Imagination (magazine)

Imagination was a fantasy and science fiction magazine launched in October 1950 by Raymond Palmer's Clark Publishing Company. The magazine was sold almost immediately to William Hamling, who published and edited it from the third issue, February 1951, for the rest of the magazine's life. Hamling launched a sister magazine, Imaginative Tales, in 1954; both ceased publication at the end of 1958 in the aftermath of major changes in US magazine distribution due to the liquidation of American News Company.

The magazine was more successful than most of the numerous science fiction titles launched in the late 1940s and early 1950s, lasting a total of sixty-three issues. Despite this success, the magazine had a reputation for low-quality space opera and adventure fiction, and modern historians refer to it in dismissive terms. Hamling consciously adopted an editorial policy oriented toward entertainment, asserting in an early issue that "science fiction was never meant to be an educational tour de force". Few of the stories from Imagination have received recognition, but it did publish Robert Sheckley's first story, "Final Examination", in the May 1952 issue, and also printed stories by Philip K. Dick, Robert Heinlein, and John Wyndham.

History

First issue cover

By the late 1940s, the American science fiction magazine market had begun to recover from the paper shortages that had led to the demise of several titles. In 1947, new magazines were beginning to appear again; and it was in this year that Raymond Palmer incorporated Clark Publishing in Evanston, Illinois. Palmer worked for Ziff-Davis as the editor of Amazing Stories, and did not ultimately leave until the end of 1949, but he launched two magazines under the Clark name before that date: Fate, in the spring of 1948, and Other Worlds, the first issue of which was dated November 1949. Both these magazines listed their editor as "Robert N. Webster", a pseudonym Palmer adopted while he was still at Ziff-Davis. The second issue of Other Worlds reported that Webster and Palmer were both going to edit together; by the third issue, dated March 1950, the pretence had been dropped and although there was no masthead listing the editor, the editorial was simply signed "Rap" (for "Raymond A. Palmer"). At the 1949 World Science Fiction Convention in Cincinnati, held over the weekend of 3–5 September, Palmer announced that he had left Ziff-Davis and described his plans. He also met and hired Bea Mahaffey, a twenty-one year old science fiction fan attending her first convention, as his assistant editor.

The first issue of Other Worlds, Imagination's stable-mate at Clark Publishing

With Fate and Other Worlds launched, Palmer began to plan for a new magazine, to be called Imagination. Material for the first two issues had been assembled by mid-1950, but in the early summer Palmer had a serious accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down. While he was hospitalized much of the work of editing both Other Worlds and Imagination was done by Mahaffey. Mahaffey coped well, despite her inexperience: an assistant, Marge Budwig Saunder, was hired to read the slush pile, and help out, and the magazine went ahead, with the first issue, dated November 1950, appearing on news stands on 1 August 1950. However, In September of that year, Ziff-Davis made the decision to move to New York from Chicago, and Palmer promptly contacted William Hamling, who did not want to relocate. Like Palmer, Hamling had made preparations to leave Ziff-Davis by establishing a separate publishing company, Greenleaf Publishing, and in November of 1950 Hamling left Ziff-Davis and took over Imagination.

Imagination was part of a boom in magazine publications that began in the late 1940s and continued into the mid-1950s. From a low of eight active magazines in 1946, the field expanded to twenty in 1950, and a further twenty-two had commenced publication by 1954. In 1954 Hamling started a companion magazine, Imaginative Tales; in addition, his company Greenleaf Publishing was the publisher of Rogue, a men's magazine modelled after Playboy. In 1957, the liquidation of American News Company, a major distributor, meant that many magazines had to scramble to find new distributors. Independent distributors often required that the magazines be monthly, and that they be in a larger format than the digest-size common in science fiction magazines. The larger format required higher income to be profitable, but in many cases it proved impossible to attract the additional advertising income that would have kept the magazines afloat. By the end of 1958 many titles had disappeared as a result, with Imagination one of the victims: Hamling closed down both Imagination and its sister magazine to invest the money in Rogue instead. The last issue of Imagination was October 1958, the 63rd issue, while Imaginative Tales, retitled Space Travel, ceased with the November 1958 issue. There was no indication in either magazine that the end had come, though the last issue of Imagination omitted its letter, book review, and pen-pal columns, all of which had appeared regularly in prior issues.

Contents and reception

The cover story for the first issue was "The Soul Stealers", by Chester S. Geier, a regular in the Ziff-Davis magazines Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures. The cover illustration was by Hannes Bok. Other contributors included Rog Phillips, another prolific magazine author, and Kris Neville, whose first story had been published only the year before. Neville went on to become one of the most frequently appearing writers in the magazine; other prolific contributors included Dwight V. Swain, Daniel F. Galouye and Milton Lesser. Edmond Hamilton also appeared frequently towards the end of the magazine's life. The magazine frequently contained a long novel as the lead attraction.

In addition to less well-known regulars, some more prominent writers occasionally appeared. Ray Bradbury's The Fire Balloons was published in the April 1951 issue, under the title of "'…In This Sign'"; the story would later be incorporated into Bradbury's fixup, "The Martian Chronicles". Robert Sheckley's first story, "Final Examination", appeared in the May 1952 issue. Other well-known authors who were published in Imagination include Poul Anderson, John Wyndham (as "John Beynon"), James Blish, Philip K. Dick, Harlan Ellison, Robert Heinlein, Frederik Pohl, and Robert Silverberg.

Imagination is generally thought of as one of the weaker science fiction magazines of the fifties, despite its relative longevity. SF encyclopedist Donald Tuck dismissed the novels it published, saying "not many were noteworthy, most being in the interplanetary/space opera/adventure field", and Brian Stableford a science fiction writer and critic, described it as dealing "primarily in routine space opera". Hamling's editorial policy was consciously slanted against intellectualism: in the November 1951 issue, he commented that "science fiction was never meant to be an educational tour de force. The so-called adult story is nothing more than an attempt to show the reader how dumb he is and how smart the editor is." Imagination's approach, he said, was to publish entertainment: "What we need is a little relaxation. And entertaining reading is one way to get it." Some readers, at least, agreed with Hamling: a 1952 issue of Rhodomagnetic Digest, a fanzine, contains approving commentary on Hamling's editorial by Gregg Calkins, a fan of the period.

Starting with the April 1951 issue, a regular column on science fiction fandom began, titled "Fandora's Box". It was written by Mari Wolf, an active fan, for five years, and was taken over by Robert Bloch from June 1956 through to the end. The column had an excellent reputation, and was one of the few such columns in the professional magazines. Every issue carried an editorial, and a letter column appeared in every issue but the very last one. A book review column began in June 1953, and appeared in every issue except the last one. It was initially by Mark Reinsberg, and was taken over by Henry Bott in May 1954 after two months in which both reviewers contributed to the column. A "Cosmic Pen Club" column, where fans could post requests for pen-pals, began in February 1957; as with the book reviews it appeared regularly, excepting only the last issue. Beginning in September 1951, the inside front cover was often used for an "Introducing the Author" feature, with short pieces by and about a writer or artist who appeared in the issue. These were unusual in that they included photographs of the authors in question. Among the better-known authors featured were Robert Heinlein, Evan Hunter and Philip K. Dick. "Introducing the Author" skipped four issues from October 1954 to January 1955, and ceased altogether with the April 1956 issue. One issue, May 1953, included pictures from that year's World Science Fiction in Chicago, rather than a feature about an author. The most frequently appearing cover artists were Harold W. McCauley, Lloyd Rognan, Malcolm Smith and William Terry.

Bibliographic details

The October 1954 issue, illustrating the revised cover layout that began with the June 1951 issue. The artist is H.W. McCauley.

Imagination was digest size (7.5 x 5.5 inches) for its first seventeen issues, and then shrank slightly to a short digest size (7.25 x 5.5 inches) for the rest of its run, a further forty-six issues. The volume number was incremented at the start of a calendar year, regardless of the number of issues, with volume one, 1950, having only two issues; subsequent volumes varied from five to twelve issues depending on the magazine's frequency of publication. Unusually, the overall issue number was also printed on the spine, along with the volume numbering. The first issue had a publication date of October 1950, and the schedule was bimonthly through the September 1952 issue except that June 1951 was followed by September 1951. The next four issues were dated October 1952, December 1952, January 1953 and February 1953, and then a monthly run began with April 1953 which lasted without a break until the July 1955 issue. The next issue was October 1955, which inaugurated another bimonthly period which ran with perfect regularity until the last issue, October 1958. The price remained at 35 cents throughout.

The title of the magazine was initially "Imagination: Stories of Science and Fantasy"; it changed with the October 1955 issue to "Imagination: Science Fiction", though this change was only on the cover and spine and was never reflected on the masthead.

The first twenty-eight issues were 166 pages long. The page count dropped to 134 with the April 1954 issue, and stayed at that length for the remainder of the run. The cover layout initially strongly resembled that of Other Worlds, but was changed with the fifth issue, June 1951, to have a white background banner for the title. This format was retained for the rest of the magazine's life, with occasional slight variations such as using a different colour for the banner background. The spine also changed from a coloured spine with pale lettering, which was similar to the spine style used by Other Worlds, to a white spine with red or blue lettering.

The publisher was Clark Publishing Company for the first two issues. The editor for those issues was Raymond Palmer, but as he was hospitalized much of the work was done by Bea Mahaffey. As a result these two issues are sometimes indexed with Mahaffey as editor. With the third issue, Greenleaf Publishing Company became the publisher and William Hamling took over as editor, a position he retained throughout the magazine's life.

References

• Ashley, Michael (1976). The History of the Science Fiction Magazine Vol. 3 1946–1955. Chicago: Contemporary Books, Inc. ISBN 0-8092-7842-1.
• Ashley, Michael (1978). The History of the Science Fiction Magazine Part 4 1956–1965. London: New English Library. ISBN 0-450-03438-0.
• Ashley, Mike (2005). Transformations: The Story of the Science Fiction Magazines from 1950 to 1970. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. ISBN 0-85323-779-4.
• Nicholls, Peter (1979). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. St Albans: Granada Publishing. ISBN 0-586-05380-8.
• Clute, John (1993). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. New York: St. Martin's Press, Inc. ISBN 0-312-09618-6. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Tuck, Donald H. (1982). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Volume 3. Chicago: Advent: Publishers, Inc. ISBN 0-911682-26-0.