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WORLDS_OF_IF

                                             March 29, 2022

Revisiting the SF magazine scene of the
later half of the 20th Century, in the        From a Malzberg piece published in
light of some remarks by Barry Malzberg       "Science Fiction Review" 51,
from 1984.                                    originally written as an afterword
                                              to a "Worlds of If" anthology.


  Campbell's Astounding/Analog was place
  with the reputation for "hard SF",
  technophilia with an unfortunate              HARD_RIGHT
  reactionary right-wing bias.

  "Fantasy & Science Fiction", as the story usually
  goes, was the home of "literary values".  Malzberg
  called it "elegant and civilized", but complained
  it had "editing based upon an ignorance of science
  which amounted to terror" suggesting that
  "technologically developed science fiction was
  almost unpublishable in that magazine."

  Then there's other member of the ruling
  triumvirate, Galaxy magazine, a place for
  actual Science Fiction but which didn't need
  to comply with Campbell's political biases.
  It held the door open to liberal/left premises,
  in a "satiric" mode that typically had a jokey,
  broad comedy spin to it.

  But Galaxy magazine had a spin-off publication
  called "Worlds of If" with a flavor that's not
  so easy to pin down.  Malzberg describes it as                      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_(magazine)
  a refuge from the other three:

    "'If' on the other hand-- under Fairman, Shaw,       The wikipedia page for
    Quinn, Knight (briefly), Pohl and Jakobssen          "Worlds of If" talks
    sought and published work whose only criteria        about how in the 60s,
    in the editorial eye was quality. For that           Frederick Pohl turned
    reason, 'IF' might have been the only science        it around and made it
    fiction magazine below the top three which           profitable, by the
    often enough saw manuscripts on first                simple expedient of
    submissions (experienced professionals knowing       doing things with it he
    beforehand that they had written something           thought was "fun".
    which fell outside the range of all three
    major editors ... ) and which was able to            To this day it's
    develop something of an editorial identity."         regarded as a weak
                                                         fourth ("the most
                                                         major of the minors"),
                                                         but for several years
    "Campbell in his way was seeking to change           there it was award-
    the world.  Gold to wall it off like a               winning.
    noxious disease and Boucher and his
    successors in their amused way to nullify            A glance at the covers
    it; less possessed, less inflamed by                 in the internet
    necessity IF's editors and its publisher             archive shows that
    who for a long enough period was also its            Pohl was pulling off
    editor simply wanted to get along. ..."              some remarkable coups
                                                         with his low-end
                                                         penny-a-word magazine.

                                                         https://archive.org/details/ifmagazine

                                                         In general Pohl
                                                         deserves credit as
                                                         an adventurous
                                                         editor:

                                                              DHALGREN



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