Fantastic Story Quarterly, then Fantastic Story Magazine, was published by Best Books Inc. from the Winter of 1950 to the Spring of 1955. It is typical of many Science Fiction pulps that mushroomed up during the SF boom of the early 1950s. Unlike other magazines, it relied on mostly reprints with some new minor tales. It was edited by Sam Merwin Jr., who supplied a number of those “minor tales” under the pseudonym of Carter Sprague. The magazine’s run was twenty-three issues, beginning on a quarterly schedule but becoming bimonthly at the end of 1952 and then all of 1953, before returning to a quarterly schedule. The magazine ended in 1955 when so many Pulps disappeared and many Science Fiction magazines also died off.
What I like about FSQ the most was the fact that it relied heavily on three of the Big Four. The Big Four were Henry Kuttner and his wife, C. L. Moore, and Edmond Hamilton and his wife, Leigh Brackett. These four sprang largely from the pages of Weird Tales and were the top writers of Science Fantasy for the 1930s to the 1950s. Only C. L. Moore did not openly publish in FSQ, though it was known she often wrote with her husband, and so was probably there too. In total, FSQ used four pieces by Hamilton, two by Brackett and three by Kuttner. Many of these were lead novels. Leigh Brackett’s “Shadow Over Mars” received some of the best Virgil Finlay artwork ever.
The second thing I like is the choice of old stories tends to be taken from older pulps like Amazing Stories and Wonder Stories, like “The Man From Beyond” by John Beynon Harris (John Wyndham), “The Amazing Planet” by Clark Ashton Smith, “Enslaved Brains” by Eando Binder or “The War of the Weeds” by Carl Jacobi, or from the more juvenile Pulps like Thrilling Wonder Stories, including “The World-Thinker” by Jack Vance (Winter 1955), “Fog Over Venus” by Arthur K Barnes and “The Piper” by Ray Bradbury (Spring 1955). The selections were always action-oriented with a nice spicing of wonder. The John Campbell’s Golden Age authors would have been unavailable or more expensive but I am glad for their absence.
The third thing I like about Fantastic Quarterly was some of its new stories such as Frank Belknap Long’s “Museum” (Winter 1951), “The Ambassador’s Tomcat” by Kim Allen Lang (Summer 1951), L. Sprague de Camp’s Sword & Sorcery parody “The Blunderer” (Winter 1952), “Death Ship” by Richard Matheson (March 1953), “The Indefatigable Frog” by Philip K. Dick, and “The New Wine” by William Vine (John Christopher) (Summer 1954). With the exception of Frank Belknap Long, a Weird Tales author from the 1920s, this list highlights some of the future stars of Science Fiction and Fantasy.
The fourth thing: a word should be mentioned here about the artists of FSQ. Merwin may not have been able to afford Foundation stories but he had no shortage of great artwork: Virgil Finlay did most of the novels, as well as Alex Schomberg, Paul Orban, Vincent Napoli, Ed Emschwiller and others.
The last thing I like about this magazine was some of the features besides the stories. The Spring 1951 issue featured a letter by an eighteen-year old Robert Silverberg, while others were written by Robert Hoskins, Jim Harmen and Richard A. Lupoff. The July 1953 issue contained an article called “Abbott and Costello Spoof Space Travel” by Pat Jones, reviewing the film, Abbott and Costello Go To Mars (1953). There is plenty to explore in this old Pulp series so dive in and have fun!
Thanks for celebrating some distinctive features of the pulp, Fantastic Story Quarterly / Magazine. Two of the three covers you feature, including your lead-off image of the title’s debut, were painted by the iconic artist, Earle K. Bergey, 1901-1952. I would also put the art as one of my “five things” to highlight, and still it bears saying that your narrative remains largely focused on the interior pen and inks, as Virgil Finlay did not create a cover of Fantastic Story. At the start of Fantastic Story, Earle K. Bergey’s role as Ned Pines’ go-to cover artist was well established through Startling Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories, and, of course, Captain Future. Bergey produced eight iconic covers here, including those published on the first six issues of this late addition to Pines’ diverse roster of pulp magazine titles. Sam Cherry also makes at least one memorable cover contribution, one of his only paintings in the science fiction and fantasy genre. And the magazine itself makes an important appearance, in terms of popular culture, in the film, Back to the Future; Marty McFly is seeing with the Fall 1954 (Jack Coggins cover) in bed. On a personal note, the final two Bergey covers, published posthumously, display a rather intriguing break in form. Increasingly restrained, these final Bergey visions make us imagine how his visual storytelling gifts would have evolved had he outlived the pulps and reinvented himself again in a chameleon-like career defined by invention.
My job for this weekend is to go back credit all the art in the blog. Should have been done originally.