Not long before I discovered old science fiction magazines, I found a new one. It must have been a Saturday morning in the spring of 1977. I was in W.H. Smith’s with my pocket money, and looking to spend it on sf. For some reason my gaze must have wandered to the magazines – where one of them caught my eye. It was clearly an sf magazine: title and cover painting proclaimed it. This was Vortex, subtitled ‘The Science Fiction Fantasy’ (that subtitle confused me even then – where was the final what?). I picked out and bought the issue, Vol. 1 No. 5, monthly: the first I had seen – had I missed the previous four, or had the local Smith’s not stocked them?
Large-size but slim, heavily illustrated, Vortex contained only three stories, one of which was the first part of a serial by Colin Kapp, The Chaos Weapon. I remembered Kapp from his remarkable story “Lambda I” which I had read in John Carnell’s anthology of that name, which I had recently bought from the small independent bookshop in our town, rushing down there one afternoon after school to browse the several shelves of sf paperbacks it offered. Then there was “Due West: Vermillion Sun On Horizon: Dying” by Mark Ambient, which baffled me as much as its title allured. It was the interview with artist Eddie Jones that interested me most. He had painted the cover for this issue; his work was soon to become familiar as my sf collection slowly began to expand. But I was not to see any further issues of Vortex. That fifth issue was to be its last.
My discovery later that summer of Dark They Were and Golden-Eyed, the London bookshop entirely devoted to sf, fantasy, and horror, was to provide the first four issues of Vortex. There was a pile of unsold copies, with gorgeous covers by Rodney Matthews (the first three issues) and Eddie Jones (the fourth). They were beauties, and I could understand why the magazine had failed. The production costs must have been enormous – and completely unsupportable without the vastly higher sales that never materialised. Not for the first time a new sf magazine blossomed briefly – and vanished.
I kept an eye on the new and back-issue magazines stocked at Dark They Were, and if there was never a new Vortex I made up for it by buying Amazing, by then edited by Ted White and published only quarterly. Together with its companion Fantastic, White produced lively, attractive and entertaining magazines on a minute budget – and told us everything. It was like being in on a show. When the publisher sold the magazines in 1979 and Ted White left, I stopped buying them. I would have to make do with the shop’s small shelf of second-hand copies of old magazines.
Among these were two issues of The British Science Fiction Magazine (which called itself the Vargo Statten Science Fiction Magazine inside and proclaimed itself ALL BRITISH). Published between 1954 and 1956, it ran for 19 issues under several names – but always maintained a connection with ‘Vargo Statten’, who was also credited as editor. Vargo Statten was the hyper-prolific Blackpool writer John Russell Fearn (1908-60) the popularity of whose sf novels under the Statten name led to the publisher, Scion, bringing out a magazine edited by Alistair Paterson (Fearn would later take over). I found the stories – nearly all written by Fearn, E.C. Tubb, and Kenneth Bulmer under a range of pseudonyms – entertaining and fun, even if often rather old-fashioned (Fearn’s were mainly reworkings of stories he had first published in American magazines during the 1930s and 40s). But as ever Ted Tubb provided good work, and the non-fiction features were interesting. There was one writer who made his debut in the magazine and was to become one of Britain’s best: Barrington J. Bayley (1937-2008). Still a teenager, he published his story “Combat’s End” in No. 4, an issue I found in 1978.
Unfortunately the magazine was betrayed, after the first two issues, by its somewhat amateurish appearance inside and out – and use of the same cover art on more than one issue – signs that the budget was small and the publisher stretched for money. Most of the issues I found carried the strapline ‘New Worlds to Conquer’ on a strip across the bottom of the cover. I had no idea whether or not it had been adapted from Plutarch on Alexander the Great: “When Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer.” At the time I thought it was a sly dig at the perceived main competition, Nova Publications’ magazine New Worlds.
Vargo Statten’s publishers did not lack ambition. In No. 4 (May 1954) there came the announcement for the ‘proposed Vargo Statten Science Fiction Fan League’. Written by editor Alistair Paterson, it ran to three pages and an expression of interest form to be filled in and returned. The League ‘would be a non-commercial membership organisation, whose aim would be the furtherance and moulding of [the readers of Vargo Statten novels’] enthusiasm into one individual and central movement, acting as the parent body to branch organisations throughout the country…’ It seems that quite some organisation was being considered, reminiscent of the Science Fiction League, which had been launched in the USA in 1934 by the editor of Wonder Stories, Charles D. Hornig, and Hugo Gernsback, its publisher. The SFL did not survive in the long term, although the local chapters served to help bring sf fans together, including in the UK.
The proposed League would produce a ‘handsome Membership Certificate’ and there would be a ‘handsomely enamelled Membership Badge which the members would wear at every possible opportunity’. A ‘list of Rules’ would be drawn up, with members agreeing that ‘at all times they would apply their enthusiastic efforts to the furtherance of Science Fiction in general, and the fiction of Vargo Statten in particular.’ A ‘covering Membership fee’ would pay for the certificates, badges, and other printed stationery, which would be supplied at cost.
It was section 6 that raised my eyebrows. ‘The V.S.S.F.F.L. would not be supported by any group of wealthy industrialists nor would it be confined in its aims by commercially inclined factions. The publishers of the V.S. Magazine have kindly placed at their disposal its organisation and the enthusiasm of its staff, to further the League’s earlier aims. But it is clearly understood that, once the League has become completely self-supporting, then its activities will be made a completely independent body. In short, the writer [Alistair Paterson] wants to see it survive alone on the enthusiasm of its members, without bowing the knee in any way to commercial influence.’
‘Wealthy industrialists’? I wondered who Paterson had in mind! Had there been, seriously, any industrialists of any sort prepared to put money into a league for science fiction fans, and Vargo Statten fans at that? Was it perhaps another dig at New Worlds? At that time Nova Publications had ceased to be a fan-led company on its absorption by a large and fully commercial publisher, Maclaren; this put Nova’s magazines on a firm financial basis and enabled them to adhere to a clockwork publishing schedule for the first time. Or perhaps it was just wishful thinking from the editor of a cash-strapped magazine, not always appearing regularly, from an ailing publisher.
Succeeding issues of The British Science Fiction Magazine carried further announcements and updates concerning the proposed League. However, an ominous note was sounded in No. 8 (December 1954). Although there had been a ‘tremendous response’ to the idea of a League, the large potential membership was too scattered, with proposed chapters each having no more than three members – and frequently fewer. ‘By and large it does begin to look as though the transition from theory to fact may prove insuperable; but on the other hand we are hoping, in the nature of true science-fictionists, to somehow “pluck a miracle from the air” by the time Issue No. 9 comes.’
No doubt some readers had been on tenterhooks as 1954 became 1955. Looking back from 1978, of course I knew the result, as I had a copy of the issue. In No. 9 (January 1955) the announcement duly appeared: ‘The publishers and your Editor, in complete union, are of the opinion that the present time is not propitious for the launching of the Vargo Statten Fan League.’ But there was still hope. ‘Everything depends on the progress of the magazine itself and how much liberty is afforded your Editor in time to come. Actually, the answer lies with you. Support us to the hilt and in time we can produce the League for which there is an undoubted demand, even if not the time at the moment, to supply it…’
What a disappointing New Year’s present for a fan. I could only sympathise – and, back in my time, carry on reading.
(John Howard)
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