Poem: 'AN INDUSTRIAL ROMANCE'

AN INDUSTRIAL ROMANCE/ 

CLOCK DVA AT THE ‘F’-CLUB 

               (Leeds, 24 February 1980) 

strobe
white lines on black
throb of inset
luminous symbols/green
in tape machine

sax shreds Coltrane
thrashing cracks in air
with spatial/temporal
dislocations

now me, 3 decades on,
longevity as accumulation
of experience, wisdom,
long-toothed, raggy bearded &
redolent of guru-like beatitude,
or just gradual deterioration
into senile mumblings,
bleary-eyed with glaucomatous
hung-over antiquity

lacerated by
ironic curtains
of concrete noise

they told me
fluoride grows strong white synapses,
so how come I still wake up
screaming for gipsy visions?
been adolescent 30-yrs
& still dream of finding
the Enchanted Ring-Pull Tab…

outside these walls
industrial romances are
being consummated in the
soft-focus drizzle of
fluoridated rain

in here there are
strobe-storms of
repetitive verticals,
in corridors of
diminishing
mirror images


Collage by Steve Sneyd

 Published in:
‘SEPIA no.16’ (UK – November 1981)
‘POSITIVE TOUCH no.2’ (UK – June 1982)
‘STINK no.1’ (UK – April 1984)

STEVE SNEYD Interview 'From Mars To Marsden'

STEVE SNEYD: 

FROM MARS TO MARSDEN - 

THE UNTOLD STORY

 He is Britain’s – and possibly the world’s most widely 

published poet. He’s been featured regularly, week-by-week, 

month-by-month, year-by-year since the 1960’s in more strange, 

obscure, and esoteric journals than even he can possibly remember. 

Now he’s singlehandedly resurrecting the ‘Genre SF’ poem 

as a unique and distinctive verse-form. He is Steve Sneyd… 

FROM MARS TO MARSDEN 

Steve Sneyd can be a distracting interview.

He’s the guy sitting at the end of the bar, with a Philip K Dick paperback crammed conveniently into his corduroy jacket pocket and an obscure crossword-completing word on the tip of his tongue. Spinning looping, leisurely soliloquies that lengthen for about the time it takes for a pint of best to settle, or for someone to get the next round in. As we talk he sketches zigzag castles and mythic faces on the beer-mat, scribbles sudden ideas in interacting hieroglyphs of longhand script into the dog-eared flyleaf of the paperback in his pocket, then hand-rolls a matchstick-thin cigarette infiltrating a fallout of tobacco strands across the table between us. He has quotes, phrases, lines and useful expressions for future use in black biro on scraps of paper in every pocket.

As he tells Marge Simon ‘I’m endlessly writing such bits down on paper, always carry some, and a pen, or into notebooks – though the problem is the vast majority never develop any further, just silt up in vast accumulations of such scraps, though sometimes, years later even, one or another will resurface and a poem will come together out of that seed. Ideas can come from anywhere – flashbacks of memory, of places, people, events, items from the radio or books, curious facts or images, fragments of phrases, odd images springing to mind.’ And he talks. He talks about everything from the lost galaxy-spanning poetry of obscure American fantasist Lilith Lorraine, to an interminably convoluted comic routine about Bob Marley’s arrival in heaven, to tales of legendary Beat poetry heroics in the back rooms of 1970’s Yorkshire pubs, and about the prehistory of Pennine earthworks and tumuli. About everything – in fact, but Steve Sneyd himself.

‘This whole thing has a sort of boot-strapping quality’ he concedes warily, ‘ie, we find out what we’re talking about, by talking about it.’ But, once the train of ideas ignites, it rapidly assumes esoteric dimensions – shifting the question further from the personal at each remove. ‘Maybe it’s more a worm in the programme. It gets in and you can’t get it out, so you have to talk it out. Like they used to lure the tapeworm out with a bit of whatever tapeworms like. It stuck its head out, and when you had enough of it for a loop, you rolled it around a knife-blade and kept rolling, and very steadily you pulled the whole thing out. Talking about poetry, or SF poetry, or SF generally come to that, is like that. If you can get a handle on it, you should – in optimistic theory someway, get a grasp on all of it.’ He pauses. Flicks tobacco strands thoughtfully as the ideas continue. ‘That’s assuming...’ he elaborates, ‘that it isn’t so busy quick-silvering and changing that what you’ve got is the dead skin it just shed. To switch metaphors from tapeworm to snake...’, and he starts again to explain further why poetry cannot be explained.

Perhaps you were aware that – further to his ‘Amazing Stories’ interview, Steve Sneyd was nominated, or elected, or appointed as ‘Grand Master of SF Poetry’, so some kind of honorific became appropriate…? Surely it was only a matter of time, and now constitutes a well-deserved and entirely appropriate recognition of his epic contribution to the genre. Odd that he didn’t actually start out with that Lit-orientation. When pressed he estimates that ‘about forty-percent’ of his output would so qualify. ‘I’ve never systematically done the figures, but as an impressionistic guess, would say about 40% of my published poetry has been SF, and overall perhaps 70% has been genre. Boundary drawing can be hard – eg. is a poem about the historical Dracula genre or ‘mainstream’?’ It seems there was always a myth-continuum, and bits of SF imagery surfacing here and there, but it only became more dominant later. Or at least that’s what my immediate recall tells me, without delving back through what he terms ‘the whatever decades’ of magazines and old small-press journals.

Anyway – it also turned out that I’d been nominated, or elected, or appointed – in some way, to make the ‘Grand Master of SF Poetry’ presentation. Although by then he’d already received it via airmail! He’d already received the Gold Chalice, or Scroll, or Coat Of Arms or whatever it was from America. And we were required to fabricate some kind of ceremony, photographed for posterity, to record it all. Marge Simon (of the ‘Science Fiction Poetry Association’) contacted me through ‘Facebook’ about doing it. She’s a lady who brooks no refusal. So we devised a joint strategy to meet up in Huddersfield to enact this arcane ritual. It took the ‘New Horizons’ probe nine years to reach the Pluto system, we did marginally better than that…!

It’s cool, with just a promise of drizzle. The fountains are arcing in the town square adjacent to the statue of former-PM Harold Wilson. We sit outside the ‘Kings Head’, a licensed premises uniquely dedicated to Jimi Hendrix, who is the ‘king’ on the pub-sign. I’m wearing a Dan Dare ‘Mekon’ T-shirt in honour of the occasion. We talk, about how to actually pronounce China Miéville’s name, about Steve’s recent visit to his brother in Norfolk, about walking the West Yorkshire canal tow-paths, and about a night at the ‘Builders’ where we both once watched poet Michael Horovitz perform. Steve can’t remember whether Horovitz interjected his set with blasts from his famous anglo-saxophone – ‘he said he’d been playing it at his gigs since the sixties, a ‘mouth-harp wrapped in brown paper’, I don’t recall him using it when he read at the ‘Bleeders’, the gig you wrote up, but maybe it’s one of my myriad memory glitches.’ I assure him that yes, Horovitz did indeed wield said mighty instrument. And the ‘Builders’ – site of those ‘Inner Circle’ poetry events? Long gone.

Then Steve carefully extracts the presentation plaque from the box in which it was posted to him across the Atlantic. A black resin monolith emblazoned with a comet-tailed star, and the legend ‘Steve Sneyd: SFPA Grand Master Poet 2015’ etched in silver lettering. Various curious photos subsequently take place, some of then snapped by a bemused passer-by who is inveigled into the impromptu ceremony. The photos eventually appear in the SFPA news-site for the entertainment and edification of all! Afterwards we sit back on the pub-seat in the weak sunshine, and Steve sips reflectively at his pint. ‘I thought afterwards, possible reason the lady who volunteered to take pics got so far away as soon as possible afterwards, maybe she saw words ‘Grand Master’ on offending object and feared was Crowley-style occult cult, and your Mekon manifest of familiar/ demon familiar…?’

--- 0 --- 

‘Ought to give up listening to World Service new’ says Steve wearily, ‘endless litany of going-to-hell-in-handbaskets. Trouble is, I’m a news junkie and can’t stay off…’

To Fred Beak, writing the afterword of Steve’s 200-page collection ‘In Coils Of Earthen Hold’*, ‘the neglect of Steve Sneyd’s work is one of the mysteries of our poetic era.’ There’s possibly something in what he says, but neglect is not what you’d normally associate with a writer responsible for over 3000 magazine appearances and a near-ubiquity in literary magazines for over thirty years. Steve is Britain’s most widely published poet, and one of the world’s top ten most frequently published, too. He also figures in ‘The Encyclopedia Of Science Fiction’ for his contribution to ‘genre’ poetry both as archivist, and scribe. So ‘neglect’ is relative. Perhaps by ‘neglect’ Fred Beak means his exclusion from that kind of self-congratulatory Oxbridge clique massaging each other’s sterile celebrity from elitist London art-circles? In which case he could well be correct. If such issues still have relevance. Which surely must be marginal, at best. Steve’s voice is Yorkshire, and it’s too vital, too involved, too real for such distractions. He writes from Almondbury, Huddersfield, beneath the appropriately gaunt tower of Castle Hill. He muses that he never intended Huddersfield to be so central, but here he is, four decades later…

Steve is bearded with a shaggy fringe of greying hair, and an air of constant pre-occupation. Reading to an audience – as he does in his mesmeric set at the Huddersfield Poetry Festival, he can conjur time and space, myth and magic, history and futures through a temporal warp, and then back to the Hotel bar again with a bardic resonance that story-tells and weaves strange truths, ‘finding skulls under every grin.’ 

‘Poetry, in the final analysis’ he opines, ‘is surely nearer – or can be, to the working of actual thought, than prose.’ But he takes it beyond such meagre limitations. Writing dialogue with a dry kitchen sink sense of desperate ordinariness, and line-breaks set to the rhythms of breath – ‘you go on and on, she said, you repeat yourself endlessly, she said, you whinge and moan, she said, some time went by, you never talk to me, she said, there was nothing to be said’ (“A Season For Taking Stock”). While above such drab domesticity there’s always awareness of the sky. The ‘Half-Moon… swollen could be her mother, shrunk could be her daughter, half-face missing as if turned, away from life...’ And beyond even that normality there’s a mythic depth behind actions that align with the symbols and rituals of lost archetypes – ‘wrote three lists – what he, feared most, what he’d done worst, what he most wished he’d done, hung each on chosen tree – oak, ash, rowan – set each with, fire. Collected ashes with, care. Buried in three holes between monster roots, then sang, light of burden at last’ (“Wildwood Days Recalled”).

--- 0 --- 

Already active in the 1960’s, it was the 1970’s that gave Steve a wider platform of possibilities. Beneath the (psychedelic) mushrooming underground press explosion – and infected by its anarcho-irreverence, looking as much to Dylan (Bob not Thomas) as it does to the performance legacy of the Liverpool Poets and the persistent viral illumination of the Beat Generation, the DIY small-press napalms the decade into the rudest of health. Traditional letterpress A5’s with neat wood-cut illustrations (‘Viewpoints’) interface with cleanly-cluttered photo-offset collages (‘Global Tapestry’), while mimeo – typed directly onto limited-run paper templates, proliferates through SF-fandom (Lisa Conesa’s ‘Zimri’) while strange mauve spirit-duplication produces ‘Bogg’ – until the dense black-solids made possible by Xerox infiltrate from the Punk-press towards decade’s end (‘Sniffin Glue’). In this raging firmament the inspirational Blake-Bardian Mike Horovitz lights ‘The Children Of Albion’, Jeff Nuttall ignites ‘Bomb Culture’, while Dave Cunliffe and Jim Burns – already outlaw literary stars of the previous decade high-profile alongside George Cairncross’ surreal humour, Dave Ward’s Liverpool urban, Barry Edgar Pilcher’s Beat-Zen, Pete Faulkner’s Rimbaud-Romantic, Tina Fulker’s brittle fragility, Derrick Butress’ precise dramas and Dave Caddy’s eco-rural.

While an International Reply Coupon – or, in that post-Imperial twilight, a Commonwealth RC, could gain admittance to the equally rich diversity of an American or Australian parallel universe. And beyond... Steve Sneyd flourished as a visible presence in it all. Each format. Every niche and sub-niche. Few magazines came – or indeed, still come, without a page or three of his distinctive voice. And although it’s obviously absurd to suggest that evolution has not taken place – because it self-evidently has, it’s equally true that early poems are as instantly recognisably Sneydian as are the latest. The shape. The breath-break punctuation. The chopped erudition…

Selected for the 1994 ‘Rhysling Awards Anthology’ Steve’s “Why Vampires Do Not Use Their Vote” is a fine balance of his style, macabre myth interacting with normality. It asks ‘why have doors for policemen to guard?’ answering ‘inaccessible windows are sufficient, access to my private dwelling.’ The dialogue continues, ‘in myself are a thousand lives, my older selves company me as I require,’ and ‘shade is enough from sunlight’s canker, shade and soil enough of home, to full a window-box my length.’

Inevitably, as perpetrator of the earlier ‘Riding West’ magazine, he was the obvious co-ordinating spirit when the ‘Inner Circle’ decided to launch its own print counterpart. As a series of Huddersfield-based live events, the ‘Inner Circle’ had already staged guests such as bussed-in Dave Cunliffe as well as providing debut-audiences for new writers and musicians. With its collectivist aspirations set to the pulse of the times – its title, an elision of errors on Steve’s notepad fusing suggestions ‘Thud’ and ‘Ned Ludd’ into ‘Ludds Mill’, it went on through changes and oddnesses through to the dawn of the eighties. By then Steve’s publishing had diversified through Hilltop Press, with irregular SF-poetry ‘Data Dumps’ linking a series of unique meticulously-researched stand-alone’s documenting neglected slipstream maverick names Robert Calvert and Lillith Lorraine (a research project begun in 1987, with a bio section appearing in ‘Fantasy Commentator’, and not ‘signed off’ until mid-2009 – although ‘as soon as book comes out some amazing new info about her life that should’ve been in will probably surface…’).

There’s also a CD by Icarus Landing, Steve’s legendary word-of-mouth underground performance-art duo. His poems delivered in a thick monotone the colour of Pennine Bitter, pointed up by slurs of betraying Yorkshire inflections, in spaces provided by Dave Jaggar’s Blues improvisations. Jaggar, he of Spider Lee Brown and the Champion Jack Dupree Band, plays dextrous guitar and – on “Trowell, Midnight”, harmonica. Blues from the Calder Delta, long-thought unrecorded and forever lost, the duo finally resurfaced with ‘Icarus Landing: The Crested Vulture Tapes’. A flood-damaged seventies tape, cleaned-up, digitised, and completely amazing. An audio artefact of smoke-hazed Folk Clubs and moist beer-mats, where sweat drips from the ceiling as if in some time-capsule monochrome photograph. Together, they pick up the rambling cadences of half-glimpsed and never-quite-concluded back-street pub people-stuff conversations and ignite them with surreal absurdist sense-of-wonder, from skew-wiff mythologies of visiting Martians, to the scrap-dealer clearing the Rhodes Colossus from where it blocks the harbour-mouth, the girl who half-inches cutlery from Motorway Service Stations yet only gets randy ‘for men with ideals’, the man on his ninth pint waiting for the girl who never turns up, then the puddled walk home uphill singing ‘Careless Love’ off-key. Like the line ‘crooked, as a ring around the moon’ – a ring, of course, is not crooked, but what they’re about is reconciling contradictions. These performances are unforgettable, like scars. 

‘I honestly can’t remember ‘owt about the circumstances of the tape being made’ Steve comments the year of the CD’s eventual release – 2009, ‘though I do have a clear memory of a later one, ‘Manna From Heaven’, which also had Michael Massey on, done at Jaggar’s house, and he was getting drunker and drunker. As was his canary, which kept sipping from his glass. It died very young from that habit, despite Jaggar’s theory that bird’s hollow bones means they can take immense amounts of C2H5OH without harm. Massey had a nightmare rendering the tape listenable, as Jaggar’s sudden weird sound-fx, shouts of irrelevance, drumming of feet on floor etc. But of the making of this one? a total mindblank. A review on Paul Rance’s website creates urban myth that it ‘was made on tour’, so ‘print the legend’ applies…’

HOLDING YOUR EIGHT HANDS 

‘We’re in Marsden at the moment’ Steve announces on a radio documentary about SF poetry. A sub-genre that link-voice Ian MacMillan places ‘at the fringe of the fringe, at the end of the universe.’ ‘And this is where – when they put the new station signs up, someone graffiti’d really neatly underneath the name ‘Marsden’ they put ‘The Land That Time Forgot’. Which I think it’s pretty appropriate, although it’s been painted out since, because that’s what Science Fiction poets do. They try and forget about the limitations of our time, and look through all time for human experience. You look out from up here, you’re looking out on practically everything that’s ever happened in this country. You look over to our right – that big mound on the horizon, that’s where neolithic men were making flint tools. There’s little pits on the top of the hill where they were doing that. You look straight in front of us, you’ve got a sunk road going up the hill past the old – what used to be Marsden Manor House. That was probably a Roman road. Perhaps even earlier than that. A bit farther up the hill behind it you’ve got loads and loads of roads on top of each other, you’ve got the Roman road, you’ve got Turnpike roads, you’ve got the first attempts to get across the Pennines and the ones that went nearly up to the time when we built motorways. They’re all going across the hills in the same sort of places. History is all twisted and linked together here. And I think Science Fiction poetry is taking this same sort of wider view of humanity, of a species, of us. And of our future. It’s not saying we live only in this present time, this fixed present, we’re not just figures in a permanent unchanging situation. But we’re part of the process that goes on and on occurring and changing and reshaping – just like this landscape…’

Steve Sneyd can be a distracting interview. For a multitude of reasons…

ANDREW DARLINGTON & STEVE SNEYD: 

AN EXPLANATORY POSTSCRIPT 

They live within ten miles of each other. Together, over some thirty years of manic productions, they’ve made over 4000 magazine appearances around the world. They share an entry in the current edition of the ‘Encyclopedia Of Science Fiction’ for their contributions to genre poetry. And they collaborated to produce ‘Ludds Mill’ – the leading vital anarchic arts magazine of the 1970’s. They have appeared together at venues dating back to the ‘Inner Circle’ events in Huddersfield, and were a regular part of the Tawny Owl group of writers which also numbered Horror novelist Simon Clark and ‘Krax’-publisher Andy Robson among its members. Yet their differences are just as pronounced. Steve Sneyd organised the live poetry programme at the Leeds Griffin Hotel SF Con – a landmark event in the recognition of genre-poetry. And he’s recognised as its leading archivist. While – although Andrew Darlington appeared on that bill, he’s equally adept at Rock journalism and erotica. And although both have an extensive fiction back-catalogue – Steve’s work in ‘Year’s Best’ and Andrew’s in New English Libraries, their styles operate in alternate universes of prose. Steve’s mythic and dream-like. Andrew’s sharp-edged and SF-literate. Only the respect is mutual.

*‘IN COILS OF EARTHEN HOLD’ by Steve Sneyd (ISBN 3-7052-0924-8 - £6.50) from The University of Salzburg, c/o Mammon Press, 12 Dartmouth Ave, Bath BA12 1AT

*‘A WORD IN YOUR EYE’ by Steve Sneyd (ISBN 0-905262-24-7 - £3.75 / $8) An introduction to the Graphic Poem, from HILLTOP PRESS, 4 Nowell Place, Almondbury, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire HD5 8PB

*‘NEOLITHON’ by Steve Sneyd & John Light (£5.50 from KT PBL, 16 Fane Close, Stamford, Lincs PE9 1HG) The poetry of prehistoric stone monuments

‘ICARUS RISING: THE CRESTED VULTURE TAPES’ by ICARUS LANDING (STEVE SNEYD & DAVID JAGGAR) (Crested Vulture Disks CVD-001 - £6.50 – Hilltop Press, 4 Nowell Place, Almondbury, Huddersfield HD5 8PB) www.booksmusicfilmstv.com/Poetry/SteveSneydDavidJaggarIcarusRising.html 

Steve’s entry in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database:
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?11125

Hilltop Press Catalogue:
www.booksmusicfilmstv.com/HilltopPress.htm 
www.booksmusicfilmstv.com/DataDump.htm
www.booksmusicfilmstv.com/SneydSnarls.html 

Gerald England reviews Steve Sneyd’s ‘Gestaltmacher’, ‘Gestaltmacher’, ‘Make Me A Gestalt’: http://www.geraldengland.co.uk/revs/bs126.htm

PDF of Steve’s ‘Flights From The Iron Moon’ a ‘gazetteer’ collecting poetry from UK FanZines from the 1980’s: http://efanzines.com/IronMoon/ 

Steve Sneyd interview by Catherine Mintz:
http://catherine-mintz.com/cm_s_interview.htm

Steve Sneyd’ poetry in Atlantean Publishing: http://atlanteanpublishing.wikia.com/wiki/Steve_Sneyd

Full text of Steve’s epic poem ‘Crowland’, plus links to Steve’s ‘The Poetry Of Brian Aldiss’ etc: http://pandf.booksmusicfilmstv.com/sneyd.htm

‘Parameter Magazine’ two Steve Sneyd poems:
http://www.parametermagazine.org/Sneyd.htm 

Link to Steve’s essay ‘The Outbound Muse’s Despatch: The Science Fiction Poetry Of Calvert And Many More’:
http://www.aural-innovations.com/issues/issue7/muse01.html 

Diane Severson’s interview in ‘Amazing Stories’:
http://amazingstoriesmag.com/2015/03/interview-sf-poet-steve-sneyd/

Retrospect: 'SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES' magazine

‘SCIENCE FICTION 

ADVENTURES’ 

by 

 ANDREW DARLINGTON 

 The story of each Science Fiction magazine is 

uniquely strange, with odd contours and metamorphoses. 

 ‘Science Fiction Adventures’ tells a stranger tale than most. 

 “…I still recall amazing days, before the wonder years…” 

                                            (Bill Nelson ‘Dreamstar 2LR’) 

Hallam Navarre is Earthman to the Court of foppish Overlord Joroiran VII of Jorvis. For shaven-headed humans are a scattered minority sprinkled across multiple worlds employed as prestige advisers to the rulers of diverse planetary systems. Advertised as one of ‘Three Complete Action Novels’, this story – “Chalice Of Death” by Calvin M Knox, leads-off the launch issue of the UK ‘Science Fiction Adventures’ magazine. But this thirty-seven-page novelette spans galaxies. Due to the conniving Vegan Kausirn – ‘allow a Vegan an inch, and he’ll grab a parsec’, Navarre must quest across the inhabited universe to find the Holy Grail. To do so – with half-breed Domrik Carso and ‘Earthman woman’ Helna Winstin, he must first locate the mythical lost homeworld. This masterpiece of compressed narrative follows their travels. And it’s everything that a Science Fiction Adventure should be. When Navarre eventually arrives on Earth he learns that over the span of a mere hundred-thousand years Earthlings have degenerated from rulers of the universe to scrubby little dwarfs living in thatched huts. And they don’t even remember their planet’s name. To them, Earth is Velidoon, in the nine-planet Dubihser system.

‘Calvin M Knox’ is an early alias of hyper-prolific Robert Silverberg. And he’s all over these magazine issues under a variety of guises. And in both style and content “Chalice Of Death” perfectly typified what the new magazine aspires to. It’s a fast-fiction exploit almost thoughtlessly spun off by the absurdly gifted Silverberg, yet effortlessly readable. In vision and imagination it even anticipates EC Tubb’s epic ‘Earl Dumarest’ saga, as well as Isaac Asimov’s novel-series commencing with ‘Foundation’s Edge’ (1982). While, as an element of Science Fiction, the Holy Grail would later be picked up and used by Michael Moorcock for his ‘Ulrich von Bek’ cycle of stories. Not to imply a direct link – the Grail legend has a long-running history, but it’s something indicative of Silverberg’s prescience. Hallam Navarre returns in issue no.3, ‘one man against a planet’ as “Earth Shall Live Again”, and completes the cycle in no.5 with “Vengeance Of The Space Armadas”, playing star-systems off against each other in galactic intrigue designed to ensure that ‘after thirty-thousand years of darkness, Earth stood once again at the threshold of light.’

As adolescents we imagine a great many things about the future, but we never imagine that it might be disappointing. We certainly never imagine that when the future arrives, Concorde and the Space Shuttle would be obsolete, the Moon would be uninhabited, and we would be too busy being our parents to wonder where those dreams went to. Yet each page of ‘Science Fiction Adventures’ is composed of microdots of those futures that never happened. True, the stories are to SF what the Missionary Position is to sex. Basic and straightforward. Few radical innovations or contortions. But, when all the elements come together, the results can be deeply satisfying. ‘The future holds the greatest adventures mankind has yet faced’ says US editor Larry T Shaw, ‘the entire universe is waiting just around the corner, full of exciting discoveries and mysterious dangers.’ That’s a future worth revisiting.

The story of each Science Fiction magazine is uniquely strange, with odd contours and metamorphoses. ‘Science Fiction Adventures’ tells a stranger tale than most. Nova Publications, piloted by John Carnell, had the UK’s leading title ‘New Worlds’. They spun off a successful companion title ‘Science Fantasy’ as a home for more slipstream less hard-science tales. By feeding separate, but adjacent niche markets, these magazines were able to cross-promote each other through back-page panel-adverts crammed with luring taglines and teasing writer-menus designed to seduce floating readers. The strategy worked, both titles benefit. So why not triangulate the plan with a third title? And – to razor down production time, instead of sourcing, editing and proofreading original content, why not make that third title a UK edition of an existing American magazine?

That first UK edition – dated March 1958 but ‘on Sale February 14’, coincided with ‘New Worlds’ no.69 and ‘Science Fantasy’ no.27 – both of which also carry Robert Silverberg stories! As Carnell notes about his contribution to ‘Science Fantasy’ – “Valley Beyond Time”, ‘incomprehensible things happen in the story which cannot be explained away by science as we know it – hence the fantasy angle.’ But ‘Science Fiction Adventures’, the ‘exciting addition to the existing Nova magazines,’ was to be different again. To invest the new title with its own distinctive identity it was to be ‘Action’ and ‘Adventure’, to differentiate it from both the heavy speculative science of ‘New Worlds’, and the imaginative realms inhabited by ‘Science Fantasy’. ‘The emphasis is on adventure; interplanetary, bizarre, strange, but full of suspense and thrills.’

But it’s CM Kornbluth, not Silverberg, who takes the first cover with his “The Slave”. Initially the story is a complex puzzle of overlaid identity using hardboiled prose and elements of horror. Agent Charles Barker of the FSI – Federal Security & Intelligence, is conditioned into a new identity as Dr Oliver, a Professor of English Literature, in order to infiltrate alien abductions from a supposed cancer-research station in Mexico. From there, he finds himself taken by cyclopean Star-people whose ships are powered by the amplified psychokinetic energy of human ‘galley-slaves’.

The colour cover, showing a distressed girl-victim being secured into the brain-draining dentist-style chair, is by José Rubios, but based on an original American black-and-white inner illustration by Ed Emshwiller, which – with more alluring cleavage, can be seen on page 22 of the British edition. Fortunately Barker’s dual-identity allows him to evade the alien’s mind-probes – they can only ‘read’ him as Oliver!, neatly enabling him to start a mutiny and take control of the ship. Tragically, the editorial of no.3 carries news of Kornbluth’s sudden death from a heart attack, aged just thirty-five, ‘cutting off what would undoubtedly have been a brilliant career in the science fiction field.’

The third of the three tales – rounding off that first issue, is “Yesterday’s Man” from Algis Budrys. The writer is described as ‘a paradoxical young man – as muscularly handsome as the hero of any science fiction story, but so quietly self-effacing that his hair-raisingly powerful writing style is a distinct surprise to many readers.’ His story is a ‘Mad Max’ exploit in a post-plague world where survivors are ‘a breed of jackals, skulking around a sickened world… free to gorge because all the lions are dead.’ Wheelwright, a near-mythical leader, is the last of the lions capable of bringing stability. Is he still capable of remaking the world, if only he can be found? Or is he dead? Is this lost Commander in the Appalachian foothills really Wheelwright – despite his denials? There’s tension as the half-track battlewagon from the Seventh North American Republic is surrounded by ragged bandits, and held in uneasy truce. It’s a story that constitutes the third in a good-value pack of diverse, yet high-energy tales, rich in entertainment value. Larry Shaw asserts that ‘science fiction isn’t as much fun to read as it used to be.’ ‘Science Fiction Adventures’ is ‘designed to be an antidote for that situation.’

The American ‘Science Fiction Adventures’ had been launched in December 1956 by Royal Publications, who originally planned to continue issue-numbering from their failed ‘Suspect Detective Stories’ project as a dubious strategy to hoodwink the US mail. Hence the first issue appeared as no.6, although this subterfuge didn’t work, and the pretence was subsequently dropped. The scam nevertheless forms a first meandering detour in the magazine’s increasingly contoured career. Nevertheless the transatlantic link was established. The UK no.1 edition shuffles content a little to Anglicise the magazine, creaming off three ‘novels’ from the spread of existing American issues.

The second issue was the first I actually bought – albeit some years later in a second-hand bookshop on Prince’s Avenue, Hull. And I immediately loved it. As a follow-on to ‘Dan Dare’, ‘Captain Condor’ or ‘Jet-Ace Logan’ – the comic-strip SF I was evolving out of, it’s a magazine packed with a trio of fast-moving straightforward high-action exploits with no superfluous padding. No philosophical musings or conceptual experiments. The opening cover-story is “One Against Herculum” by Jerry Sohl, a screenwriter for ‘The Twilight Zone’, ‘The Outer Limits’ and the original ‘Star Trek’ (as ‘Nathan Butler’). Cheated out of his upgrade by devious Testing Officer Jack Bohannen, Alan Demuth chooses official criminal status as ‘murderer’ which grants him a day to carry out his revenge within the enclosed dome-city of the title. The subsequent death-race amid feathered Vegans, Altairians and excitable Aquarians, is complicated by betrayal and double-cross at the hands of a humanoid robot that fugitive Demuth then drops from the city’s central shaft-tower in a scene dramatically illustrated in full-page art by Richard Kluga. There’s also a smart and sexy woman in Connie Craig, and a shoot-out climax with a twist.

Then there’s “Two Worlds In Peril” jointly authored by James Blish & Phil Barnhart. This story of war between Fish-People and Grey Men in the oceans of Venus stands up less well, and had already been done by the ‘Rick Random: Secret Of The Ocean Planet’ picture library of March 1956! Nevertheless, the fact that Earthman Heimdall – with gill-grafts, is usually naked while mer-girl Noran’s ‘single garment’ is ‘almost totally torn away’ gives it a prurient charge that worked like napalm for the adolescent me.

Yet the issue closes on another high with “Secret Of The Green Invaders” by ‘Robert Randall’ who, as the title-blurb points out, is a conflation of Robert Silverberg with Randall Garrett. By May 3035 Orvid Kemron is a rebel against Earth’s alien overlords. Since the nuclear wars of the mid twenty-first century, humans have lost self-confidence, preferring the benevolent thousand-year rule of the lizard-like Sslesor, then as a minor Terran Protectorate of the squat four-legged multi-tentacled Velks, and now the Khoomish, ‘the green-furred saviours from the stars who had rescued Earth from anarchical chaos.’ The shock-secret of these latest overlords, as Kemron discovers, is that they’re not alien at all. Merely humans assuming a guise that the tamed and stagnating population will accept, until motivated insurrectionists can regain racial self-confidence sufficient to re-take Earth. As a teenage reader of ‘Science Fiction Adventures’, this issue had just about everything I needed.

The third issue has original UK cover-art, a beautifully surreal creation by the innovative Brian Lewis. And kicks off with the return of Henry Hasse (1913-1977) – a 1940’s short-story veteran, with “Clansmen Of Fear”, a ‘Crysalids’-variant with aliens and the twist that the villagers of the zone, rather than being poisoned by hard-radiation from the nuked city-ruins, have instead adapted to become dependant on it. Issue four has Harry Harrison. And number five centres on new fiction by a true SF legend – ‘if anyone can be called the inventor of action-adventure science fiction, that man is Edmond Hamilton. He’s been writing exciting tales of deep space since about the time the first science fiction magazine appeared’ and “The Star-Combers” – with human-scavengers entering the core-deep volcanically-warmed cleft of a planet circling a dead black star shows he’s lost none of his startling edge.

But it’s also this fifth issue where the transatlantic divide begins to become apparent. The cover shows a dramatic Ed Emsh landscape with a nicely-contoured girl in a contorted pose as she flees from the spire of a spaceship across a devastated dereliction of twisted metal shards. But check out the corresponding cover on the American edition, and that landscape is piled high with corpses, all of which have been cleverly expurgated to protect the more sensitive sensibility of British readers.

The next twist to the tale is that the US edition promptly died! Due to disappointing sales and ‘distribution troubles’, after reaching twelve issues it was abruptly and inconveniently axed. Problematically the Nova edition was coming along nicely. The triangulation of titles was working well, with each issue advertising and promoting its two companion titles in a pleasing synergy, while ‘our edition (although starting quietly) was beginning to increase its circulation in leaps and bounds.’ So Carnell decides to continue anyway. ‘This issue now in your hands is creating science fiction history in a quiet way’ he editorialises in no.6. Despite a still-unused backlog of American work, this is the first issue to consist entirely of new work, gathered by recruiting suitable fiction initially submitted to Nova, then by chasing up his regular pool of writers for new work answering the ‘Science Fiction Adventures’ requirements.

 Australian writer Wynne Whiteford – ‘now living in London’, opens with “Shadow Of The Sword”. In a race to recover alien technology from Triton before Cold War rivals the Eastern Alliance can, Captain Rick Scott forms an uneasy partnership with stout Bren Galt, a woman adapted to colonise Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. Was it still possible to write about that Gas Giant planet’s storm-centre as ‘an iceberg of solidified gasses thirty-thousand miles long, floating in a (toxic) atmosphere,’ even in January 1959? Apparently it was. And they plot their course to Neptune’s frigid moon using slide-rules. The story continues in no.9.

Then Ken Bulmer adopts his ‘Nelson Sherwood’ alias for a neat ecological fable titled “Galactic Galapagos”. He even fleshes out his assumed guise by inventing the biographical detail that ‘Sherwood’ – who returns in no.7 with “The Sun Creator”, is ‘better known for his adventure and detective stories.’ While Arthur Sellings’ “The Tycoons” not only effectively rounds out the issue, but was soon adapted into an episode for ABC-TV’s highly-rated groundbreaking ‘Out Of This World’ series. Which helps vindicate John Carnell’s decision to continue the magazine independently from its transatlantic origins. To Carnell, SF is a ‘subject which virtually has no boundaries.’ He sought tales in which ‘a sense of wonder and a sense of enjoyment go hand in hand’ (in his introduction to the ‘Gateway To Tomorrow’ anthology).

The amazing artwork of Brian Lewis begins to replace that of his more-celebrated American counterparts. Lewis had already been responsible for illuminating the comic-strip version of ‘The Quatermass Xperiment’ as serialised in the ‘House of Hammer’ magazine (from issue no.7), and is remembered with affection for his superb contributions to the ‘Captain Condor’ SF strip in ‘Lion’ – especially ‘The Push-Button Planet’, and later to ‘Dan Dare’ in ‘2000AD’. Meanwhile, there’s still an occasional dipping back into the American writer-pool, with Silverberg’s ‘Calvin M Knox’. But the British SF magazine regulars who now predominate still retain the capacity to surprise. In his “Galactic Destiny” (in no.10) EC Tubb manages to include the seeds of two epic cycles, a character called Elric, and a passage ‘now it is all too easy to find men, whole planets even, to whom Earth is but a legend’ predicting his own Earl Dumarest series.

Specialising in the longer ‘novelette’ or ‘short novel’ format, which space-restrictions deny his other two titles, Carnell devotes some issues to just two tales. If the contents occasionally fall into the Space Opera clichés of galactic long-hauls and stellar colonisation, there are always validating new twists and plot variants. Robert Presslie – ‘a London chemist who has made quite a name for himself in our two companion magazines’, makes his ‘SFA’ debut with a fast-action “The Savage One” (no.11), while a ubiquitous Kenneth Bulmer ‘can always be relied upon to present an interesting and exciting plot… under his own name and several pseudonyms.’ His “Of Earth Foretold” (no.14) features stranded Solarians on the richly-imagined oceanic floating cities of the beaver-like Pogosans. Even as they search for lost Commander Varese, galactic conflict against the proselytising Evil Ones gains momentum in space around them. Or Clifford C Reed’s short story in the same issue – “Ivory And Apes”, of a freighter carrying experimental animals ‘twenty revolutions further out on the Fringe.’ While the narrative style is distinctive, the plot switch-around is that the animal-cargo turns out to be human, the feuding trio aboard are… what? some manner of psi-enabled aliens? It’s not specific.

Then veteran writer William F Temple adds a whimsical “A Trek To Na-Abiza” to no.21, following Alexander Sherret’s picaresque journey across Amara, a world of three suns. His destination is the title city, which literally translates in the native language as ‘no-shit’, while the contradictory speech-patterns of one alien species earns them the un-politically correct nickname ‘Paddies’ due to their ‘Irishness’. This was – in mitigation, 1961! Among Sherret’s strange encounters is Rosala, a Petran phantom-woman who is the Circe to his Ulysses, who parasitically draws her existence from him, and the Three-man whose split psyche exists as a separate disembodied entity which bonds with anyone foolish enough to come close, to form an evil third being.

So, in this way, ‘Science Fiction Adventures’ evolves into its own form, assuming an increasingly British character unique in its own genre niche. It continued for thirty-two issues – until May 1963, expanding its remit to draw in fiction by Michael Moorcock, John Brunner and JG Ballard.

With Brian Lewis providing dramatic cover-art illustration for “The Drowned World”, Ballard debuts in no.24. Soon expanded from its novelette status, it will become Ballard’s second novel. The first – ‘The Wind From Nowhere’, had itself been originally serialised in ‘New Worlds’ September and October 1961. “The Drowned World” follows the basis for what has been termed his groundbreaking ‘Images from the Disaster Area’ cycle. Although these tales start out from the traditional Science Fiction Adventure of post-apocalyptic eco-disaster, as with John Wyndham, Ballard’s characters adapt to their reshaped worlds and are drawn into its transfigured mind-set. Rather than heroically striving to overcome the menacing hazard – as in earlier SF generations, they adjust their inner landscape, and alter themselves. The following issue – no.25, draws in the debut appearance by another high-hitter, John Brunner – with the first of three excerpts from his ‘Society Of Time’ alternate history set in a modern world where historically the Spanish Armada had triumphed. Featuring Don Miguel Navarro in Spanish-dominated England, the stories later form his ‘Times Without Number’ novel.

The other architect of the New Wave is ‘rising young London author’ Michael Moorcock himself, a writer who Carnell says has ‘been making a name for himself’. Maintaining the old-new balance of the issue (no.25), Philip E High remains the central attraction, highlighting the strengths of traditional SF with an immensely detailed space battle, with Terran Command adopting unorthodox methods to counter the implacable and seemingly invincible Voyans, while Moorcock’s “Going Home” is light-years away from the Elric sagas that were already unfolding in simultaneous issues of ‘Science Fantasy’. After three-hundred years, a fleet of five starships travel from planet Veildo to discover why its original colonists had left Earth. Arriving at their drab unimaginative racial home-world the space-farers learn they are descended from the last neurotics to be exiled from its clinically-clean civilisation. Yet it’s those very paranoiac tendencies that give their civilisation its vigour and strength. A competent little tale which certainly slots into the ‘Science Fiction Adventure’ category, but shows little evidence of Moorcock’s genre-quake tendencies, beyond the ornate accoutrements and weaponry. In fact, its terrain is far closer to High’s all-action “Blind As A Bat” than some would care to admit.

He follows it with the more ambitiously high-concept “The Sundered Worlds” demonstrating his ‘developing flair for other-world descriptiveness’, and with more recognisably Moorcockian preoccupations. Renark of the Rim has ‘deep-set black eyes in a long skull, a brooding face in repose,’ while his companion Asquiol of Pompeii is foppishly ‘dressed with careful flamboyance in a high-collared quilted jacket of orange nylon fur and tight slacks of purple stuff which fitted over his pointed, fibre-glass boots.’ Yet they meet in a tavern-brawl in lawless Migaa in a sequence that could be lifted intact from a two-fisted EC Tubb yarn. Hunting the answer to the contracting-universe, Renark seeks out madwoman Mary the Maze. ‘Do sit down’ she says. ‘There was nowhere to sit. He remained standing’ – like a verse from the Beatles “Norwegian Wood”.

Leaving Migaa, they penetrate the Shifter – ‘a rogue System’ of eleven worlds orbiting a blue binary dislodged by ancient warfare, so as no longer to be part ‘of this space-time continuum.’ To Entropium, an anarchist world where the misfit criminals of every STC – space-time continua (not yet multiverse!) live out lives of lethargy. Then to the metazoa of Ekiversh, and into the Abyss of Reality on the ‘Ragged Planet’ punched full of holes ‘like a great maggoty cheese’ to learn of the Doomed Folk and the Dance of the Stars, to finally achieve transcendence with the god-like Originators. A sequel appears in no.32 – the final issue, with the remnants of humanity escaping the collapsing universe into a new hostile dimension where the native species subject them to devastating psychological warfare, a gamble that rips competitors apart, reducing them to cringing madness. The stories were collected and republished first by Compact SF, then by Mayflower (1974) and Sphere, but are now difficult to find. They form a unique strand of early Moorcock fiction well worth seeking out.

Meanwhile – the cover-art for no.26 is devoted to one of Kenneth Bulmer’s ‘Nelson Sherwood’ stories in which the human galaxy is regulated by the Statque. They maintain the status quo and enforce changelessness, but are destabilised by an alien symbiote called Sandoz. In a sequel in no.28, having transferred from a dragonfly-creature to Ross Carson, Sandoz now seeks his female counterpart – Lys, who is first lodged within a dying mentally-crippled child, then a ginger cat called Miss Pepper, while altering Carson’s face to escape detection and even allowing him to survive ejection from an airlock into space. Of course, that drab conformist decade had its own Statque-like inertial forces. A town called Brubeck on planet Jazzstar possibly offers an escapist clue. While Sandoz, in reality, is the Swiss location where the drug LSD was first synthesised. Maybe it’s a metaphor for the social changes the mind-expanding psychedelic would instigate? An advance tremor of the new attitudes and social convulsions the SF New Wave would champion?

The story is balanced by the first of two conceptually stunningly stories by the amazing Barrington J Bayley, masquerading as ‘PF Woods’. A dissolute two-man ship orbiting beyond Neptune encounters what seems to be the keel of a Greek trireme – ‘don’t you see what that ship is? It floats on space as an ocean ship floats on water! It’s really right outside space – outside the dimensions. But it floats on them, and we see the part its weight causes to be projected below the water-line… the space-line.’ Bayley’s mind-boggling revelation of ‘creatures to whom space is a heavy liquid’ is already a mental-step outside of previous conjectures. Then his story in the following issue inverts the idea with the even more head-spinning “The Radius Riders”. When a subterrene ship is prevented from ‘surfacing’ it follows ER Burroughs’ David Innes, or Jules Verne, to the centre of the Earth, but finds itself ‘advancing along the line of a paradox.’ Encountering subterranean cities that exist within the same relationship as the humans in “Fishing Trip” have to the more tenuous dimension above it, the density of the Earth warps physics so ‘we shrink as we enter denser matter, so it always looks the same. There’s always the same distance to go.’ Using traditional SF ingredients and action-narrative, Bayley introduces contentions that upturn ideas of reality itself.

Each issue of ‘Science Fiction Adventures’ is a two-shilling map of dreams, of chrono-tripping through time on journeys into new Technospheres of robots and spaceflight. Same world. Different planet. It’s impossible to do a full story-by-story breakdown on each issue, no matter how much they deserve such treatment. For here are adventures crammed with all of those fantastic extraterrestrial tomorrows which reality has sadly withheld from us, but which EC Tubb, Philip E High and ER James told us all about. Back where artist Alan Hunter is ‘remembering great times, now lost forever in the past…’ But with Moorcock flipping through dimensions, Brunner reconfiguring history and Ballard’s Earth transfigured, the future itself was also changing. Significantly, along the magazine’s galaxy-spanning trail, the publication of no.19 happened just before 12th April 1961. Its Brian Lewis cover leads into another of Kenneth Bulmer’s ‘Nelson Sherwood’ novelettes, even as Yuri Gagarin was turning the world into a celestial roundabout by circling it in a sealed container. Taking Science Fiction Adventures from cult magazines into global newspaper headlines.

Yet I love these magazines. I love each issue, from the attention-grabbing gloss covers, to the feel of riffling those pulp pages, on in to the rich wealth of text, each story opening with a paragraph-burst of italics above the title, beguiling you in. The inner cover panel-adverts for ‘New Worlds’ or ‘Science Fantasy’ use single colour highlights, crammed with luring taglines and teasing writer-menus designed to seduce floating readers. Or a panel asking ‘Missed Any Issues? Earlier issues of this magazine are still available, each one packed with exciting action adventure science fiction stories.’ And yes, they can still be found on eBay or in online book-sales listings. The first issue I actually bought new, was also the last to be published. Shoving my silver half-crown across the counter of a cramped newsagent off Whitefriargate in Hull, hidden down the Hepworth’s Arcade which connects through to the open market square. No.32 leads off with a single mauve colour-tint Gerard Quinn cover illustration, and contains the Michael Moorcock novella “The Blood Red Game”. The remnants of the human race fall through levels of what he now calls the multiverse. ‘A dead universe lay behind them and they knew not where they were going…’

‘Science Fiction Adventures’ might be many years dead, but it still reads like it’s alive.

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES: 

THREE COMPLETE 

ACTION NOVELS 

ISSUE BY ISSUE U.S. EDITIONS 

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES 

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.1 (USA) December 1956, editor Larry T Shaw (Royal Publications Inc). 132pp. Issue for this number is Vol.1 no.6 to continue from defunct ‘Suspect Detective Stories’. Cover-art by Ed Emsh, with Edmond Hamilton (‘The Starcombers’), Robert Silverberg & Randall Garrett (‘Secret Of The Green Invaders’ as Robert Randall, plus ‘Battle For The Thousand Suns’ as by Calvin Knox), plus Harlan Ellison (‘Hadj’). Interior art by Bowman and John Giunta (as Giunta). ‘The Fan Space’ feature in each issue is by Larry T Shaw (writing as Archibald Destiny)

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.2 (USA) February 1957, editor Larry T Shaw (Royal Publications Inc) Cover-art by William Bowman, with James Blish & Phil Barnhart (‘Two Worlds In Peril’), Robert Silverberg (‘Slaves Of The Star Giants’), Harlan Ellison (‘Assassin’). Interior art by Bowman and Stallman

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.3 (USA) April 1957, editor Larry T Shaw (Royal Publications Inc) Cover-art by Ed Emsh, with Henry Hasse (‘Clansmen Of Fear’), Daniel F Galouye (‘Gulliver Planet’), Robert Silverberg (‘Spawn Of The Deadly Sea’). Inner art by Bowman and Robert Engle

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.4 (USA) June 1957, editor Larry T Shaw (Royal Publications Inc) cover art: Ed Emsh (Ed Emshwiller), inner art Robert Engle, Bowman. With Algis Budrys (‘Yesterday’s Man’), Harlan Ellison (‘Run For The Stars’), ‘Calvin M Knox’ (Robert Silverberg alias for ‘Chalice Of Death’, first part of novel ‘Lest We Forget Thee, Earth Pt1’, Ace Books 1958), Charles L Fontenay (‘Moths’) + ‘The Readers Space’

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.5 (USA) August 1957, cover-art by Robert Engle, with Ivar Jorgenson (Robert Silverberg’s ‘This World Must Die!’), Thomas N Scortia (‘Alien Night’), Harlan Ellison (‘Forbidden Cargo’). Inner art by Bowman, Ed Emsh and Robert Engle

 SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.6 (USA) September 1957, cover-art by Ed Emsh, with CM Kornbluth (‘The Slave’), John Victor Peterson (‘Mission To Oblivion’), Robert Silverberg (‘The Flame And The Hammer’). Inner art by Bowman, Emsh and Engle

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.7 (USA) October 1957, cover-art by Barry Waldman, with Ivar Jorgenson (Robert Silverberg’s ‘Thunder Over Starhaven’), Harry Warner Jr (‘Earth Aflame!’), Joseph Farrell (‘We Learn Fast’), David Mason (‘The Gates Of Pearl’). Inner art by William Bowman and Barry Waldman

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.8 (USA) December 1957, cover-art by Ed Emshwiller. With Robert Silverberg (‘Valley Beyond Time’), Calvin M Knox (Robert Silverberg’s ‘Earth Shall Live Again’ – ‘Lets We Forget Thee, Earth Pt2’), Richard R Smith (‘Moon Dust’), Basil Wells (‘Final Voyage’), Harry Harrison (‘Captain Bedlam’). Inner art by Martinez, Bowman, Kluga and Emsh

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.9 (USA) January 1958, cover-art by John Schoenherr, with Ivar Jorgenson (Robert Silvergerg’s ‘Hunt The Space-Witch!’), Jerry Sohl (‘One Against Herculum’), Alex Kirs (‘Man Overboard’), Walter L Kleine (‘The Girl Was Dangerous’). Inner art by Bowman, Richard Kluga, John Martinez

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.10 (USA) March 1958, cover-art by Ed Emsh, with Robert Silverberg as Calvin M Knox (serial ‘Vengeance Of The Space Armadas’ – ‘Lest We Forget Thee, Earth Pt3’, plus book-reviews of Robert A Heinlein (‘Double Star’), David Duncan, Andrew North and Philip K Dick), Charles V De Vet (novella ‘The Scarlet Sun Rises’), short stories Christopher Anvil (‘Destination Unknown’), Harlan Ellison (‘Big Sam Was My Friend’), Stanley R Lee (‘Sykes). Inner art by Ed Emshwiller, John Schoenherr, Richard Kluga, John Martinez

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.11 (USA) April 1958, cover-art by Ed Emsh, with serial by Robert Silverberg (‘Shadow On The Stars’ – novel ‘Stepsons Of Terra’, plus as Calvin M Knox ‘The Book-Space’ essay, and book-reviews of Kenneth Bulmer (‘City Under The Sea’) Poul Anderson, Robert Sheckley and Jerry Sohl), and short stories Allen K(im) Lang (‘Box-Garden), David Mason (‘Farewell Message’). Inner art by Ed Emshwiller

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.12 (USA) June 1958, cover-art by Ed Emsh, with John Brunner (‘The Man From The Big Dark’ from ‘Interstellar Empire’), Harry Harrison (‘The World Otalmi Made’), Robert Silverberg (‘3117 Half-Credit Uncirculated’ as by Alexander Blade, ‘The Reluctant Traitor’ as by Ralph Burke, and ‘The Book-Space’ essay and book-review of Eric Frank Russell (‘Wasp’) Philip K Dick and Fredric Brown as by Calvin M Knox). Inner art by Richard Kluga, Ed Emshwiller, Martinez. Final ‘The Fan-Space’ by Larry T Shaw writing as Archibald Destiny and ‘The Reader’s Space’

UK EDITIONS 

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.1  (2/- UK) March 1958, editor John Carnell (Nova Publications Ltd) cover art: José Rubios, based on Ed ‘Emsh’ Emshwiller. With CM Kornbluth (‘The Slave’, art by Emsh, from US issue no.6) – ‘To become a man again, he had to be two men, fighting an enemy who had conquered billions?’, Calvin M Knox (Robert Silverberg, ‘Chalice Of Death’ from US no.4, art by Bowman – ‘Lest We Forget Thee, Earth Pt1) – ‘Was it only a myth – or did it exist, and hold the secret of eternal life?’, Algis Budrys (‘Yesterday’s Man’ from US no.4, art by Engle) – ‘Only one man could save Earth’s blasted civilisation – and he was thirty years dead!’

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.2 (UK) May 1958, cover art by Rubios from Schoenhurr original. Larry T Shaw editorial. With Jerry Sohl (‘One Against Herculum’ US no.9, art by Richard Kluga) – ‘The planet made him a killer – then stole his victim from him!’, James Blish & Phil Barnhart (‘Two Worlds In Peril’, US no.2) – ‘Heimdall’s mission to Venus held the last hope of survival for the people of a dying Earth – but he found that Venus too was doomed by the deadly Gas’, Robert Randall (Robert Silverberg & Randall Garrett, ‘Secret Of The Green Invader’ US no.1, art by Emsh, recycled in issue no.15!) – ‘Centuries of alien conquest had made Earth a slave planet. Only a pitiful handful of men dared fight – but they had a weapon they didn’t even know about’ Ads for ‘New Worlds no.71’ and ‘Science Fantasy no.28’

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.3 (UK) July 1958, cover art Brian Lewis. First John Carnell editorial (with Kornbluth obituary). Henry Hasse (‘Clansmen Of Fear’ US no.3, art by Emsh) – ‘Helpless, Donal saw the embers of Terran civilisation grow dim, as the Zone’s women turned oddly alien’, Calvin M Knox (Robert Silverberg, ‘Earth Shall Live Again’, from US no.8 – ‘Lest We Forget Thee, Earth Pt2) – ‘The prize: Earth. The arena: Jorus. The odds: one man against a planet!’, plus short stories Alix Kers (‘Man Overboard’, US no.9) – ‘were they dreams, the memories of places he’d never been in and people he’d never known? Or was ‘reality’ a dream?’, Richard R Smith (‘Moon Dust’, US no.8) poor Cold War story, Charles L Fontenay (‘Moths’, US no.4) – ‘that’s Venus for you, you live hard, you die easy.’ Ads for ‘New Worlds no.73’ and ‘Science Fantasy no.29’

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.4 (UK) September 1958, cover art by Bradshaw, Larry T Shaw ‘The Editors Space’ on Sputniks, with John Victor Petersen (‘Mission To Oblivion’ US no.6, art by Bowman) – ‘On Mag, all Earthmen were confined to ghetto areas, and ruled by the decrees of an arbitrary dictator. To disobey was to die – but Hill Barris had no choice’, Harry Harrison (‘The World Otalmi Made’ US no.12, art by John Martinez) – ‘The only way to void a Profession man’s contract was to kill him – if you could. It wasn’t easy, but everybody on Dubhe IV seemed to want to kill Brek’, plus short stories by Ralph Burke (Robert Silverberg’s ‘The Reluctant Traitor’, US no.12) – ‘Faylad was the best spy Donnobir had – until he became a turncoat against his will!’, Basil Wells (‘Final Voyage’ US no.8, art by Bowman) – ‘The Janelace was a hulk that would never fly again. Even I couldn’t deny that – and I’m the Janelace!’, David Mason (‘The Gates Of Pearl’, US no.7) – ‘A space station, of all places, should be off limits to unauthorised personnel – especially when they’re dead!’ Ads for ‘New Worlds no.75’ and ‘Science Fantasy no.30’

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.5 (UK) November 1958, cover and inner art by Emsh, with ‘The Editor’s Space’ by Larry T Shaw, Ivar Jorgenson (Robert Silverberg’s ‘This World Must Die!’, US no.5) – ‘the Earth Central computer said that Loy Gardner was the one man who could blast Lurion to dust. But the computer had been wrong once, and Gardner wondered’, Edmond Hamilton (‘The Starcombers’, US no.1) – ‘Greedy scavengers of the universe, they sold dead dreams of ancient races for junk – until a battle for life taught them what dreams are worth’, Calvin M Knox (Silverberg’s ‘Vengeance Of The Space Armadas’ from US no.10 – ‘Lest We Forget Thee, Earth Pt3) – ‘Earthward they raged – fifty mighty battlewagons of space, the combined forces of Jorus and Kariad, against a pitiful handful of defenders of a reborn planet’. Ads for ‘Science Fantasy no.32’ and New Worlds no.78’

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.6 (UK) January 1959, cover by Bradshaw, inner art Brian Lewis, with John Carnell’s ‘The Editor’s Space’, Wynne Whiteford (‘Shadow Of The Sword’) – ‘to avert a war on Earth two people had to pit their wits against the science of an alien culture’, Nelson Sherwood (Ken Bulmer’s ‘Galactic Galapagos’) – ‘the colony was a paradise, yet the emigrants were fighting a losing battle against the animals and insects. Someone had to save both from extinction’, Arthur Sellings (‘The Tycoons’) – ‘their business was to produce dancing dolls, but behind the scenes they were an alien organisation waiting to take over Earth’, George Chailey (Bonus Short Story ‘Death Of A Telepath’). Ads for ‘Science Fantasy no.32’ and ‘New Worlds no.78’

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.7 (UK) March 1959, all art by Brian Lewis, with James White (‘Occupation Warrior’) – ‘War had been outlawed but serious disagreements among the galactic worlds were settled by picked armies – of cowards! When Earth was involved Major Dermod decided to do something about it’, Nelson Sherwood (Ken Bulmer’s ‘The Sun Creator’) – ‘Mabel had been designed to turn a planet into a Sun, but accidentally the machine became lost on a civilised world, with the mechanism triggered’, Clive Jackson (short story ‘Anachronism’). Ads for ‘Science Fantasy no.33’ and ‘New Worlds no.81’

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.8 (UK) May 1959, Brian Lewis art, with Jay Williams (‘Seed Of Violence’) – ‘When Nick Egon discovered an archaeological connection between Lunar and Mars he had no idea that it would turn him into the central figure in an Earth-Mars squabble’, Philip Stratford (Ken Bulmer’s ‘Don’t Across A Telekine’) – ‘With his specialised talent it should have been easy for Craig to get away from Venus – but apparently there was little honour among telepaths!’ plus Clifford C Reed (novelette ‘Halfway House’), George Chailey (article ‘Cave Painting’). Ads for ‘Science Fantasy no.34’ and ‘New Worlds no.81’

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.9 (UK) July 1959, all art by Brian Lewis, with Wynne Whiteford (‘Distant Drum’ – sequel to ‘Shadow Of The Sword’ in no.6), ‘the stolen alien spaceship was priceless, but the aliens had no intention of letting Rick Scott get away with it. Where hide it?’, Clifford C Reed (‘Children Of The Stars’) – ‘out of penal servitude into freedom – of a kind, Burke Halwell led his motley crew, to build a new world for their children’ plus ‘Readers Space’, ad for ‘Science Fantasy no.35’ and ‘New Worlds no.84’

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.10 (UK) October 1959, cover by Hutchings, interior art by Brian Lewis, with EC Tubb (‘Galactic Destiny’) – ‘the Folk crewed the starships. People were only passengers and never the twain should meet. Until a disastrous accident in No-Space altered the circumstances.’ Calvin M Knox (Silverberg’s ‘The Silent Invaders’) – ‘Unbeknown to its inhabitants Earth was a vital battleground for two opposing galactic forces. The protagonists both wanted Earth on their side for the final conflict.’ NK Hemming (‘Call Them Earthmen’) Australian writer and first woman contributor, the discovery of ancient Plandaro Citadel reveals the defenders of Earth are not native to Earth, but the victors of a previous interplanetary conflict. Ads for ‘Science Fantasy no.37’ and ‘New Worlds no.87’

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.11 (UK) November 1959, art by Lewis, with novel Clifford C Reed (‘Forgotten Knowledge’, a sequel to ‘Children Of The Star’) – ‘only a generation after the penal battalion landed on Sumedin most of Earth’s technology has been lost. The struggle against environment and themselves is long and bitter.’ Novelette Robert Presslie (‘The Savage One’) – ‘on Earth Kramer was a rogue, and as such due to die – but he was destined to become a Soldier of Mirfak and pit his wits against some of the greatest fighters of the galaxy.’ Short story ER James (‘Refrigerator Ship’), colony-ship Cold Comfort discovers destination-star Capella has gone nova. Plus article ‘The Mohole’ by Kenneth Johns. Ads for ‘Science Fantasy no.37’ and ‘New Worlds no.88’

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.12 (UK) December 1959, art by Lewis, with novel Wynne N Whiteford (‘Who Rides The Tiger’) – ‘powerful and opposing forces were out to stop Edison North representing Earth at the Galactic Federation Council on Xaron. Throughout the journey death stared over his shoulder.’ Novelette Kenneth Bulmer (‘The Halting Hand’) – ‘Earth scientists, on the brink of space travel, had to be prevented from doing so for at least 50 years – the Machine said.’ Short stories Robert Silverberg (‘Venus Trap’) and Lan Wright (‘The Easy Way’). Article ‘Time For Moderns’ by Kenneth Johns. Ads for ‘Science Fantasy no.38’ and ‘New Worlds no.89’

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.13 (UK) February 1960, all art by Brian Lewis, with short novel Clifford C Reed (‘The Road Back’ third in cycle, sequel to ‘Forgotten Knowledge’ in no.11) – ‘Third and fourth generations of Sumedians, descendants of renegade Earthmen, now clash in their final struggle to attain the stars.’ Novelette James White (‘Deadly Litter’) – ‘When the interplanetary freight lanes are opened up, garbage dumped in space will become more deadly than the asteroid belt.’ Ad for the ‘British Convention: Easter 1960’, and ‘The Readers’ Space’ letters. Ads for ‘Science Fantasy no.39’ and ‘New Worlds no.92’

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.14 (UK) May 1960, all art by Brian Lewis, with short novel Kenneth Bulmer (‘Of Earth Foretold’) – ‘Earthmen had found a way round the impossibility of trying to colonise the entire galaxy, but eventually they met up with another dominant race with the same idea!’, and short stories EC Tubb (‘Grit’) – ‘His destiny was to be junkered, but before he went, the little inoffensive guy left behind the seeds of destruction,’ and Clifford C Reed (‘Ivory And Apes’) – ‘Transporting animals around the galaxy was a pretty mundane sort of job, the snag came when a cruelty preventionist became mixed up with the delivery.’ Ads for ‘Science Fiction Book Club’, ‘Science Fantasy no.40’ and ‘New Worlds no.94’

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.15 (UK) July 1960, cover art by Jarr, plus Emsh inner art recycled from no.2 and Brian Lewis for Lan Wright short novel (‘The First Return’) – ‘the first starship to return to Earth was put in quarantine on the far side of the Moon. Soon afterwards peculiar and mysterious events started happening in South Africa’, largely a mystery-thriller set in Nairobi, the symbiotes from the fourth planet ‘Eden’ of Alpha Centaurus infest the ‘First Discoverer’, plus novelette by Nelson Sherwood (Kenneth Bulmer’s ‘The Dedicated Ones’), and short stories by Brian Aldiss (‘Original Sinner’) – ‘most of the soldiers were only trying to be men. It took a man to defy authority and prove his point’ when the AS Intractible calls off at Mars, and Jim Harmon (‘Messenger Boy’) – ‘naturally an alien wouldn’t understand the psychology of a human – so passive resistance would be incomprehensible to him’ as the Sankrusan attack Terrestrial Federation planet Marlowe. Ads for ‘Science Fantasy no.41’ and ‘New Worlds no.95’

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.16 (UK) September 1960, cover art by Brian Lewis. Novelettes by Brian W Aldiss (‘A Touch Of Neanderthal’) – ‘Something very peculiar was happening on the colony planet. Nobody ever came back – not even the police’ the high N-factor on Nehru II reverts them to Neanderthal or Crow (Cro-Magnon), EC Tubb (‘Iron Head’) – ‘One Earthman without any special talent in a galaxy of talented men’ with Jake one non-telepath in a psi-galaxy ‘a fine tongue-in-cheek example of his satiric approach to a theme’, Francis G Rayer (‘Adjustment Period’) – an offshoot of his ‘Tomorrow Sometimes Comes’ Magnus Mensis novel, plus short story by John Kippax (‘Last Barrier’) – ‘Being a good soldier meant more than being physically fit, it meant mentally as well. Depending upon which side you were on’, and ‘The Readers Space’ letters. Ads for ‘Digit Books’, ‘Science Fantasy no.42’ and ‘New Worlds no.96’

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.17 (UK) November 1960, cover art by Jarr, short novel by Kenneth Bulmer (‘Earth’s Long Shadow’) – ‘Earth and its colony worlds were long dead, cut off from the rest of the Galaxy by the uncrossable Blight, while their names passed into fable and legend. Yet the descendants of those who survived still fought for power,’ plus short story by Lan Wright (‘Transmat’) – ‘what went in at one end of the matter transmitter didn’t necessarily come out the other. Which proved embarrassing for Mulchrone.’ Article on “The Bow’ by Alan Barclay. Ads for Tsiolkovsky’s 1920 novel ‘Beyond The Planet Earth’, ‘Science Fantasy no.44’ and generic ‘New Worlds’

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.18 (UK) January 1961, cover art by Brian Lewis, novelettes by John Ashton ‘Ashcroft’ (‘The Lonely Path’) – an enigmatic tower on Mars leads to sense-of-wonder on vast time-spanning scale, with the benevolent rat-like Martians fleeing a planet-wrecking asteroidal ‘intruder’, wonderfully old-fashioned SF with part-sequel in no.21, and Kenneth Bulmer (‘The Aztec Plan’) – linked into his ‘New Worlds’ tales of Takkat, Shurilala and Earth, despite the armistice, galactic intrigue continues. Short stories by EC Tubb (‘Umbrella In The Sky’) – facing ‘sunburst’ with ‘a meteor shower of seetee’ anti-matter due to hit the Sun, they construct a vast space-shield, and Robert Hoskins (‘Weapon Master’), the arms-dealer supplying feuding colony-worlds Newcastle and Jordan’s Delight turns out to be a pacifist. Article ‘Fit For Space’ by Kenneth Johns. Ads for ‘Rosicrucians, ‘Science Fantasy no.44’ and ‘New Worlds no.102’

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.19 (UK, price rise from 2/- to 2.6d) March 1961, yellow+black Brian Lewis cover-art, novelettes by ‘Nelson Sherwood’ (Kenneth Bulmer’s ‘Design Dilemma’) – ‘The problem was to place greater fire power on ships of the Space Navy. The trouble was that the space-driven engines had a maximum potential’, and Francis G Rayer (‘Contact Pattern’) – part of ‘Mens Magna’ sequence, ‘Earth scientists were clever enough to produce a globe of force to protect colonial cities. Then a Spaceship hit the field – and vanished’. Short stories by Gordon R Dickson (‘The Amateurs’) – ‘The yardstick of space travel might well be: four amateurs equal one professional’, and Dale Hart (‘Conquest By Proxy’) – ‘There must always be more than one way to conquer a planet’, a poor Mars-based space-filler by Arkansas writer. Ads for ‘Science Fiction Book Club, ‘Science Fantasy no.45’ and Theodore Sturgeon’s serial in ‘New Worlds’

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.20 (UK) May 1961, Brian Lewis cover-art and John Carnell’s ‘The Editor’s Space’, with short novel by Kenneth Bulmer (‘Wind Of Liberty’) – ‘Vickery was the key man in the colonial world’s bid for liberty, but he didn’t know anything about psychology!’, novelette by Robert Silverberg (‘The Wages Of Death’) – ‘The weaklings had to make a 2,000-mile trek to liberty, or die. On the journey many things happened’, both dealing with colony worlds breaking away from Earth, Bulmer’s Sjalberg II from Friendly Combine, successor to the Terran Solar Empire, and Silverberg’s Maynard declared a Free World from loyalty to Earth. Also a short ‘delightful satire’ by Trevis Cogswell (‘Machine Record’) about a Mad Scientist. Ads for ‘Rosicrucians, ‘Science Fantasy no.47’ – Michael Moorcock’s ‘Elric’ debut ‘The Dreaming City’, and ‘New Worlds no.106’

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.21 (UK) July 1961, Brian Lewis cover-art for short novel by William F Temple (‘A Trek To Na-Abiza’) – ‘Amara was a strange planet. Nothing conformed to known laws or logic. Physically it was a mad world’, and novelette by John Ashcroft (‘No Longer Alone’, part-sequel to ‘The Lonely Path’ in no.18) – ‘given two cultures with opposing interests living on the same planet, how to integrate them for their common good?’ naïve optimism on grand scale, final reveal shows Earth war-devastated with united human races on terraformed Mars determined to save environmentally-damaged Gann-Shuva’s world from the folly of racial strife. Ads for ‘Science Fiction Book Club, ‘Science Fantasy no.47’ and ‘New Worlds no.107’

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.22 (UK) September 1961, three novelettes, Brian Lewis cover for Lan Wright (‘Should Tyrone Fail’) – ‘everyone wanted to salvage the crashed ship, if it could be found, but for vastly different reasons’, domed Jewel City is ‘one of the seven wonders of the galaxy’ on jungle planet Lyra, David Rome (‘The Game’) – ‘It was a modern ball game played in the setting of ancient gladiators, except the ball could kill and the victors seldom won’, and WT Webb (‘Babel Has 500 Floors’) – ‘it was called the emporium and once within its fascinating walls the shoppers found that it was almost impossible to get out.’ Ads for ‘British Science Fiction Association’, ‘Science Fantasy no.48’ and generic ‘New Worlds’

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.23 (UK) November 1961, Brian Lewis cover, short novel by ‘Nelson Sherwood’ (Kenneth Bulmer’s ‘Trial) – Harrington of Galactic Importers Ltd visits jungle-hell planet Terpsichore, but are the Zana sentient plants, toys, pets or potential weaponry? plus novelette by John Kippax (‘Stark Refuge’) – stricken Starship Dromio is granted permission to land on Draneth (Kindros III), interesting strands include ‘hundreds of years earlier a man named Orwell had written a book,’ and Captain John Hunsecker’s blaster is ‘set at stun’ to rescue pregnant Leela. Why is it a ‘closed planet’ under constant surveillance? it transpires that Dranethan’s are Androids who cannot reproduce. Plus short stories by Noel Baddow Pope (‘The Thin Red Line’) on planet Lannion, the enemy Vhazas are unable to see the colour red, and Bertram Chandler (‘By Implication’) – ‘Pirate or patriot, the implication was applied entirely from the viewpoint of the protagonists’. Ads for the ‘BSFA’, ‘Science Fantasy no.49’ and ‘New Worlds no.111’

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.24 (UK) January 1962, Brian Lewis cover for novelette by JG Ballard (‘The Drowned World’) – ‘only the tops of the world’s great cities remained above sea level and the remnants of civilisation fought an unusual battle against strange dreams’, and David Rome (‘Bliss’) – ‘the ship was a long way from Earth – and most of Earth’s culture had been forgotten, including how to be civilised’, with short story by Lee Harding (‘Pressure’), Earth claustrophobically sealed off from the universe by a barrier imposed by the alien Slugs, a massed population controlled by drugs. Ads for ‘Science Fantasy no.50’ and ‘New Worlds no.114’

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.25 (UK) March 1962, Brian Lewis cover-art for novelette by John Brunner (‘Spoils Of Yesterday’) – ‘only the Society of Time was allowed to visit past eras – the removal of an artifact could well change history’, first of three tales later collected into his ‘Time Without Number’ novel, plus Philip E High (‘Blind As A Bat’) – widescale space war with vast Voyan battlefleet attacking hugely outnumbered New Commonwealth Worlds, but Manwood gambles their supposed ‘parapsychic’ powers actually track Earth ship’s radar echoes. Plus short stories by Michael Moorcock (‘Going Home’) – ‘an overwhelming desire possessed the colonists’ descendants to return Home to Earth’, Alan Burns (‘Deviant’) – imaginative use of language as Deviant community shelter apparently ‘normal’ Ellie on jungle planet Horsch IV, and Steve Hall (‘Einstein’s Universe’) – poor story quoting Hoyle vs Big Bang theories predicting ‘the end of the world, the Solar System, the Universe.’ Ads for ‘Science Fantasy no.51’ (Moorcock’s ‘Stealer Of Souls’) and ‘New Worlds’

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.26 (UK) May 1962, Brian Lewis cover-art for ‘Nelson Sherwood’ short novel (Kenneth Bulmer’s ‘Scarlet Denial’) – Ross Carson, orphan space-ship breaker on dusty half-forgotten planet Ragnor fuses with eternal symbiotic alien Sandoz, and becomes a ‘princely frog’ (sequel in no.28), plus novelette John Brunner (‘The Word Not Written’) second part of three ‘Time Without Number’ excerpts, and short story by ‘PF Woods’ (Barrington J Bayley’s ‘Fishing Trip’) – ‘doubtless the ocean of space will have as many strange inhabitants as the seas of Earth. The problem will be recognising them.’ Ads for ‘Science Fantasy no.52’ and ‘New Worlds no.117’

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.27 (UK) July 1962, Brian Lewis cover-art for novelette John Brunner (‘The Fullness Of Time’) third part of three ‘Time Without Number’ excerpts, plus Steve Hall (‘Takeover Bid’) – due to an accidental detonation of duomatter, a molecule mingling matter and antimatter, Tony Rawson and new girlfriend Pat Monroe find their blood has developed an intelligence of its own – the Multiman, until, fully integrated, four become one, and short stories by Harry Harrison (‘War With The Robots’) – humans in bunkers while robots continue waging war above them, ‘PF Woods’ (Barrington J Bayley’s ‘The Radius Riders’) – subterrene vessel Interstice takes eleven light-years to tunnel through the Earth, and David Rome (‘Confidence Trick’) slight Venus space-filler. Ads for ‘Science Fantasy no.53’ and ‘New Worlds no.120’

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.28 (UK) September 1962, Gerard Quinn cover-art, with short novel by ‘Nelson Sherwood’ (Kenneth Bulmer’s ‘Scarlet Dawn’) – sequel to ‘Scarlet Denial’ in no.26 as Carson explores millions of Galyears of his insider-friend’s memories, novelette by WT Webb (‘Earthmen, Farewell’) – ‘Ecti was a paradise planet upon which the only sentient life was the ‘goldies’, harmless enough creatures, until somebody killed one!’, and short story by Sydney J Bounds (‘Out There’) – ‘there was an ‘interference’ coming from outside the Solar System, something waiting for Man…’ Ads for ‘Science Fantasy no.55’ and ‘New Worlds no.122’

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.29 (UK) November 1962, Singleton cover-art, with long novelette by Michael Moorcock (‘The Sundered Worlds’) – Renark the Guide Senser defies the Galactic Lords of the Union to enter the Ghost System with Asquiol and Talfryn, ‘an unlicensed explorer and therefore a criminal’ – sequel appears in no.32, novelette by Russ Markham (‘The Third Law’) – ‘The laws of robotics were designed for the safety of mankind, but the interpretation of one of them required a Court of Law to define it’, plus short stories by John Baxter (‘Vendetta’s End’) – ‘the duelling grounds were the logical place to settle differences of opinion. In this way, even major wars could be avoided. Like the gladiators of old, however, someone had to die’, and Mark Streeter (‘The High Edge’) – ‘strategically, the submarine could be the only worthwhile weapon in any future war, especially if already on patrol waiting for a ‘Red Alert’. But, what of the crew…?’ Ads for ‘Science Fantasy no.55’ and ‘New Worlds no.124’

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.30 (UK) January 1963, Singleton cover-art, with long novelette by John Rackham (‘The Rainmakers’) – ‘Mars desperately needed water, so the colonists sent special ships to the one place where there was plenty (the asteroid belt) – but it took a tough crew to get it back to the planet’, novelette by Alan Burns (‘Placebo’) – ‘the watcher’s job was to safeguard the Earth – but unfortunately he arrived without his defences’, plus short stories by Joseph Green (‘The Fourth Generation’) – ‘the youngest generation had been born into the hostile environment of the alien planet, descendants of the survivors of a crashed spaceship. To them the thought of eventual rescue was insignificant when compared with the struggle for existence which faced them every day’ and Colin Denbigh (‘Walk To A Star’) –‘to the natives, the Star was god, only appearing once a year at the time of their annual pilgrimage. Sometimes, however, the god sent gifts to his subjects.’ Ad for ‘New Worlds no.125’

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.31 (UK) March 1963, Gerald Quinn cover-art, with novelettes by Richard Graham (‘Breakdown’) – ‘in the fully automated City, the Maintenance engineers were parasites, knowing nothing about their job. Until the machines suddenly stopped’, and John Brunner (‘Jack Fell Down’) – ‘Mars had been the original Builderworld. Now the men from Earth wanted to push the idea out to the colony worlds’, Kropotkin’s vision… ‘Imagine a watch as big as a planet: that was modern Mars’ (Prince Pyotr Kropotkin, 1842-1921 was a Russian Anarchist writer), plus short stories by Claude & Rhoda Nunes (‘Inherit The Earth’) – ‘the dolls were the nearest thing to intelligence Man had come across. When the time came they were ready to play their predestined part,’ and Peter Vaughan (‘Foolproof’) – at a time when computers printed-out cards and punched-tape, this is a quite advanced story of a fully-computerised fail-safe system blocking starship Argus’ launch due to foreseen dangers. Generic ad for ‘Science Fantasy’ and for ‘New Worlds no.129’

SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.32 (UK) May 1963, two-colour cover by Gerard Quinn, short novel by Michael Moorcock (‘The Blood Red Game’, sequel to ‘The Sundered Worlds’) – ‘the remnants of the human race, fleeing from their own contracting universe, find themselves in a more-than-hostile dimension’, and novelette by Lan Wright (‘A Task For Calvi’) – ‘Peter Calvi had a rendezvous with a man he had never met, to receive a message he knew nothing about. The man died before they made contact – which put Calvi in a difficult spot’ fast-action espionage thriller, Calvi is an agent of the Stellar Bureau ‘knights errant of the twenty-third century’ under cover on pleasure-world Norval Two, his implanted micro-unit communicator burned out, hunting traitor Egon Bray. Special Notice, ‘We regret to inform readers that this is the last issue of ‘Science Fiction Adventure’ we shall be publishing, at least for the time being. Well-liked though the magazine is in certain circles, sales no longer warrant keeping it on our lists’ Ad for ‘British Science Fiction Association’, generic ad for ‘Science Fantasy’ Thirteenth Year Of Publication, and ‘New Worlds’ EC Tubb ‘Window On The Moon’ serial

COMPLETE AUTHOR LISTING 

& THE ISSUES IN WHICH 

THEY APPEARED 

Brian Aldiss – 15, 16
John Ashcroft – 21 (& as John Ashton – 18)
JG Ballard – 24
John Baxter – 29
Barrington J Bayley (as PF Woods) – 26, 27
James Blish & Phil Barnhart – 2
Sydney J Bounds – 28
John Brunner – 25, 26, 27, 31
Algis Budrys – 1
Kenneth Bulmer – 12, 14, 17, 18, 20
                          also as Philip Stratford – 8
                          as Nelson Sherwood – 6, 7, 15, 19, 23, 26, 28
                          also as Kenneth Johns (with John Newman) see Features
Alan Burns – 25, 30
George Chailey – 6 (see also Features)
A Bertram Chandler – 23
Theodore R Cogswell (as Tevis Cogswell) – 20
Colin Denbigh – 30
Gordon R Dickson – 19
Charles L Fontenay – 3
Richard Graham – 31
Joseph Green – 30
Steve Hall – 25, 27
Edmond Hamilton – 5
Jim Harmon – 15
Harry Harrison – 4, 27
Henry Hasse – 3
Lee Harding – 24
Dale Hart – 19
NK Hemming – 10
Philip E High – 25
Robert Hoskins – 18
Clive Jackson – 7
ER James – 11
John Kippax – 16, 23
Alex Kirs – 3
CM Kornbluth – 1
Russ Markham – 29
David Mason – 4
Michael Moorcock – 25, 29, 32
Claude and Rhoda Nunes – 31
John Victor Petersen – 4
Noel Baddon Pope – 23
Robert Presslie – 11
John Rackham – 30
Francis G Rayer – 16, 19
Clifford C Reed – 8, 9, 11, 13, 14
David Rome – 22, 24, 27
Arthur Sellings – 6
Nelson Sherwood (see Kenneth Bulmer)
Robert Silverberg – 12, 20
                           also as Ivar Jorgenson – 5
                           as Ralph Burke – 4
                           as Robert Randall – 2
                           as Calvin M Knox – 1, 3, 5, 10
Richard R Smith – 3
Jerry Sohl – 2
Mark Streeter – 29
William F Temple – 21
EC Tubb – 10, 14, 16, 18
Peter Vaughan – 31
WT Webb – 22, 28
Basil Wells – 4
James White – 7, 13
Wynne Whiteford – 6, 9, 12
Jay Williams – 8
Lan Wright – 12, 15, 17 22, 32

FEATURES 

Alan Barclay (on ‘The Bow’) – 17
John Carnell (‘The Editor’s Space’) – 3, 6, 7, 20, 32 (termination notice)
George Chailey (on Cave Paintings) – 8 (also see Fiction)
Kenneth Johns (Science) – 11, 12, 18 (see Kenneth Bulmer)
Reader’s Letters – 9, 13, 16
Larry T Shaw (editorial) – 1, 2, 4, 5

 ARTISTS 

(*indicates cover illustration) 

Bowman – 1, 4
Bradshaw – 4*, 6*
Emsh (Ed Emshwiller) – 1*, 2, 3, 5*, 15 (reprint)
Engle – 1, 2
Hutchings – 10*
Jarr – 15*, 17*
Richard Kluga – 2
Brian Lewis – 3*, 6, 7*, 8*, 9*, 10, 11*, 12*, 13*, 14*, 15, 16*, 18*, 19*, 20*, 21*, 22*, 23*, 24*, 25*, 26*, 27*
Martinez – 4
Gerard Quinn – 28*, 31*, 32*
Jose Rubios – 1* (from Emsh original), 2* (from original by Schoenherr)
Schoenherr – 2*
Singleton – 29*, 30*