Yesterday, Black Gate magazine published a post of mine on a subject related to the magazines I have been featuring in my almost daily “Today’s Favorite Magazine From the V1N1 Collection” series.
Apparently Black Gates’ editor had been reading both here and on Facebook the various bits and pieces I’ve been doing on the magazines and related subjects and liked the round-up I had done on what the news stands might have looked like on various decennial anniversaries. He (John O’Neil) invited me to write up something a bit more formal for that publication and, as you can see if you visit Science Fiction History Considered As A Series Of Images Of Newsstand Displays, you’ll see what I put together.
Yes, I was thinking of Delaney’s Time Considered As A Helix Of Semi-Precious Gems when I wrote the title. (Delaney’s title was unlike the titles I was more familiar with, like Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers or The Court of a Thousand Suns, and has always stood out for me).
This circumstance gives me an obvious opportunity to feature that magazine, as, through generosity, I have been able to include a copy of that magazine’s first issue in my collection. And here it is – a weighty tome indeed –
Black Gate debuted at a World Fantasy Con in 2000 and has over 200 pages of content. It’s sized to fit into the “pulp” format and certainly has the heft of some of the larger efforts from that era. It published a series by the late, great Bud Webster and also reprinted the entirety of Charles R. Tanner’s “Tumithak” series (one of the early stories included by Isaac Asimov in his “Before the Golden Age” anthology that contained the stories that influenced his own entry into SF authorship).
The cover is listed in theISFDB.org database as by “Bernie Mireault and Gabriel Morrissette and Keith Parkinson and Denis Rodier and Richard Whitters, though the signature in the lower left is “Parkinson”. I like it because it is seminally “fantastical”.
Unfortunately, the print edition of that magazine (2001 – 2o11, 15 issues) succumbed to increasing print and postal charges and ceases in favor of the website still operating today (otherwise, you’d not get to read my article).
Black Gate and its editor are good people. Check them out.
Full disclosure: I mentioned the V1N1 collection to John and he sent me a copy of that issue for inclusion. Like I said, good people!
