New Worlds (magazine)
New Worlds was a British science fiction magazine that began in 1936 as a fanzine called Novae Terrae. John Carnell, who became Novae Terrae's editor in 1939, renamed it New Worlds that year. He was instrumental in turning it into a professional publication in 1946 and was the first editor of the new incarnation. It became the leading UK science fiction magazine; the period to 1960 has been described by science fiction historian Mike Ashley as the magazine's "Golden Age".[1]
Categories
Carnell joined the British Army in 1940 following the outbreak of the Second World War and returned to civilian life in 1946. He negotiated a publishing agreement for the magazine with Pendulum Publications, but only three issues of New Worlds were produced before Pendulum's bankruptcy in late 1947. A group of science fiction fans formed a company called Nova Publications to revive the magazine; the first issue under their management appeared in mid-1949. New Worlds continued to appear on a regular basis until issue 20, published in early 1953, following which a change of printers led to a hiatus in publication. In early 1954, when Maclaren & Sons acquired control of Nova Publications, the magazine returned to a stable monthly schedule.
Roberts & Vinter acquired New Worlds in 1964 when Michael Moorcock became editor. By the end of 1966, financial problems with their distributor led Roberts & Vinter to abandon New Worlds, but with the aid of an Arts Council grant obtained by Brian Aldiss, Moorcock was able to publish the magazine independently. He featured experimental and avant-garde material, and New Worlds became the focus of the "New Wave" of science fiction. Reaction among the science fiction community was mixed, with partisans and opponents of the New Wave debating the merits of New Worlds in the columns of fanzines such as Zenith-Speculation. Several of the regular contributors during this period, including Brian Aldiss, J. G. Ballard, Thomas M. Disch, and Moorcock himself, became major names in the field. By 1970, Moorcock was too in debt to continue with the magazine, and it became a paperback quarterly after issue 201. The title has been revived multiple times with Moorcock's direct involvement or approval; by 2021, 22 additional issues had appeared in various formats, including several anthologies.
Publishing history[edit]
Early years[edit]
In 1926, Hugo Gernsback launched Amazing Stories, the first science fiction (sf) magazine.[2] It was soon followed by other US titles also specialising in sf, such as Astounding Stories and Wonder Stories.[3] These were distributed in the UK, and British fan organisations began to appear. In 1936, Maurice K. Hanson, a science fiction fan living in Nuneaton, founded a fanzine called Novae Terrae (Latin for "new lands" or "new worlds") for the local branch of the Science Fiction League. Hanson moved to London and his fanzine became the official publication of the Science Fiction Association, founded in 1937.[4]
Arthur C. Clarke, John Carnell and William F. Temple became involved in Novae Terrae's production. In 1939 Hanson gave up the editorship to Carnell, who retitled the fanzine New Worlds and restarted the numbering at volume 1 number 1; the first issue under Carnell's control was dated March 1939. Carnell wanted to turn New Worlds into a professional magazine, and through W.J. Passingham, a writer, had begun discussions with a publisher named The Worlds Says Ltd.[4] In January 1940 Carnell was asked to put together three issues,[4] and Carnell and Passingham each put up £50 towards costs.[5] Carnell solicited material from British authors including John F. Burke, C.S. Youd, and David McIlwain, and acquired Robert A. Heinlein's "Lost Legion", but in March internal strife led to the collapse of The World Says.[4] Alfred Greig, the director, returned to his native Canada without repaying Carnell and Passingham, and no issues were ever printed.[5]
Contents and reception[edit]
Carnell[edit]
The lead story of the first issue of New Worlds was Maurice Hugi's "The Mill of the Gods". John Russell Fearn contributed four stories, under his own name and three pseudonyms, and William Temple provided "The Three Pylons", a fantasy which turned out to be the most popular story in the issue.[4][6] Science fiction historian Mike Ashley regards the next two issues as an improvement on the first; the second issue contained John Wyndham's "The Living Lies", under his "John Beynon" alias,[24] and the third contained "Inheritance", an early story by Arthur C. Clarke.[25] Wyndham's story, about hostility and bigotry shown by settlers on Venus to the Venusian natives, was reprinted in Other Worlds in 1950,[24] while "Inheritance" later appeared in Astounding Science Fiction.[25]
The acquisition of Nova Publications by Maclaren in 1954 gave New Worlds the stability to establish itself as a leading magazine. Ashley describes the period from 1954 to 1960 as a "Golden Age" for New Worlds. Carnell bought J. G. Ballard's first sale, "Escapement", which appeared in the December 1956 New Worlds; Ballard went on to become a significant figure in the genre in the 1960s.[1] Ballard was grateful to Carnell for the support he provided Ballard in the late 1950s. Much of Ballard's work appeared in New Worlds and Science Fantasy, and Ballard later recalled that Carnell "recognized what I was on about from a very early stage and he encouraged me to go on writing in my own way."[26] Carnell also published much of Brian Aldiss's early work in Science Fantasy and New Worlds. John Brunner, later to become one of the most successful British science fiction writers, appeared regularly in the Nova magazines, starting with "Visitors' Book" in the April 1955 New Worlds. James White began publishing with "Assisted Passage" in the January 1953 New Worlds, and in 1957 began his popular Sector General series, about a hospital for aliens, with "Sector General" in the November 1957 issue.[1] John Wyndham, who was already well known outside the genre for works such as The Day of the Triffids,[27] began a series about the Troons, a space-going family, with "For All the Night" in the April 1958 issue.[28] Arthur C. Clarke, another successful British sf writer of the period, wrote relatively few short stories for the British market, but published "Who's There" in the November 1958 New Worlds.[28] Colin Kapp began his popular "Unorthodox Engineers" series with "The Railways up on Cannis", in October 1959.[29] Other less well-known writers who were prolific during the late 1950s included J. T. McIntosh, Kenneth Bulmer, and E. C. Tubb.[1]
New Worlds has been credited with "shap[ing] the way science fiction developed" as a genre.[30] It "did the most" of any magazine for British science fiction, helping to revive a nationalist style of speculative fiction in the 1950s; Roger Luckhurst called it "the most important British sf journal".[31] Particularly influential were Clarke's "Guardian Angel" (published in 1950), and the work of Brian Aldiss, John Brunner and J. G. Ballard.[32] Mike Ashley argued that New Worlds and Science-Fantasy were "the bedrock of high-quality science fiction in Britain".[33] Female readership for the magazine was between 5 and 15 percent, according to surveys conducted during the 1950s. The magazine became increasingly popular among a younger demographic: readers 19 and under made up 5 percent of total readership in 1954, 18 percent in 1958, and 31 percent in 1963. The same polls also showed an increase in the number of science and technology workers reading the magazine during that period.[34] Among the best artists of this period were Brian Lewis, Gordon Hutchings, and Gerard Quinn, whose art is regarded by Ashley as comparable in style to Virgil Finlay's work.[35] In 1957 Carnell stopped using interior art, saying that "art work in the digest-size magazines is as out-of-date as a coal fire".[36]
In Ashley's view, the quality of New Worlds began to drop in the early 1960s. It still ran popular series such as White's Sector General stories, and printed some well-received stories such as Harry Harrison's "The Streets of Ashkelon", about a clash between an atheist (the protagonist) and a priest, on another planet. Because of the subject matter, it took six years for Harrison to find an editor willing to accept the story; when Aldiss bought it for an anthology, Carnell agreed to print it in New Worlds, where it appeared in September 1962.[37] J.G. Ballard continued to publish in New Worlds, but was now sending his more conventional stories to the US magazines, and submitting his more experimental pieces to Carnell. Examples from 1961 to 1964 include "The Overloaded Man", "The Subliminal Man", "End-Game", and "The Terminal Beach", with themes of psychological stress, and changes to the nature of perception and of reality.[37]
Moorcock[edit]
When Roberts & Vinter made the decision to close down New Worlds in 1963, Moorcock and Ballard considered publishing a new magazine that would be willing, as Carnell had been, to publish experimental material. Moorcock assembled a dummy issue, and later described his intentions: "It would be on art paper, to take good quality illustrations; it would be the size of, say, Playboy so that it would get good display space on the newsstands; it would specialise in experimental work by writers like [William] Burroughs and [Eduardo] Paolozzi, but it would be 'popular', it would seek to publicise such experimenters; it would publish all those writers who had become demoralised by a lack of sympathetic publishers and by baffled critics; it would attempt a cross-fertilization of popular sf, science and the work of the literary and artistic avant garde."[38] Moorcock also wrote a letter to Carnell setting out his thoughts on what science fiction needed: "Editors who are willing to take a risk on a story and run it even though this may bring criticism on their heads."[39] The letter was published in the final Nova Publications issue, which also carried the announcement that Moorcock would be taking over from Carnell as editor of New Worlds,[40] though Moorcock had been unaware he would be considered for the post when he wrote his letter.[37]
Moorcock's first issue, dated May/June 1964, bore a cover by James Cawthorn illustrating the first instalment of Ballard's novella "Equinox"; Ballard also contributed a book review of William Burroughs' Dead Fingers Talk,[12] and stories by Brian Aldiss, Barrington Bayley, and John Brunner completed the issue.[6] Moorcock's editorial included a quote from a radio interview with William Burroughs to the effect that "If writers are to describe the advanced techniques of the Space Age, they must invent writing techniques equally advanced in order properly to deal with them."[41] Within the first few issues, Moorcock printed stories intended to demonstrate his editorial goals. The most controversial of these was Langdon Jones' "I Remember, Anita ...", which appeared in the September/October 1964 issue; the story contained sex scenes that led to arguments in the magazine's letter column,[42] and some regular subscribers abandoned the magazines, though overall circulation increased.[13]
Moorcock contributed a substantial amount of material, under his own name and under pseudonyms such as James Colvin;[6] some of these stories were fairly traditional, but contributions such as the Jerry Cornelius stories, which began with "Preliminary Data" in the August 1965 issue, were much more experimental.[42] He also printed his novella "Behold the Man" in the September 1966 issue; the story, about a time traveller who returns to the time of Christ, won him a Nebula Award the following year. Ballard also began to write some of his most controversial stories, including "You: Coma: Marilyn Monroe" in the June 1966 issue, and "The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race", in March 1967; both had been previously published in Ambit, a literary magazine, in 1966.[42]
Many writers now found New Worlds to be a market in which they could publish experimental material. Charles Platt, David I. Masson, and Barrington Bayley were among the British writers in this group, and Moorcock also attracted work from US writers such as John Sladek, Roger Zelazny and Thomas M. Disch.[42][43] Zelazny's contributions included "For a Breath I Tarry" in March 1966, and Disch published several short stories and the novel Echo Round His Bones, which was serialized starting in the December 1966 and January 1967 issues. Disch commented that he had been unable to find a publisher for the novel in the US.[42]
In the mid-1960s, the term "New Wave" began to be applied to the more experimental work that Moorcock was publishing, and New Worlds was soon regarded as the leading publication in the New Wave movement.[42][44] In addition to the experimental material, Moorcock attempted to keep the existing readership happy by publishing more traditional science fiction; in the words of sf historian Colin Greenland, he "changed the contents of the magazine much more slowly than he pretended to".[45] Traditional sf stories bought by Moorcock include Vernor Vinge's first story, "Apartness", which appeared in June 1965; he also printed material from Bob Shaw, early stories by Terry Pratchett, and, in March 1965, Arthur C. Clarke's "Sunjammer".[42]
Arts Council and after[edit]
When Moorcock took over publication of New Worlds from Roberts & Vinter he changed the format from digest to a larger size with good quality paper that allowed better use of artwork. The first issue in this format, July 1967, contained part one of Disch's Camp Concentration, written for the magazine and refused by its American publisher because of the explicit language used by the protagonist. Disch afterwards recalled that some of the experimental language in the book was written in the knowledge that New Worlds was available as a market for unconventional fiction. Other new writers who appeared in the magazine include M. John Harrison and Robert Holdstock, who both appeared in the November 1968 issue, and Michael Butterworth whose work first appeared in the May 1966 edition. The December 1968 issue included Samuel R. Delany's "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones", and Harlan Ellison's "A Boy and His Dog" appeared in April 1969; Ellison won a Nebula Award, and Delany both a Nebula and a Hugo, though it was not until the stories were reprinted in book form that they were widely noticed.[14]
The July 1967 issue of New Worlds contained Pamela Zoline's first story, "The Heat Death of the Universe",[14] which used entropy, a frequent theme in New Worlds, as a metaphor.[21] The story is one of the best examples of the new approach Moorcock was taking with the magazine: in the words of critic Edward James, the goal was to "use science-fictional and scientific language and imagery to describe perfectly 'ordinary' scenes of life, and by doing so produce altered perceptions of reality in the reader".[46] "Inner space", a term originally coined by J.B. Priestley, was also used to describe the focus of the stories Moorcock printed, in contrast to traditional science fiction's focus on outer space,[21] and James regards the term as "the watchword of the British New Wave, and the shibboleth by which one recognized those who had abandoned Gernsback and Campbell." The methods and interests of these writers were quite different from those of traditional science fiction: the concern was with internal rather than external reality, and experimental techniques, unusual juxtapositions of material, and a focus on psychological concerns were the norm.[47]
With the switch to anthology format, some of the more experimental material disappeared. In his editorials, Moorcock made it clear that he did not want to exclude traditional sf stories; he wanted to eliminate the genre boundaries completely, and have science fiction treated as part of the mainstream of fiction. The quarterlies were labelled as science fiction since Sphere knew that would increase sales. The stories printed in the anthologies were generally downbeat. New writers who appeared for the first time in the quarterly anthology series included Marta Randall (under the name Marta Bergstrasser), Eleanor Arnason, Geoff Ryman, and Rachel Pollack (as Richard A. Pollack).[21]
Issue 212 reprinted a piece written by Moorcock and M. John Harrison that was a spoof issue of The Guardian; it had been published in Frendz, an underground paper, in 1971. The next two issues also contained mock newspaper stories; issue 215 contained more conventional material, including a Jerry Cornelius story written by Charles Partington. Issue 216, the last of the late 1970s issues, reintroduced the mock news stories.[48] The 1990s anthology series did not try to recapture the atmosphere or style of the 1960s or 1970s New Worlds. It contained some well-received material, including stories by Moorcock, Paul Di Filippo, and Ian McDonald, but was financially unsuccessful.[22] The current revival from PS Publishing began in 2021.
New Worlds and the "New Wave"[edit]
New Worlds' greatest influence on science fiction came in the 1960s, with the "New Wave" that began with Moorcock's polemical editorials. Moorcock asserted in 1965 that a writer of good sf "can learn from his predecessors, but he should not imitate them";[49] and he was soon publishing stories that were quite different in technique and style from anything that had appeared before, not just in New Worlds itself, but in any of the sf magazines.[50][51] Moorcock's goal was to use the magazine to "define a new avant-garde role" for the genre.[52] New Worlds thus became the "ideological center of the [New Wave] movement to rejuvenate conjectural literature".[53]
The term "New Wave" did not always meet with approval among those who were regarded as part of it (this included Moorcock, who denied that he was creating a movement). Brian Aldiss, for example, wrote to Judith Merril in 1966 that he suspected the term was "a journalistic invention of yours and Mike Moorcock's", and added "I feel I am no part of the New Wave; I was here before 'em, and by God I mean to be here after they've gone (still writing bloody science fiction)!"[54] Merril was an important advocate for New Worlds[55] and the New Wave, and popularized the latter in her anthology England Swings SF, which appeared in 1968;[44] she spent almost a year in London, living near Moorcock, when researching the anthology in 1966–1967.[56] Merril and writer Christopher Priest were among those who used the term "New Wave" to describe the work being done in New Worlds, but Aldiss was not the only writer to object to the term, and it never received a generally accepted definition.[57] Critic Brian Attebery characterizes it as a "disruptive, existentially fraught and formally daring" style;[58] Peter Nicholls hesitates to define it but comments that "perhaps the fundamental element was the belief that sf could and should be taken seriously as literature".[44] In a 1967 interview, Ballard, one of the writers most closely associated with the New Wave, described modern US sf as extrovert and optimistic, and contrasted it with "the new science fiction, that other people apart from myself are now beginning to write", which he saw as "introverted, possibly pessimistic rather than optimistic, much less certain of its own territory."[21]
Whatever the exact definition of the term, between 1964 and 1966, New Worlds was at the forefront of the New Wave movement. Two guest editorials in 1962 and 1963 ("Which way to Inner Space?" by Ballard and "Play with Feeling" by Moorcock) were arguably the "first glimmerings" of New Wave ideas in sf magazines. Latham suggests that these were "the first volleys in the polemical offensive they would launch once [Moorcock] gained control of the magazine and installed [Ballard] as his resident visionary".[59] The response to the New Wave from critics and sf fans was varied. Christopher Priest called New Worlds a "New Wave prozine", but lauded the talents of its writers and its experimental stories (with the exception of Ballard's The Crystal World, which he deemed "tedious and wearying").[60] Ian McAuley suggested the magazine's editors were "plugging the 'inner-space' jazz for all its [sic] worth".[61] Mike Ashley argued that New Worlds was instrumental in promoting authors who would not otherwise have been published (a suggestion with which Bould and Butler concur).[62] Ballard was a particular focus of both praise and vehement criticism, and was vigorously defended by Moorcock. Peter Weston took an "even-handed approach" by praising New Worlds in Speculation editorials, in contrast with his largely negative columnists.[59]
Beginning in 1966, US fanzines began responding to New Worlds and its detractors, and the debate spread to the professional US magazines as well. Merril praised Disch and Ballard's contributions to New Worlds in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction; Algis Budrys in Galaxy rebutted her viewpoint and condemned both authors.[59] Frederik Pohl called New Worlds "damned dull", advocating a return to adventure stories.[63] American science fiction authors "were finding it increasingly difficult to avoid partisan alignments in the developing New Wave war" because of the preponderance of columns and letters in American magazines both for and against New Worlds and New Wave in general. Latham suggests that "the New Worlds editorial conclave was actively working within fandom to counteract the Old Guard assaults".[59]
By the end of the 1960s, New Worlds and the New Wave's connection to and influence on science fiction was becoming tenuous. In the August 1969 issue, Platt asserted that "New Worlds is not a science-fiction magazine", and Moorcock likened it to an avant-garde and experimental literary review. The sf world had lost interest in New Worlds, and it had become, in Ashley's words, "a revolution running out of energy".[14] In the longer term it proved influential, despite the lack of wide acceptance at the time: in the words of sf historian Brian Stableford, "the paths beaten by the New Worlds writers are now much more generally in use".[22][note 9]