Authentic Memories 1: ‘All hail to the future!’
Throughout the spring and summer of 1978 I continued to make my regular Saturday trips ‘up’ to London. I was working at a builders’ and plumbers’ merchants, and sometimes had to work Saturday mornings on the trade counter, so wouldn’t get to the railway station until about one o’clock. An hour or so later I would be hurrying out of Marylebone Station, which was still rather shabby and dim in those days, intent on spending most of my hard-earned wages on science fiction. My routine was to visit Dark They Were and Golden Eyed, a bookshop devoted solely to sf, fantasy, and horror hidden in plain sight along an alley in Soho, and then the Vintage Magazine Shop nearby, before going on to South Kensington or staying in the area for further wanderings around Soho, Bloomsbury, threading eastwards towards the City. It was on one of these Saturdays in the Vintage Magazine Shop that I first encountered Authentic Science Fiction. I was to find three issues there.
The first issue was No. 41, dated January 1954. Authentic was smaller and thicker than any sf magazine I had seen before. Closer in size to a pocketbook or paperback than a digest magazine, it was published by Hamilton & Co., who in numerous adverts also announced themselves as the publishers of Panther Books – an imprint then still in existence, familiar from the shelves of W.H. Smith’s and other places where I bought my doses of science fiction.
The cover featured a spaceship shaped like a dumb-bell newly landed on a bleak planet, with two space-suited figures cautiously making their way up a rocky slope towards the viewer. Unusually, the painting was captioned: ‘WE LAND ON PHOBOS – ARID MOON OF MARS!’ Text on the back cover explained. ‘This month’s cover is the seventh in our new series of documentary paintings and depicts the scene of man’s first landing beyond the Moon….’ They had taken off without me, and I had to catch up – 24 years late – and embark on a voyage FROM EARTH TO THE STARS! The artwork was credited to ‘Davis’ – who I later found was John Richards, the Art Editor of Authentic and later a notable paperback cover artist in his own right, especially for Corgi Books.
Authentic was different to the other British sf magazines I already knew – and not only in its format. For a start, it was published on a firm monthly schedule, in contrast to Nova Publications’ magazines New Worlds and Science Fantasy, which at that time appeared irregularly. As well as short stories Authentic featured what it proclaimed to be a ‘novel’ – in reality usually a novelette. There were short scientific articles, a section on fanzines, and a lively no holds barred letter column. And editorials by one H.J. Campbell. Comparing Authentic with New Worlds I preferred Campbell’s magazine to John Carnell’s more staid and earnest product. Authentic had what I felt were superior artwork and higher production quality – hardly surprising as the product of a commercial publisher instead of the fan-led consortium as Nova was then. But most appealing of all was the personal atmosphere: the feeling that Campbell was talking to me as a fellow reader and fan, discussing the magazine and its contents on a one-to-one basis. Authentic seemed – well, more ‘authentic’.
The next issue I found, deep in one of the piles of magazines on a shelf or the floor, was the first, which I later discovered had been released in January 1951. This was a very different Authentic to that which it had developed into forty issues later – and not really a magazine at all. I held a fragile paperback, battered and scruffy, entitled Mushroom Men from Mars. The author was ‘Lee Stanton’. The cover attempted to be lurid and sensational, but was too faded or just too crude to get that far. A strip along the foot of the cover announced ‘Authentic Science Fiction Series’. There was no editorial or any other features. Clearly many changes were to be in store for Authentic – and I wanted to find out what happened. I needed to search out more issues…
In the meantime, though, I found a third: No. 55, dated March 1955. The logo had changed, and emphasised the ‘Science’ in Authentic Science Fiction. There was still a longish feature story and several short stories, but the number of scientific articles had increased. It seemed to me that H.J. Campbell was attempting to turn Authentic into a popular science magazine – perhaps reflecting his developing career and changing interests. Hints dropped in his editorials led to the conclusion that he was a scientist still gaining his higher degrees and professional memberships. Yet at the same time he was an sf fan who wrote and edited the stuff. Campbell had two parallel careers; perhaps he had wished to concentrate on the purely scientific one, while continuing to combine it with his editorial work.
The cover by John Richards depicted a huge delta-winged aircraft flying over a great city of white buildings. Inside, the descriptive text, surely by Campbell, rhapsodised: ‘[...] Surrounded by light, airy spacious buildings – no more crowded dwellings – the airport will be as busy as a present-day train terminus. […] And there will be no passport and immigration troubles. In the enlightened future, all countries will be free and untrammelled by the strings of petty bureaucracies… […] Down with the pessimists! The world of the future will be a gay, enchanting place, where the spirit of the people will match the spirit of the age… […] Work will be what you want to do. […] There will be colour and music and a fine rare mood of content. All hail to the future! You’ll see it on our covers.’
These were heartfelt predictions by a man of 1955 who had grown up in London during World War II and in the aftermath seen the first glimmerings of a new order with its limitless possibilities, symbolised by the foundation of the United Nations and the prospect of limitless and clean power through atomic energy. In the UK the National Health Service had been established; bombed cities were being rebuilt and whole new towns planned and under construction. The Festival of Britain had illustrated, in microcosm, a heady vision of the future. During 1954 all rationing had finally ended. Insecurity and austerity would soon be banished to memory.
But of course even in 1955 someone would have been particularly optimistic – ignoring the facts and weaving a dream – not to know and be worried at the direction the world had taken as post-war idealism waned over the previous decade. Nevertheless, Campbell made his wishes. The cover for the March 1955 Authentic was a glimpse into a future that I knew, even in 1978, was not going to arrive. That world had been almost completely lost; stolen and betrayed.
(John Howard)
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