Between 1952 and 1954, John Raymond published four digest-size science fiction and fantasy magazines. Raymond was an American publisher of men's magazines who knew little about science fiction, but the field's rapid growth and a distributor's recommendation prompted him to pursue the genre. Raymond consulted and then hired Lester del Rey to edit the first magazine, Space Science Fiction, which appeared in May 1952. Following a second distributor's suggestion that year, Raymond launched Science Fiction Adventures, which del Rey again edited, but under an alias. In 1953, Raymond gave del Rey two more magazines to edit: Rocket Stories, which targeted a younger audience, and Fantasy Magazine, which published fantasy rather than science fiction.
All four magazines were profitable, but Raymond did not reinvest the profits in improving the magazines and was late in paying contributors. Del Rey persuaded Raymond to invest some of the profits back into the magazines, but nothing came of this and, when del Rey discovered that Raymond was planning to cut rates instead, he resigned. Two of the magazines continued for a short time with Harry Harrison as editor, but by the end of 1954 all four magazines had ceased publication.
The magazines are well regarded by science fiction historians. They carried fiction by many names well known in the field or who later became famous, including Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, Robert E. Howard, and John Jakes.
Publication history
American science fiction magazines first appeared in the 1920s with the launch of Amazing Stories, a pulp magazine published by Hugo Gernsback. World War II and its attendant paper shortages interrupted the expanding market for the genre, but by the late 1940s the market began to recover again. In October 1950, the first issue of Galaxy Science Fiction appeared; it reached a circulation of 100,000 within a year, and its success encouraged other publishers to enter the field. John Raymond, at that time primarily a publisher of men's magazines, was told by his distributor that science fiction was a growing field; Raymond knew nothing about science fiction so he asked Lester del Rey for advice, and then offered del Rey the job of editor on the new magazine. Del Rey was initially hesitant, but eventually agreed to become the editor of Space Science Fiction; the first issue was dated May 1952. When another distributor approached Raymond to ask if he would be interested in publishing a science fiction title, he suggested to del Rey that this second magazine should focus on action stories. The result was Science Fiction Adventures, which appeared in November that year. Raymond decided to expand further, launching Fantasy Magazine in March 1953, and Rocket Stories, which like Science Fiction Adventures was aimed at a juvenile readership, the following month. Ziff-Davis had launched Fantastic, a rival fantasy magazine, in 1952, and once Fantasy Magazine appeared, they threatened to sue Raymond because of the similarity of the titles, so Raymond renamed the magazine Fantasy Fiction from the second issue onwards.
Del Rey used several pseudonyms for these magazines: he edited the last issue of Fantasy Magazine as "Cameron Hall", and edited Rocket Stories as "Wade Kaempfert"; for Science Fiction Adventures he edited as "Philip St. John" and used another alias, "R. Alvarez", as the publisher's name. Del Rey hired Michael Shaara, later a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, as associate editor.
Raymond's management of the magazines was chaotic, according to del Rey. There was no fixed schedule; one day Raymond told del Rey that the magazines would be switching to a monthly schedule, but nothing came of this. Raymond would simply decide that copy was due the very next day for one of them, which meant that del Rey had to scramble to find material ready to use—since Raymond paid on publication, del Rey did not acquire an inventory of stories ahead of time to use when needed. This made it harder for him to keep to the plan of targeting each magazine to a particular readership. Del Rey sometimes had to write a story overnight to have a lead story for an issue: "it was a miserable way to run a magazine", he recalled. Raymond did give del Rey complete control of story purchasing; as a favor to del Rey, John Campbell, the influential editor of Astounding Science-Fiction, called Raymond and convinced him that it was necessary to let the editor make the fiction decisions.