William Tenn
William Tenn was the pseudonym of Philip Klass, a British-born American science fiction author, notable for many stories with satirical elements. Born to a Jewish family in London, Phillip Klass moved to New York City with his parents before his second birthday and grew up in Brooklyn, the oldest of three children. After serving in the United States Army during World War II as a combat engineer in Europe, he held a job as a technical editor with an Air Force radar and radio laboratory and was employed by Bell Labs. Phillip and Fruma Klass married in 1957, they moved in 1966 to State College, where he taught English and comparative literature at Penn State University for 22 years. Students of his who would go on to professional careers as writers included Rambo creator David Morrell, screenwriter Steven E. de Souza, technology writer Steven Levy and crime novelist Ray Ring. Phil's wife, Fruma Klass, grew up in New York City and graduated from the Bronx High School of Science and Brooklyn College to work as a lab technician, a medical editor and a Harper & Row copy editor.
At Penn State, she was a copy editor for the Penn State University Press. When Phil Klass retired, the couple moved to the Pittsburgh suburb of Mt. Lebanon in 1988, she took a job as an editor with Black Box Corporation; that same year, her first short story, "Before the Rainbow," was published in the anthology Synergy 3. In 1996, her second story, "After the Rainbow," won a Writers of the Future prize. In 2004, she entered a worldwide essay competition, the Power of Purpose Awards, sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation. Competing against 7,000 entrants from 97 countries, she won $25,000 for her essay, "Streets of Mud, Streets of Gold."Phil and Fruma Klass were members of the Pittsburgh Area Real Time Science Fiction Enthusiasts Consortium, were frequent speakers at its local conference, Confluence. Phil Klass was a Guest of Honor at the 2004 World Science Fiction Convention, he was the Author Guest of Honor at Loscon 33 at the LAX Marriott in Los Angeles in 2006. He has published most of his fiction as much of his nonfiction as Phil Klass.
He is sometimes confused with UFO debunker Philip J. Klass, born six months earlier and who died August 9, 2005. Klass was related to other writers, including his nieces, Perri Klass and Judy Klass, his nephew David Klass, his brother Morton Klass, he died on February 7, 2010, of congestive heart failure, was survived by his wife Fruma, daughter Adina, sister Frances Goldman-Levy. Klass published academic articles, two novels and more than 60 short stories, he began writing while working at Bell Labs, his radar lab experience prompted his first story, "Alexander the Bait", about a radar beam aimed at the moon. It was published in Astounding Science Fiction, within months a Signal Corps lab bounced a radar beam off the moon, making his story obsolete, he commented, "It was a bad story, just good enough to be published. Others in the same magazine were much better, so I worked hard on my second one. I did as well as I knew how." Some of the nonfiction articles in the trade periodical TWX Magazine have been attributed to Klass during his employment at Bell Labs, although most were published without by-lines.
His second story, the reprinted "Child's Play", told of a lawyer who creates people with his Bild-A-Man kit, a Christmas gift intended for a child of the future. After publication in Astounding Science Fiction, Tenn was soon hailed as the science fiction field's reigning humorist, during the early 1950s, readers of Galaxy Science Fiction looked forward to issues featuring his satirical science fiction. Many stories followed, including "Venus and the Seven Sexes", "Down Among the Dead Men", "The Liberation of Earth", "Time in Advance" and "On Venus, Have We Got a Rabbi". One of his non-fiction articles, "Mr. Eavesdropper," was collected in Best Magazine Articles, 1968, his essay and interview collection, Dancing Naked, was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Related Book in 2004. He was given the Author Emeritus honor by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 1999; the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction ranked Tenn as "one of the genre's few genuinely comic, genuinely incisive writers of short fiction."
Theodore Sturgeon summed up Tenn's humorous viewpoint on life: It would be too wide a generalization to say that every SF satire, every SF comedy and every attempt at witty and biting criticism found in the field is a poor and cheap imitation of what this man has been doing since the 1940s. His involved and complex mind can at times produce constructive comment so pointed and astute that the fortunate recipient is permanently improved by it. Admittedly, the price may be to create two whole categories for our species: humanity and William Tenn. For each of which you must create your laws. I've done that, and to me it's worth it. Tenn wrote two novels, both published in 1968. Of Men and Monsters is an expansion of his story "The Men in the Walls" in Galaxy Science Fiction. A Lamp for Medusa was published as a double novel with Dave Van Arnam's The Players of Hell; this novella was an expansion of his story "Medusa Was a Lady!" from the October, 1951 issue of Fantastic Adventures. In 1978, the University Readers at Penn State University presented a dramatization, directed by Joseph Wigley, of four of Tenn's short stories under the title Four From Tenn.
The selected stories were "The Discovery of Morniel Mathaway", "Bernie the Faust", "The Tenants", "My Mother Was a Witch". Pittsburgh's Malac
Theodore Sturgeon
Theodore Sturgeon was an American writer of fantasy, science fiction and horror. He was a critic, he wrote 400 reviews and more than 200 stories. Sturgeon's science fiction novel More Than Human won the 1954 International Fantasy Award as the year's best novel and the Science Fiction Writers of America ranked "Baby is Three" number five among the "Greatest Science Fiction Novellas of All Time" to 1964. Ranked by votes for all of their pre-1965 novellas, Sturgeon was second among authors, behind Robert Heinlein; the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted Sturgeon in 2000, its fifth class of two dead and two living writers. Sturgeon was born Edward Hamilton Waldo in Staten Island, New York in 1918, his name was changed to Theodore Sturgeon at age eleven after his mother's divorce and remarriage to William Dicky Sturgeon. He sold his first story in 1938 to the McClure Syndicate, his first genre story was "Ether Breather", published by John W. Campbell in the September 1939 issue of Astounding Science Fiction.
At first he wrote short stories for genre magazines such as Astounding and Unknown, but for general-interest publications such as Argosy Magazine. He used the pen name "E. Waldo Hunter". A few of his early stories were signed "Theodore H. Sturgeon." Sturgeon ghost-wrote The Player on the Other Side. This novel gained critical praise from critic H. R. F. Keating: " had finished writing Crime and Mystery: the 100 Best Books, in which I had included The Player on the Other Side... placing the book squarely in the Queen canon" when he learned that it had been written by Sturgeon. William DeAndrea and winner of Mystery Writers of America awards, selecting his ten favorite mystery novels for the magazine Armchair Detective, picked The Player on the Other Side as one of them, he said: "This book changed my life... and made a raving mystery fan out of me.... The book must be'one of the most skilful pastiches in the history of literature. An amazing piece of work, whomever did it'."Disliking arguments with Campbell over editorial decisions, after 1950 Sturgeon only published one story in Astounding.
Sturgeon wrote the screenplays for the Star Trek episodes "Shore Leave" and "Amok Time". The latter is known for its invention of the Vulcan mating ritual. Sturgeon is sometimes credited as having deliberately put homosexual subtext in his work, like the back-rub scene in "Shore Leave", the short story "The World Well Lost". Sturgeon wrote several episodes of Star Trek that were never produced. One of these was notable for having first introduced the Prime Directive, he wrote an episode of the Saturday morning show Land of the Lost, "The Pylon Express", in 1975. Two of Sturgeon's stories were adapted for The New Twilight Zone. One, "A Saucer of Loneliness", was dedicated to his memory. Another short story, "Yesterday was Monday", was the inspiration for The New Twilight Zone episode "A Matter of Minutes", his 1944 novella "Killdozer!" was the inspiration for the 1970s made-for-TV movie, Marvel comic book, alternative rock band of the same name. Sturgeon is well known among readers of classic science-fiction anthologies.
At the height of his popularity in the 1950s he was the most anthologized English-language author alive. Describing "To Here and the Easel" as "a stunning portrait of personality disassociation as perceived from the inside", Carl Sagan said that many of Sturgeon's works were among the "rare few science‐fiction novels combine a standard science‐fiction theme with a deep human sensitivity". John Clute wrote in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction: "His influence upon writers like Harlan Ellison and Samuel R. Delany was seminal, in his life and work he was a powerful and liberating influence in post-WWII US sf", he is not much known by the general public, he won comparatively few awards. His best work was published before the establishment and consolidation of the leading genre awards, while his production was scarcer and weaker, he was listed as a primary influence on the much more famous Ray Bradbury. Sturgeon's original novels were all published between 1950 and 1961, the bulk of his short story work dated from the 1940s and 1950s.
Though he continued to write through 1983, his work rate dipped noticeably in the years of his life. Sturgeon lived for several years in Oregon, he died on May 8, 1985, of lung fibrosis, at Sacred Heart General Hospital in the neighboring city of Eugene. He was a member of the all-male literary banqueting club the Trap Door Spiders, which served as the basis of Isaac Asimov's fictional group of mystery solvers the Black Widowers. Sturgeon was the inspiration for the recurrent character of Kilgore Trout in the novels of Kurt Vonnegut. In 1951, Sturgeon coined what is now known as Sturgeon's Law: "Ninety percent of is crud, but ninety percent of everything is crud." This was known as Sturgeon's Revelation.
Venture Science Fiction
Venture Science Fiction was an American digest-size science fiction magazine, first published from 1957 to 1958, revived for a brief run in 1969 and 1970. Ten issues were published with another six in the second run, it was founded in both instances as a companion to The Magazine of Science Fiction. A British edition appeared for 28 issues between 1963 and 1965. There was an Australian edition, identical to the British version but dated two months later; the original version was only moderately successful, although it is remembered for the first publication of Sturgeon's Law. The publisher, Joseph Ferman, declared that he wanted well-told stories of adventure, it succumbed to poor sales within less than two years. The second US version was no more successful, with less attractive cover art and little in the way of notable fiction, though it did publish Vonda McIntyre's first story. By the end of 1970, Venture had ceased publication permanently. In late 1949, publisher Lawrence E. Spivak launched The Magazine of Fantasy, one of many new titles in a crowded field of genre magazines.
The title was changed to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction with the second issue, the new magazine became successful and influential within the science fiction field. The editors were Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas, the managing editor was Robert P. Mills. In 1954, Joseph Ferman, a partner of Spivak's, bought the magazine from him. Ferman subsequently decided to launch a companion magazine, gave it to Mills to edit; the new magazine was titled Venture Science Fiction, the first issue was dated January 1957. Mills was managing editor of F&SF throughout Venture's first run; the editorial philosophy was laid out by Ferman in the inaugural issue: "strong stories of action and adventure... There will be two prime requisites for Venture stories: In the first place, each must be a well-told story, with a beginning and end. Ferman hoped to take advantage of a gap in the science fiction magazine market opened up by the demise of Planet Stories, one of the last sf pulps, which had ceased publication in late 1955.
Planet Stories had focused on adventure stories, as opposed to the realistic style becoming more popular in science fiction in the 1950s, Ferman hoped to combine the virtues of the melodramatic pulp fiction style with the literary values that were key to F&SF's success. Venture's bias towards action-oriented adventure led to stories with more sex and violence than those in competing magazines, sf historian Mike Ashley has commented that it was five or ten years ahead of its time. One story, "The Girl Had Guts", by Theodore Sturgeon, involved an alien virus that caused its victims to vomit up their intestines. Ed Emshwiller supplied eight of the ten covers. Emshwiller contributed interior illustrations in the first issue, but the main interior artist was John Giunta, with John Schoenherr contributing some of his earliest work to several of the issues; some well-known writers appeared during this incarnation of Venture, including Isaac Asimov, Clifford Simak, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Robert Silverberg, Damon Knight.
Not all the fiction was adventure oriented. For example, Sturgeon's story "The Comedian's Children" tells of a telethon host and his relationship with his sponsors, Leigh Brackett's "All the Colors of the Rainbow" deals with racism after aliens have contacted humanity; these and other examples can be regarded as stories of character with strong themes, in keeping with Ferman's stated goals in his inaugural editorial. Venture was the place that "Sturgeon's Law" first saw print; this adage is now seen in the form "90% of everything is crap". It was formulated by Sturgeon in about 1951, a version of it appeared in the March 1958 issue of Venture, under the name "Sturgeon's Revelation". An editorial, "Venturings," appeared in each issue of the first series; the last editorial, in July 1958, featured a eulogy of C. M. Kornbluth by Frederik Pohl, one of Henry Kuttner by Sturgeon. Kornbluth and Kuttner had died within two months of each other earlier that year. Sturgeon began a book review column, "On Hand...
Offhand", in the July 1957 issue that continued for the rest of the magazine's run. This was Sturgeon's first review column; the January 1958 issue saw the first in a series of four science articles by Asimov that continued until Venture folded. The series was transferred to F&SF, beginning with the November 1958 issue, ran to 399 consecutive articles. Venture kept to a steady bimonthly schedule for ten issues, but its circulation never reached a sustainab
Oxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary is the principal historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press. It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a comprehensive resource to scholars and academic researchers, as well as describing usage in its many variations throughout the world; the second edition, comprising 21,728 pages in 20 volumes, was published in 1989. Work began on the dictionary in 1857, but it was only in 1884 that it began to be published in unbound fascicles as work continued on the project, under the name of A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles. In 1895, the title The Oxford English Dictionary was first used unofficially on the covers of the series, in 1928 the full dictionary was republished in ten bound volumes. In 1933, the title The Oxford English Dictionary replaced the former name in all occurrences in its reprinting as twelve volumes with a one-volume supplement. More supplements came over the years until 1989.
Since 2000, compilation of a third edition of the dictionary has been underway half of, complete. The first electronic version of the dictionary was made available in 1988; the online version has been available since 2000, as of April 2014 was receiving over two million hits per month. The third edition of the dictionary will most only appear in electronic form: the Chief Executive of Oxford University Press has stated that it is unlikely that it will be printed; as a historical dictionary, the Oxford English Dictionary explains words by showing their development rather than their present-day usages. Therefore, it shows definitions in the order that the sense of the word began being used, including word meanings which are no longer used; each definition is shown with numerous short usage quotations. This allows the reader to get an approximate sense of the time period in which a particular word has been in use, additional quotations help the reader to ascertain information about how the word is used in context, beyond any explanation that the dictionary editors can provide.
The format of the OED's entries has influenced numerous other historical lexicography projects. The forerunners to the OED, such as the early volumes of the Deutsches Wörterbuch, had provided few quotations from a limited number of sources, whereas the OED editors preferred larger groups of quite short quotations from a wide selection of authors and publications; this influenced volumes of this and other lexicographical works. According to the publishers, it would take a single person 120 years to "key in" the 59 million words of the OED second edition, 60 years to proofread them, 540 megabytes to store them electronically; as of 30 November 2005, the Oxford English Dictionary contained 301,100 main entries. Supplementing the entry headwords, there are 157,000 bold-type derivatives; the dictionary's latest, complete print edition was printed in 20 volumes, comprising 291,500 entries in 21,730 pages. The longest entry in the OED2 was for the verb set, which required 60,000 words to describe some 430 senses.
As entries began to be revised for the OED3 in sequence starting from M, the longest entry became make in 2000 put in 2007 run in 2011. Despite its considerable size, the OED is neither the world's largest nor the earliest exhaustive dictionary of a language. Another earlier large dictionary is the Grimm brothers' dictionary of the German language, begun in 1838 and completed in 1961; the first edition of the Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca is the first great dictionary devoted to a modern European language and was published in 1612. The official dictionary of Spanish is the Diccionario de la lengua española, its first edition was published in 1780; the Kangxi dictionary of Chinese was published in 1716. The dictionary began as a Philological Society project of a small group of intellectuals in London: Richard Chenevix Trench, Herbert Coleridge, Frederick Furnivall, who were dissatisfied with the existing English dictionaries; the Society expressed interest in compiling a new dictionary as early as 1844, but it was not until June 1857 that they began by forming an "Unregistered Words Committee" to search for words that were unlisted or poorly defined in current dictionaries.
In November, Trench's report was not a list of unregistered words. The Society realized that the number of unlisted words would be far more than the number of words in the English dictionaries of the 19th century, shifted their idea from covering only words that were not in English diction
The Light That Failed (1923 film)
The Light That Failed is a 1923 American silent drama film, directed by George Melford and written by Jack Cunningham and F. McGrew Willis based on the novelette of the same name by Rudyard Kipling; the film stars Jacqueline Logan, Percy Marmont, David Torrence, Sigrid Holmquist, Mabel Van Buren, Luke Cosgrave, Peggy Schaffer. The film was released on October 25, 1923, by Paramount Pictures, it is not known whether the film survives, which suggests that it is a lost film. It was remade in 1939 as a sound film The Light That Failed starring Ronald Colman. Jacqueline Logan as Bessie Broke Percy Marmont as Dick Heldar David Torrence as Topenhow Sigrid Holmquist as Maisie Wells Mabel Van Buren as Madame Binat Luke Cosgrave as Binat Peggy Schaffer as Donna Lane Winston Miller as Young Dick Mary Jane Irving as Young Maisie The Light That Failed on IMDb Synopsis at AllMovie Still at silentfilmstillarchive.com Still at silenthollywood.com
Rockism and poptimism
Rockism is the belief in certain values thought to be intrinsic to rock music, making the genre superior to other forms of popular music. A "rockist" may be someone who regards rock music as the normative state of popular music. Poptimism is the belief that pop music is as worthy of professional critique and interest as rock music. Detractors of poptimism describe it as a counterpart of rockism that instead privileges the most famous or best-selling pop, hip-hop, R&B acts. Magazines devoted to the serious discussion of popular music first developed in the 1960s and 1970s, with some formative rock critics suggesting that enduring pop music art was made by singer-songwriters using traditional rock instruments on long-playing albums, that pop hits reside on a lower aesthetic plane as a source of "guilty pleasure"; the term "rockism" was coined in 1981 by English rock musician Pete Wylie and soon became a pejorative used humorously by self-described "anti-rockist" critics in the British press. Coinciding with the rise of New Pop in the early 1980s, the term was not used beyond small music magazines until the mid 2000s due to the increasing number of bloggers who used it more in analytical debate.
In the 2000s, a critical reassessment of pop music was underway, by the next decade, poptimism supplanted rockism as the prevailing ideology in popular music criticism. While poptimism was envisioned as the "antidote" to rockist attitudes, opponents of its discourse argue that it has resulted in certain pop stars being shielded from negative reviews as part of an effort to maintain a consensus of uncritical excitement. Others argue; until the late 1960s, "pop" was considered to have the same definition as "rock" or "rock and roll". From the 1960s to the 1970s, music magazines such as Rolling Stone and Creem laid the foundation for popular music criticism in an attempt to make popular music worthy of study. Following the release of the Beatles' 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, such magazines began drawing a contrast between "pop" and "rock", creating a division that gave generic significance to both terms."Pop" became associated with music, more commercial and accessible. "Rock" became associated with a style of music, heavier and centered on the electric guitar.
Besides general differences in musical style, the two words became associated with differing values. Many early rock reporters believed that rock embodied a particular set of values, such as rebelliousness, innovation and sociopolitical intent. However, not all critics supported the idea of integrating high culture values into rock music, nor did they all argue for the importance of personal expression. In addition, some believed that such values were impositions of the cultural establishment. Nonetheless, a widespread belief among music critics in the 1960s and 1970s was that artistic music was made by singer-songwriters using traditional rock instruments on long-playing albums, that pop hits reside on a lower aesthetic plane, a source of "guilty pleasure". "Rockism" was coined in 1981 when English rock musician Pete Wylie announced his Race Against Rockism campaign, an inversion of "Rock Against Racism". The term was repurposed as a polemical label to identify and critique a cluster of beliefs and assumptions in music criticism.
Former NME writer Paul Morley recalled:... one or two music journalists writing in the one or two music magazines that existed were pleased. I was one of them, was using the term "rockist" the minute after I read Wylie say it.... If the idea of rockism confused you, you lazily thought Pink Floyd were automatically better than Gang of Four, that good music had stopped with punk, you were a rockist and you were wrong.... Anti-rockism was always violently pro-pop because we original campaigning anti-rockists had been given such a tough time at school for liking Bowie and Bolan and not ELP and Led Zep. There is no widespread consensus for the definition of "rockism". During the 1990s, to be a "rockist" was defined as demanding a perception of authenticity in pop music despite whatever artifice is needed. In 2004, music critic Kelefa Sanneh offered a definition of rockists: "omeone who reduces rock'n' roll to a caricature uses that caricature as a weapon. Rockism means idolizing the authentic old legend while mocking the latest pop star.
He further accused rockists of projecting a sexist and homophobic point of view. Seattle Weekly's Douglas Wolk acknowledged the loose definition of rockism and proposed: "Rockism, let's say, is treating rock as normative. In the rockist view, rock is the standard state of popular music: the kind to which everything else is compared, explicitly or implicitly." Popmatters' Robert Loss wrote that "traditionalism" describes the policing of the present with the past, making it a better word for "rockism". Design critic and indie pop musician Nick Currie compared rockism to the international art movement Stuckism, which holds that artists who do not paint or sculpt are not true artists. Poptimism is a mode of discourse which holds that pop music deserves the same respect as rock music and is as authentic and as worthy of professional critique and interest, it positions itself as an antidote to rockism and developed following Carl Wilson's book about Céline Dion's album Let's Talk About Love and Sanneh's 2004 essay against rockism in The New York Times.
In the a
Galaxy Science Fiction
Galaxy Science Fiction was an American digest-size science fiction magazine, published from 1950 to 1980. It was founded by a French-Italian company, World Editions, looking to break into the American market. World Editions hired as editor H. L. Gold, who made Galaxy the leading science fiction magazine of its time, focusing on stories about social issues rather than technology. Gold published many notable stories during his tenure, including Ray Bradbury's "The Fireman" expanded as Fahrenheit 451. In 1952, the magazine was acquired by its printer. By the late 1950s, Frederik Pohl was helping Gold with most aspects of the magazine's production; when Gold's health worsened, Pohl took over as editor, starting at the end of 1961, though he had been doing the majority of the production work for some time. Under Pohl Galaxy had continued success publishing fiction by writers such as Cordwainer Smith, Jack Vance, Harlan Ellison, Robert Silverberg. Pohl never won the annual Hugo Award for his stewardship of Galaxy, winning three Hugos instead for its sister magazine, If.
In 1969 Guinn sold Galaxy to Universal Publishing and Distribution Corporation and Pohl resigned, to be replaced by Ejler Jakobsson. Under Jakobsson the magazine declined in quality, it recovered under James Baen, who took over in mid-1974, but when he left at the end of 1977 the deterioration resumed, there were financial problems—writers were not paid on time and the schedule became erratic. By the end of the 1970s the gaps between issues were lengthening, the title was sold to Galileo publisher Vincent McCaffrey, who brought out only a single issue in 1980. A brief revival as a semi-professional magazine followed in 1994, edited by H. L. Gold's son, E. J. Gold. At its peak, Galaxy influenced the science fiction genre, it was regarded as one of the leading sf magazines from the start, its influence did not wane until Pohl's departure in 1969. Gold brought a "sophisticated intellectual subtlety" to magazine science fiction according to Pohl, who added that "after Galaxy it was impossible to go on being naive."
SF historian David Kyle agreed, commenting that "of all the editors in and out of the post-war scene, the most influential beyond any doubt was H. L. Gold". Kyle suggested that the new direction Gold set "inevitably" led to the experimental New Wave, the defining science fiction literary movement of the 1960s; the first science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories, appeared in 1926. By the end of the 1930s, the genre was flourishing in the United States, but World War II and its resulting paper shortages led to the demise of several magazines. In the late 1940s, the market began to recover. From a low of eight active US magazines in 1946, the field expanded to 20 just four years later. Galaxy's appearance in 1950 was part of this boom. According to sf historian and critic Mike Ashley, its success was the main reason for a subsequent flood of new releases: 22 more science fiction magazines appeared by 1954, when the market dipped again as a side effect of US Senate hearings into the putative connection between comic books and juvenile delinquency.
H. L. Gold, Galaxy's first editor, had worked at Standard Magazines in the early 1940s as an assistant editor, reading for Standard's three science fiction pulps: Startling Stories, Thrilling Wonder, Captain Future. With the advent of the war, Gold left publishing and went into the army, but in late 1949 he was approached by Vera Cerutti, who had once worked for him. Cerutti was now working for a French-Italian publisher, Éditions Mondiales Del Duca founded by Cino Del Duca, that had opened an office in New York as World Editions, she asked Gold for guidance on how to produce a magazine, which he provided. World Editions took a heavy loss on Fascination, its first attempt to launch a US magazine, Cerutti returned to Gold asking for recommendations for new titles. Gold knew about The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, a digest launched in the fall of 1949, but felt that there was still room in the market for another serious science fiction magazine, he sent a prospectus to World Editions that included a proposal for a series of paperback sf novels as well as a periodical, proposed paying three cents a word, an impressively high rate, given that most competing magazines were paying only one cent a word.
World Editions agreed, hired Gold as the editor, the first issue appeared in October 1950. The novel series subsequently appeared as Galaxy Science Fiction Novels. Gold suggested two titles for the magazine, If and Galaxy. Gold's art director, Washington Irving van der Poel, mocked up multiple layouts and Gold invited hundreds of writers, editors and fans to view them and vote for their favorite. For the first issue, Gold obtained stories by several well-known authors, including Isaac Asimov, Fritz Leiber, Theodore Sturgeon, as well as part one of Time Quarry by Clifford D. Simak. Along with an essay by Gold, Galaxy's premiere issue introduced a book review column by anthologist Groff Conklin, which ran until 1955, a Willy Ley science column. Gold sought to implement high-quality printing techniques, though the quality of the available paper was insufficient for the full benefits to be seen. Within months, the outbreak of the Korean War led to paper shortages that forced Gold to find a new printer, Robert M. Guinn.
The new paper was of lower quality, a disappointment to Gold. According to Gold, the magazine was profitable within five issues: an "incredible" achievement, in his words. In
