Fantasy Fiction was a Pulp magazine that ran for only four issues from March to November 1953. It was produced by Future Publications, the publisher of Science Fiction Adventures. Fantasy Fiction was edited by Lester Del Rey for the first three issue and Cameron Hall for the last. The contents were a mix of heroic fantasy with Conan the Barbarian leading things off, to Campbellian Fantasy in the mode of Unknown with some horror scattered in. During a decade dominated by Science Fiction, Fantasy Fiction was a welcome oasis for the fan of the the non-scientific wonder story. Not until Cele Goldsmith would turn Fantastic towards Sword & Sorcery five years later would Fantasy fans have a place to call home. When she did, she mirrored many of the things Del Rey and Cameron did here first.
The first issue, March 1953, began with a Robert E. Howard/L. Sprague de Camp Conan novella, “The Black Stranger”. Del Rey introduces it with a page promoting the Gnome Press editions of Howard’s Conan stories. The tale is actually “The Treasure of Tranicos” from King Conan. Howard had failed to sell the original and had rewritten it as a pirate yarn for the adventure magazines. This version appeared in the Donald M. Grant edition of Black Vulmea’s Vengeance and Other Tales of Pirates (1976).
“Too Gloomy For Private Pushkin” by Mystery writer Richard Deming is a horror piece as is “The Night Shift” by Frank M. Robinson . “The Demons” and “Feeding Time” by satirical SF writer Robert Sheckley are typical of his humorous approach. “Ashtaru the Terrible” by Poul Anderson is an Unknown style farce. Anderson was one of the best Sword & Sorcery writers of the 1950s with The Broken Sword but he also wrote in this modern mode with Three Hearts and Three Lions. “Dragon Fires” by Western/Noir writer Steve Frazee is an intriguing tale of knights versus dragons similar to what Gordon R. Dickson would do in The Dragon and the George (1976).
The second issue, June 1953, featured “The Wall of Serpents”, a Harold Shea Fantasy. You couldn’t get more Unknown that writing about one of its classic protagonists (I can’t bring myself to call him a “hero”.) Written by L. Sprague de Camp & Fletcher Pratt, the series pokes fun at mythology by showing how ridiculous mythological ideas are in real time. This time Shea visits the world of Finnish mythology.
“The Weeblies” by SF writer Algis Budrys, could have been humorous SF, “Emissary” by Charles E. Fritch is a post holocaust fantasy, “Samsi” by Peter Coccagna is a werewolf story but not like anything from Weird Tales, “Rachella” by Poul Anderson is a modern ghost story essentially, “The Cookie Lady” by Philip K. Dick is a horror tale, as is “Sylvia” by Peter Phillips and “More Spinned Against” by John Wyndham is a tale from the spider’s POV.
Issue three, August 1953, opens with “So Sweet as Magic…” by Bruce Elliott, an Unknown type story about a magician who crosses dimensions with his simple magic tricks. “Out in the Garden” by Philip K. Dick is more genre-eluding fantasy, “Much Ado About Plenty” by Charles E. Fritch, “A Stray From Cathay” by John Wyndham, “Koenigshaufen’s Curve” by H. B. Fyfe and “Mr. Mottle Goes Pouf” by Laurence Manning seem like SF lite, while “Foxy’s Hollow” by Leah Bodine Drake and “The Other Ones” by David Alexander are straight out of Weird Tales (which was on its last legs in 1953). “Non du Nom” by Randall Garrett is a Biblical fantasy.
For the heroic fantasy fan, “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter” by Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp is another rewrite from Gnome Press. The original tale “Gods of the North” (Fantasy Magazine, March 1934) had the Conan figure trying to get into a giant girl’s pants. De Camp made the story more polite and it received a famous Frank Frazetta cover in 1969.
The last issue (November 1953) edited by Cameron Hall isn’t all that different from the first three. Beginning with “Web of the Worlds” by Harry Harrison and Katherine MacLean, a portal Fantasy that projects an ordinary man into a fantastic world. This was Harrison’s third story while he still worked for EC Comics as a writer and artist. “Nothing To It” by William S. Corwin, “Medicine Dance” by Bill Brown, “Capital Expenditure” by Fletcher Pratt, and “The Apprentice Sorcerer’ by Stephen Arr are pretty standard almost SF tales (from writers in Science Fiction Adventures) while “De Demon- De Natur-” by Wesley Barefoot is closer to horror. Clark Ashton Smith appears with “Schizoid Creator” in a Lovecraft mode.
For the Heroic Fantasy fan there is “The Stronger Spell” by L. Sprague de Camp, a Pusad tale, related to his novel, The Tritonian Ring. These stories are humorous with a softness unlike Howard’s brand of Sword & Sorcery.
In regards to art and illustration, Hannes Bok produced all four covers, some better than others. Paul Orban, Emsh, Frank Kelly Freas, Roy G. Krenkel and Joseph Eberle are the more famous ones, but H. R. Smith, Alex Ebel and Tyler produced some good illos too.
The final analysis is that Sword & Sorcery, my favored sub-genre, was included but did not dominate. If anything, Del Rey was trying to create a new version of Unknown, which John W. Campbell had promised when the magazine folded because of paper shortages in 1943. Mixed in with the Campbell is a vein of Weird Tales (with WT writers like Drake, Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard) but Science Fiction writers tended to dominate. Del Rey had a good eye for new talent, publishing Philip K. Dick, who would not be really appreciated until after his death. The inclusion of writers like Steve Frazee and Richard Deming is intriguing, even if they never became full-blown Fantastists.
The failure of the magazine after a year is not surprising. This was the post-World War II world of atomic bombs and Communist spies. Fantasy was seen by many as old-fashioned or irrelevant (or they preferred their fantasy in the form of James Bond.) But after another decade of this, Fantasy and Sword & Sorcery in particular, would reappear with a vengeance, with the paperback publication of The Lord of the Rings and the Lancer Conans.
