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Chicago: Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, 1955. First Edition. December, 1955 issue, Vol.4, No. 6. 7 1/2" x 5 3/8", 130 pp. Illustrated wraps. Age-toning to the pages, as always; trace edge wear, some rubbing at rear cover, else remarkably sharp, very good plus, and not far short of near fine. In the small forest of pulp fiction-era periodicals, the magazine names were often so similar as to be confusing. This one, established by Howard Browne in 1952, itself bore a variety of names, from Fantastic to Fantastic Science Fiction, Fantastic Science Fiction Stories, Fantastic Stories of Imagination, Fantastic: Science Fiction - Fantasy and Fantastic Stories, all as part of the effort by Browne, in both title and content, to maximize the interested demographic. Not affiliated with this magazine were the similar pulp titles Fantastic Novels, Fantastic Science Fiction (an unrelated two-issue 1952 effort bearing a title identical name to one of the above Ziff-Davis titles], Fantastic Story Magazine, Fantastic Story Quarterly, Fantastic Universe, and the elder statesmen of pulps beginning with "Fantastic", Fantastic Adventures and Famous Fantastic Mysteries. By the time of this issue - still fairly early in its evolution - "Fantastic" alone was the name of Browne's offering, and the story selections denote an effort to avoid distinct genre identification. Those are: "All Walls Were Mist (He Walked Through Solid Stone!)" (Paul W. Fairman); "He Took What He Wanted (No Woman Could Resist Him !)" (C.H. Thames); "The Man Who Reads Minds (He Knew Her Innermost Thoughts!)" (John Toland); "Between Two Worlds (Bank Teller by Day; Superman by Night] (Milton Lesser - something of an iconic pulp sci-fi name, but in fact one of an army of pseudonyms of the two cousins who wrote most famously as Ellery Queen); and "Madame, I Have Here." (Ivar Jorgensen). A fascinating issue particularly because it shows a state of identity uncertainty for Browne - who was never completely comfortable with outright science fiction - and his magazine. What he clearly did know was that his target readership required stimulation of its collective imagination and, lightly, of its erotic side - a fact wordlessly expressed in the generally semi-lurid, but always fantasy-imbued, cover art of that time. A piece of American fiction history, in superior condition. L53n.
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