For our Best of 1955 group read I thought I’d look over some of the less successful science fiction magazines published that year. I started with Amazing Stories. Howard Browne had been editing the magazine since 1950 but would leave in 1956 to move to Hollywood to become a moderately successful TV scriptwriter (Maverick, Cheyenne, Bourbon Street Beat, 77 Sunset Strip, Mission Impossible, Mannix, The Rockford Files). Browne helped Amazing Stories transition away from the pulp format and its obsession with the Shaver Mystery. He began 1955 with this editorial:

In the following issue Browne promised further improvements which included a book review column and a fanzine review column. Throughout 1955 the letter column kept growing, and it was apparent that Amazing Stories had its faithful fans. To help members of my reading group get a sense of the magazine, I made a .pdf file that had the covers, table of contents, book reviews, fanzine reviews, and some letters of comments from the seven issues of Amazing Stories from 1955. Get the file: 1955: Amazing Stories Overview. If you want, you can read the seven 1955 issues at the Internet Archive.

Despite Amazing Stories being the first magazine devoted to publishing exclusively science fiction, and its fame in science fiction history, damn few stories have been reprinted from its pages. In its early years, Amazing mostly published classic reprints by Wells, Verne, and others. Just look at the table of contents from two anthologies devoted to collecting the best of its stories:

Amazing Stories: 60 Years of the Best Science Fiction (1985) edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg.

• The Revolt of the Pedestrians • (1928) • novelette by David H. Keller, M.D.
• The Gostak and the Doshes • (1930) • short story by Miles J. Breuer, M.D.
• Pilgrimage • (1939) • novelette by Nelson S. Bond
• I, Robot • (1939) • by Eando Binder
• The Strange Flight of Richard Clayton • (1939) • short story by Robert Bloch
• The Perfect Woman • (1953) • short story by Robert Sheckley
• Memento Homo • (1954) • short story by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
• What Is This Thing Called Love? • (1961) • short story by Isaac Asimov
• Requiem • (1962) • short story by Edmond Hamilton
• Hang Head, Vandal! • (1962) • short story by Mark Clifton
• Drunkboat • (1963) • novelette by Cordwainer Smith
• The Days of Perky Pat • (1963) • novelette by Philip K. Dick
• Semley’s Necklace • (1964) • short story by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Calling Dr. Clockwork • (1965) • short story by Ron Goulart
• There’s No Vinism Like Chauvinism • novelette by John Jakes
• The Oögenesis of Bird City • (1970) • short story by Philip José Farmer?
• The Man Who Walked Home • (1972) • short story by James Tiptree, Jr.
• Manikins • (1976) • short story by John Varley
• In the Islands • (1983) • short story by Pat Murphy

The Best from Amazing Stories (1973) edited by Ted White

• No Charge for Alterations • (1953) • novelette by H. L. Gold
• The Augmented Agent • (1961) • novelette by Jack Vance
• The Misfit • (1963) • short story by Roger Zelazny
• The Dowry of Angyar • (1964) • short story by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Placement Test • (1964) • novelette by Keith Laumer
• The Horn of Time the Hunter • (1963) • short story by Poul Anderson
• Phoenix • (1963) • short story by Marion Zimmer Bradley and Ted White
• Rogue Psi • (1962) • novelette by James H. Schmitz

Not exactly classics, are they? And most of the stories by well-known authors were early works. So, I wasn’t expecting much when I went looking through the issues that came out in 1955. I found that most of the stories have never been reprinted since their publication in Amazing in 1955. And those few that were reprinted were reprinted in Amazing or other cheap reprint magazines.

I’ve always wondered why stories from Astounding/Analog, F&SF, and Galaxy have dominated the table of contents of anthologies published before 1970. Still, since my reading group will be discussing the best science fiction short stories from 1955, I thought I’d give Amazing Stories a look over. The first story of 1955 was:

I read “. . . now you don’t” by James Leland, to get the feel for things. You can read it online. This story is Leland’s only entry in ISFDB.org, and it gives no biographical data, so I don’t know how old he was. In 1955, most of the stories in Amazing were written by just a few writers, with several of them also packing the issues with pseudonyms. I’m guessing Leland was made up name. Since many of the stories have a New York City connection, and written by a small group of writers, I’m assuming they all knew each other and the editor. They appear to be young, smart, and precocious, but not very experienced or sophisticated. Maybe a little street wise, or trying to pass that off.

The writing for “. . . now you don’t” is not good, but it is readable, and even fun. I’d call it good bad writing. Leland has obviously seen the Frank Capra film, You Can’t Take It with You, and builds the setting and mood of “. . . now you don’t” around it. To add science fiction, he took H. G. Wells’ The Invisible Man and spiced it up with some Thorne Smith naughtiness. The story is just a tiny bit risqué, throwing in a few bits of innuendo. Leland tries to sound well-read by throwing in references to novels people read in college, but the story really reflects being well-read in pulp fiction.

I get the impression from looking through the stories that these guys were mostly would-be writers and used Amazing Stories as a practicum. Quite a few famous writers got their start with Amazing, but quickly moved on. There were no famous names in the 1955 issues, but there were in the 1954 and 1956 issues — such as Philip K. Dick and Frank Herbert.

The writer I was most interested in was Paul W. Fairman, who would become the editor of Amazing and Fantastic after Browne left in 1956. He was also the first editor of If. Fairman sometimes used the house name Ivar Jorgensen, which other writers also used. Using the Jorgensen name, Fairman published “Deadly City” in the March 1953 issue of If. That was one of my favorite stories from 1953, and it was made into the film Target Earth in 1954. That was one of the first science fiction movies I saw as a kid back in the 1950s. Fairman also wrote about twenty forgotten SF novels, many coauthored with Lester del Rey.

Fairman had seven stories published in 1955, three in Amazing and four in Fantastic. I figured I would start with those three stories to see if any of them were worth remembering in 2023. Amazing Stories was a decent place to start a writing career but a terrible place to be left behind.

Fairman published “The Cosmic Frame” in May, a story about two teenagers on a date who run over an alien in a Packard. The alien’s companions take an interesting revenge on the kids. In September, Fairman wrote about a more complicated alien invasion in “One Man to Kill.” Finally, in November, he told a man from Mars story, “The Man in the Ice Box” — although the superintelligent alien in this story wasn’t really from Mars. Because the four stories I’ve read by Fairman all involve invasions from space I could think of him as Mr. Alien Invader.

The three Fairman stories from 1955 Amazing were all readable and entertaining enough if you shut your critical eye. They were about as good as an average TV show from the 1950s. All three would have made middling episodes of The Twilight Zone, especially “The Man in the Ice Box,” which started out like a humorous TZ but ended with a nice philosophical punch. “The Cosmic Frame” would have made a TZ episode with a horrifying twist ending.

However, none of the stories I’ve read out of Amazing from 1955 have any sparkle or pizzazz. They were okay hack writing. Back in the 1960s when I first discovered Amazing and Fantastic, it was in used bookshops, and I could get them for a dime. I like the ones edited by Cele Goldsmith. Then I started buying the new ones edited by Ted White. They were never as good as F&SF, Galaxy, or Analog, but they were fun. I don’t know if I should admit it, but I found the stories from Amazing 1955 more entertaining than many of the intellectual/literary stories in The Big Book of Science Fiction or The World Treasury of Science Fiction — both anthologies that tried to impress that science fiction is sophisticated, worldly, and diverse.

If you liked the old Winston Science Fiction series from the 1950s, you might like Amazing Stories from the 1950s too.

I haven’t found a story yet that I’d make a case it was one of the best SF stories of 1955. I’d rate them all 2+ stars, which is my way of saying they were less than professionally written, but likeable. I consider 3-stars to be competent and professional. A plus means I found a story likeable. I’m going to keep reading from 1955 Amazing for a bit longer.

James Wallace Harris, 8/26/23