). She was that good.
As to the quality of the rest…the names are familiar to fans of Ray A. Palmer’s pulps, Guy Archette, Thortnon Ayre, Don Wilcox, Leroy Yerxa and Robert Bloch (when he wasn’t doing Weird Tales horror) as well as the high production writers of the 1950s like Robert Silverberg, Milton Lesser, Harlan Ellison (before his New Wave years) and Henry Slesar (usually under a pseudonym). The young stars who weren’t part of that include John Jakes, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Keith Laumer and Frank Herbert, all to find bestseller success later. Quality is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose, but always something interesting here.
