F&SF magazine, which I suppose you could call the ‘Grand Dame’ of SF/F magazines (leaving Analog as the Grand Master, so long as you credit it as being the successor of Astounding) has made a number of copies of their July 2008 issue available for free to bloggers.
I asked for one and now, having received it, I’m obligated to write about it. (Those were the terms of the agreement.)
This will not be my only commentary on the issue (considering that all I’ve read so far are the book reviews…)
I did think it would be interesting to compare this issue to the original issue of the magazine entitled The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Below are some scans of the Winter/Spring 1950 issue and the July 2008 issue.
Quite a difference – but then, fifty-eight years have transpired between the two.
Of course, the very first issue of the magazine was not the one shown above. That honor is reserved for The Magazine of Fantasy, published in the Fall of 1949.
The title was changed with the very next issue.
Of special note is the price change – thirty-five cents to $4.50. If you had a time machine, you could buy a round dozen copies of the original for the current price, and have enough change left over for a soda and a couple of candybars!
I wonder if any of the stories in the 2008 issue will come to be as famous as DeCamp’s and Pratt’s Gavagan’s Bar or Sturgeon’s The Hurkle is a Happy Beast.
