Magazine
MYSTERY MAGAZINE: THE ILLUSTRATED DETECTIVE MAGAZINE [COVER TITLE].
Chicago, IL: Tower Magazines, Inc., 1934. Large octavo, single issue, pictorial wrappers. "Four Men Who Loved a Woman" by Ellery Queen. Also Stuart Palmer (Hildegarde Withers), Maurice Level, Hulbert Footner and others. A large format, densely illustrated, bedsheet-sized pulp. "The fiction emphasized the woman's point of view, was often narrated by a woman, and featured as many feminine as masculine detectives. In the rear of the magazine flowered all the usual departments of a more conventional woman's publication ... That this magazine would publish much fiction of interest seems improbable. But without effort, it contrived to be superb. ILLUSTRATED DETECTIVE selected outstanding writers who had made their mark in the 1920s and mingled these with rising writers of the 1930s. Over the years, the magazine would publish work by top names in the mystery field, including Ellery Queen, Stuart Palmer, Sax Rohmer, Arnold Kummer, Hulbert Footner, Vincent Starrett and H. Bedford-Jones. The fiction was polished, often strongly compressed, and good enough for a large amount of it to appear later between book covers. The magazine appeared monthly for almost six years, sixty-nine issues, at ten cents a copy. After three years, the title was changed to THE MYSTERY MAGAZINE ... Covers were tasteful, bright, and uneventful, relying heavily on the faces of self-confident women. Inside was an astonishing amount of material: eight to ten pieces of fiction, four or more crime-fact articles, and up to ten continuing departments (about half of these slanted directly toward women). When the magazine was at its peak in the early 1930s, it offered material carefully calculated to appeal to most tastes and both sexes ... MYSTERY was as meticulously planned as an orchestral score. Its careful variations played upon every shade of reader interest. It was consciously polished, self-consciously feminine. A curious pared sound rang in its fiction, as if the stories had been edited with a chain saw, but the prose flashed with a bright nickel glitter. Slick the magazine may have been, and often over illustrated, but it was also considerably interesting and, for years, excellent." - Cook, Mystery, Detective, and Espionage Magazines, pp. [287]-90.
THE FLAW IN THE SYSTEM: A SHORT STORY IN ELLERY QUEEN'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE.
New York: Mercury Publications, Inc., 1956. Wrappers. First edition. Illustrated wrappers, digest size magazine. Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Vol. 28, #1; July 1956. Also includes stories by Graham Greene (about a juvenile gang), Fredric Brown, Ellery Queen and others.
UNIVERSE SCIENCE FICTION. (Ten issues, all published).
Chicago, (later) Evanston, IL: Bell Publications, (later) Palmer Publications, 1953-1955. Small octavo, ten issues, pictorial wrappers. Digest magazine. Authors include Murray Leinster, Robert Bloch, William Campbell Gault, Isaac Asimov, Edward E. Smith, Frank Robinson, Evan Hunter, Donald Westlake, Zenna Henderson, Margaret St. Clair and others. The first issue has the "The World Well Lost" by Theodore Sturgeon, a controversial story at the time. Tymm and Ashley, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Weird Fiction Magazines, pp. 692-694.
VANGUARD SCIENCE FICTION. (all published).
New York: Vanguard Science Fiction, Inc., 1958. Small octavo, single issue, cover by Ed Emshwiller, pictorial wrappers. Digest magazine. First and only issue. This appeared at the tail end of the digest boom of the fifties, not helped but the disruption in magazine distribution. Good quality stories by Raymond F. Jones, Richard Wilson, James Gunn, C. M. Kornbluth and A. Bertram Chandler. Tymm and Ashley, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Weird Fiction Magazines, pp. 701-703.
VORTEX SCIENCE FICTION. (Two issues, all published).
New York: Specific Fiction Corp. 1953]. Small octavo, two issues, covers by Chester Martin, pictorial wrappers. Digest sized magazine. The first issue includes "The Mitr" by Jack Vance and "Dealer's Choice" by S.A. Lombino who would change his name to Evan Hunter (and write mysteries as Ed McBain). The second issue is notable for publishing the first two professional stories by Marion Zimmer Bradley. Another short lived digest from the 1950s. Tymm and Ashley, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Weird Fiction Magazines, pp. 720-721.
MIDNIGHT SUN.
Birmingham, England: Stephen Jones, 1981. Octavo, single issue, pictorial wrappers. Magazine. Includes the Kane story "The Other One" by Karl Edward Wagner.
WONDERS OF THE SPACEWAYS.
London: John Spencer & Co., [1951]. Small octavo, single issue, cover by Facey, pictorial wrappers. First of ten published, paperback size magazine. Six SF stories. Harbottle and Holland p. 154. Tymn and Ashley (eds), Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Weird Fiction Magazines, pp. 768-769.
WONDERS OF THE SPACEWAYS.
London: John Spencer & Co., [1952]. Small octavo, single issue, cover by Facey, pictorial wrappers. Second of ten published, paperback size magazine. Four SF stories. Harbottle and Holland p. 154. Tymn and Ashley (eds), Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Weird Fiction Magazines, pp. 768-769.
THE BLACK PATH OF FEAR.
New York: Novel Selections, Inc., n.d., [1944?]. Octavo, pictorial wrappers. Probable first paperback edition. Thriller Novel Classic No. 29. Digest sized format. An abridged edition. This is likely the first paperback edition preceding the Avon 1946 paperback edition. Basis for the 1946 film noir The Chase, starring Robert Cummings and Peter Lorre. In the 1940s after splitting with Curl, Hillman launched his own digest lines, seeing the writing on the wall for pulp magazines after the war Hillman essentially considered the digests as paperbacks.
WORLDS OF FANTASY.
London: John Spencer & Co., [1952]. Small octavo, single issue, cover by Facey, pictorial wrappers. Fifth of fourteen published, paperback size magazine. Four SF stories. Harbottle and Holland p. 155. Tymn and Ashley (eds), Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Weird Fiction Magazines, pp. 770-771.
WORLDS OF FANTASY.
London: John Spencer & Co., [1952]. Small octavo, single issue, cover by Norman Light, pictorial wrappers. Sixth of fourteen published, paperback size magazine. Six SF stories. Harbottle and Holland p. 155. Tymn and Ashley (eds), Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Weird Fiction Magazines, pp. 770-771.
WORLDS OF FANTASY.
London: John Spencer & Co., [1950]. Small octavo, single issue, cover by Facey, pictorial wrappers. Second of fourteen published, paperback size magazine. Six SF stories. Harbottle and Holland p. 155. Tymn and Ashley (eds), Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Weird Fiction Magazines, pp. 770-771.
WORLDS OF FANTASY.
London: John Spencer & Co., [1951]. Small octavo, single issue, cover by Facey, pictorial wrappers. First edition. Fourth of fourteen published, paperback size magazine. Four SF stories. Harbottle and Holland p. 155. Tymn and Ashley (eds), Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Weird Fiction Magazines, pp. 770-771.
STAB IN THE BACK and BOTTOM DEAL
Chicago: Century Publications, n.d., [194?]. Small octavo, pictorial wrappers. First edition. Century Mysteries No. 18. Digest sized format. Collects two fictions. The Wylie story "Stab in the Back" was first published in The American Magazine (October, 1943) and the Philips story "Bottom Deal" was first published in Blue Book magazine (May, 1941). Not in Hubin (1994).