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Unknown (magazine)
Encyclopedia
Unknown was an American pulp
fantasy fiction magazine, published from 1939 to 1943 by Street & Smith
, and edited by John W. Campbell
. Unknown was a companion to Street & Smith's science fiction pulp, Astounding Science Fiction
, which was also edited by Campbell at the time; many authors and illustrators contributed to both magazines. The leading fantasy magazine in the 1930s was Weird Tales
, which focused on shock and horror. Campbell wanted to publish a fantasy magazine with more finesse and humor than Weird Tales, and put his plans into action when Eric Frank Russell
sent him the manuscript of his novel Sinister Barrier, about aliens who own the human race. Unknowns first issue appeared in March 1939; in addition to Sinister Barrier, it included H. L. Gold
's "Trouble With Water", a humorous fantasy about a New Yorker who meets a water gnome. Gold's story was the first of many in Unknown to combine commonplace reality with the fantastic.
Campbell required his authors to avoid simplistic horror fiction and insisted that the fantasy elements in a story be developed logically: for example, Jack Williamson's "Darker Than You Think" describes a world in which there is a scientific explanation for the existence of werewolves
. Similarly, L. Sprague de Camp
and Fletcher Pratt
's Harold Shea series, about a modern American who finds himself in the worlds of various mythologies, depicts a system of magic based on mathematical logic. Other notable stories included several well-received novels by L. Ron Hubbard
and short stories such as Manly Wade Wellman
's "When It Was Moonlight" and Fritz Leiber
's "Two Sought Adventure", the first in his Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser
series.
Unknown was forced to a bimonthly schedule in 1941 by poor sales, and cancelled in 1943 when wartime paper shortages became so acute that Campbell had to choose between turning Astounding into a bimonthly or ending Unknown. The magazine is generally regarded as the finest fantasy fiction magazine ever published, despite the fact that it was not commercially successful, and in the opinion of science fiction historian Mike Ashley
it was responsible for the creation of the modern fantasy publishing genre.
In May 1923, the first issue of Weird Tales
appeared, from Rural Publications in Chicago. Weird Tales was a pulp magazine that specialized in fantasy stories and material that no other magazine would accept. It was not initially successful, but by the 1930s had established itself and was regularly publishing science fiction (sf) as well as fantasy. Weird Tales was the first magazine to focus solely on fantasy, and it remained the pre-eminent magazine in this field for over a decade. In the meantime, science fiction was starting to form a separately marketed genre, with the appearance in 1926 of Amazing Stories
, a pulp magazine edited by Hugo Gernsback
. In 1930 pulp publisher Clayton Publications launched Astounding Stories of Super Science
, but the company's bankruptcy in 1933 led to the acquisition of the magazine by Street & Smith
. The title was shortened to Astounding Stories, and it became the leading magazine in the science fiction field over the next few years under the editorship of F. Orlin Tremaine
. At the end of 1937 John W. Campbell
took over as editor.
By 1938, Campbell was planning a fantasy companion to Astounding: Weird Tales was still the leader in the fantasy genre, though competitors such as Strange Stories were also being launched. Campbell began acquiring stories suitable for the new magazine, without a definite launch date in mind. When Eric Frank Russell
sent him the manuscript of his novel Sinister Barrier, Campbell decided it was time to put his plans into action. The first issue of Unknown appeared in March 1939. It was a monthly at first, but poor sales forced a switch to a bimonthly schedule beginning in February 1941. In December 1940 the subtitle Fantasy Fiction was added, and in October 1941 the main title was changed to Unknown Worlds; both changes were intended to make the genre of the magazine clearer to potential readers. When wartime paper shortages became severe in late 1943, Campbell made the choice to keep Astounding monthly and cancel Unknown, rather than switch the former to a bimonthly schedule as well. The last issue was dated October 1943.
were the only stories in the first issue that accurately reflected his goals for the magazine.
Under Campbell's editorial supervision, the fantasy element in Unknown stories had to be treated rigorously. This naturally led to the appearance in Unknown of writers already comfortable with similar rigor in science fiction stories, and Campbell soon established a small group of writers as regular contributors, many of whom were also appearing in the pages of Astounding. L. Ron Hubbard
, Theodore Sturgeon
, and L. Sprague de Camp
were among the most prolific. Hubbard contributed eight lead novels including Typewriter in the Sky
, Slaves of Sleep
, and Fear, described by Ashley as a "classic psychological thriller"; sf historian and critic Thomas Clareson describes all eight as "outstanding". De Camp, in collaboration with Fletcher Pratt
, contributed three stories featuring Harold Shea, who finds himself in a world where magic operates by rigorous rules. The title of one of these, "The Mathematics of Magic", is, according to sf critic John Clute
, "perfectly expressive of the terms under which magic found easy mention in Unknown".
Other Astounding writers who wrote for Unknown included Robert A. Heinlein
, whose "The Devil Makes the Law" (reprinted as "Magic, Inc.
") depicts a world where magic is a part of normal everyday life. Heinlein also contributed "The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag
" and "They", described by Ashley as "perhaps the ultimate solipsist fantasy". A.E. van Vogt, a frequent Astounding contributor, appeared in the final issue with "The Book of Ptath" (later expanded into a novel). Isaac Asimov
, despite multiple attempts to write for Unknown, never appeared in the magazine. On his sixth attempt, he sold "Author! Author!
" to Campbell, but the magazine was cancelled before it could appear. It eventually appeared in the anthology The Unknown Five.
In addition to the overlap between the writers of Unknown and Astounding, there was a good deal of overlap between their readerships: Asimov records that during the war, he read only these two magazines. Sf historian Paul Carter has argued that in fact the spectrum of fantastic fiction from Weird Tales through Unknown to Astounding was far less cleanly separated than is sometimes assumed: many stories in the early science fiction magazines such as Wonder Stories were more like the works of Edgar Allan Poe
than they were tales of scientific imagination.
Fritz Leiber
's first published story was "Two Sought Adventure", which appeared in the August 1939 issue of Unknown; this was the first story in his long-running Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser
series about a pair of adventurers in a sword and sorcery
setting. Four more Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories appeared in Unknown in as many years, and Leiber's novel Conjure Wife
, about a man who discovers that all women are secretly witches, was the lead story in the April 1943 issue. The protagonist, a university professor, "is forced to abandon scepticism and discover the underlying equations of magic, via symbolic logic", in critic David Langford's description. Leiber also contributed "Smoke Ghost" in October 1941, described by Ashley as "arguably the first seriously modern ghost story". Another writer whose first story appeared in Unknown was James H. Schmitz
, whose "Greenface" appeared in the August 1943 issue.
Other notable stories that appeared in Unknown include Jack Williamson's "Darker Than You Think" (December 1940), which provides a scientific basis for a race of werewolves living undetected alongside human beings. Expanded into a novel in 1948, it remains Williamson's best-known fantasy, and sf historian Malcolm Edwards
comments that the two protagonists' relationship is "depicted with a tortured (and still haunting) erotic frankness unusual in genre literature of the 1940s". In addition to the Harold Shea pieces, de Camp published several other well-received stories, including "The Wheels of If" (October 1940) and "Lest Darkness Fall
" (December 1939), an alternate history story about a time-traveler who attempts to save the Roman Empire from the coming dark ages; Edwards and Clute comment that the story is "the most accomplished early excursion into history in magazine sf, and is regarded as a classic". Also highly regarded is Wellman's "When It Was Moonlight" (December 1940), a story about Poe.
The first sixteen issues of Unknown had cover paintings, but from July 1940 the cover style was changed to a table of contents, with a small ink drawing usually accompanying the summary of each story, in an attempt to make the magazine appear more dignified. The cover art came almost entirely from artists who did not contribute to many science fiction or fantasy magazines: six of the sixteen paintings were by H. W. Scott; Manuel Islip, Modest Stein, Graves Gladney, and Edd Cartier
provided the others. Cartier was the only one of these who regularly contributed to sf and fantasy periodicals; he painted four of Unknowns last six covers before the change to a text-heavy design.
, an important early influence on the fantasy genre. In the foreword to From Unknown Worlds, in 1948, Campbell commented that fantasy before Unknown had been too much infused with "gloom and terror"; his approach in Unknown had been to assume that the "creatures of mythology and folklore" could be characters in an amusing tale as easily as they could be made part of a horror story. Horror stories, he said, had a place, but "horror injected with a sharp and poisoned needle is just as effective as when applied with the blunt-instrument technique of the so-called Gothic horror tale". Campbell insisted on the same rational approach to fantasy that he required of his science fiction writers, and in the words of Clareson, this led to the destruction of "not only the prevalent narrative tone but also most of the trappings that had dominated fantasy from The Castle of Otranto
and The Monk
through the nineteenth century to Weird Tales". Unknown quickly separated itself from Weird Tales, whose fantasies still primarily aimed to produce fear or shock. The closest predecessor to Unknown was Thorne Smith
, whose prohibition-era "Topper" stories also mixed fantasy with humor. Before Unknown, fantasy had received little serious attention, though on occasion writers such as James Branch Cabell
had achieved respectability. In Ashley's opinion, Unknown created the modern genre of fantasy, though commercial success for the genre had to wait until the 1970s.
Clareson also suggests that Unknown influenced the science fiction that appeared in Astounding after Unknown folded. According to this view, stories such as Clifford Simak's City series would not have appeared without the destruction of genre boundaries that Campbell oversaw. Clareson further proposes that Galaxy Science Fiction
and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
, two of the most important and successful science fiction and fantasy magazines, were direct descendants of Unknown.
Unknown is widely regarded as the finest fantasy magazine ever published: Ashley says, for example, that "Unknown published without doubt the greatest collection of fantasy stories produced in one magazine." Despite its lack of commercial success, Unknown is the most lamented of all science fiction and fantasy magazines; Lester del Rey
describes it as having gained "a devotion from its readers that no other magazine can match". Edwards comments that Unknown "appeared during Campbell's peak years as an editor; its reputation may stand as high as it does partly because it died while still at its best".
Unknown was edited by John W. Campbell and published by Street & Smith Publications throughout its run. It was pulp-sized from its launch through August 1941, and then bedsheet
-sized from October 1941 to April 1943. The last three issues were pulp-sized again. Street & Smith had planned to switch it to digest size
with the December 1943 issue, but it was cancelled before that issue appeared. The price began at 20 cents and rose to 25 cents with the change to bedsheet size; it remained at 25 cents when the size changed back to pulp. It had 164 pages when pulp-sized and 130 pages while it was bedsheet-sized. It began as a monthly and switched to bimonthly from December 1940 on. The volume numbering was regular, with six volumes of six numbers and a final volume of three numbers.
The first six U.S. issues were available directly in the UK, but thereafter an abridged British reprint edition was issued by Atlas Publications, beginning in September 1939. It was pulp-sized, and priced at 9d (nine pence) throughout. It appeared on a regular monthly schedule until December 1940, after which the schedule became quite irregular, with two or three issues appearing each year until 1949. The volume numbering initially followed the corresponding U.S. editions, with some omitted numbers in 1942 and 1943, and then disappeared for four issues; from the twenty-eighth issue (Spring 1945) the magazine was numbered as if it had been given volumes of twelve numbers since the start of the run. The title was changed from Unknown to Unknown Worlds with the March 1942 issue.
s and six pence). Part of the run was issued in a hardcover binding at a higher price. One story from the U.S. version was omitted: "One Man's Harp" by Babette Rosmond
.
Three anthologies of stories from Unknown were published in the early 1960s. The Unknown Five includes four stories reprinted from Unknown and the first print appearance of "Author! Author!", by Isaac Asimov, which was sold to Unknown shortly before Street & Smith shut it down.
Pulp magazine
Pulp magazines , also collectively known as pulp fiction, refers to inexpensive fiction magazines published from 1896 through the 1950s. The typical pulp magazine was seven inches wide by ten inches high, half an inch thick, and 128 pages long...
fantasy fiction magazine, published from 1939 to 1943 by Street & Smith
Street & Smith
Street & Smith or Street & Smith Publications, Inc. was a New York City publisher specializing in inexpensive paperbacks and magazines referred to as pulp fiction and dime novels. They also published comic books and sporting yearbooks...
, and edited by John W. Campbell
John W. Campbell
John Wood Campbell, Jr. was an influential figure in American science fiction. As editor of Astounding Science Fiction , from late 1937 until his death, he is generally credited with shaping the so-called Golden Age of Science Fiction.Isaac Asimov called Campbell "the most powerful force in...
. Unknown was a companion to Street & Smith's science fiction pulp, Astounding Science Fiction
Analog Science Fiction and Fact
Analog Science Fiction and Fact is an American science fiction magazine. As of 2011, it is the longest running continuously published magazine of that genre...
, which was also edited by Campbell at the time; many authors and illustrators contributed to both magazines. The leading fantasy magazine in the 1930s was Weird Tales
Weird Tales
Weird Tales is an American fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine first published in March 1923. It ceased its original run in September 1954, after 279 issues, but has since been revived. The magazine was set up in Chicago by J. C. Henneberger, an ex-journalist with a taste for the macabre....
, which focused on shock and horror. Campbell wanted to publish a fantasy magazine with more finesse and humor than Weird Tales, and put his plans into action when Eric Frank Russell
Eric Frank Russell
Eric Frank Russell was a British author best known for his science fiction novels and short stories. Much of his work was first published in the United States, in John W. Campbell's Astounding Science Fiction and other pulp magazines. Russell also wrote horror fiction for Weird Tales, and...
sent him the manuscript of his novel Sinister Barrier, about aliens who own the human race. Unknowns first issue appeared in March 1939; in addition to Sinister Barrier, it included H. L. Gold
H. L. Gold
Horace Leonard Gold was a science fiction writer and editor. Born in Canada, Gold moved to the United States at the age of two...
's "Trouble With Water", a humorous fantasy about a New Yorker who meets a water gnome. Gold's story was the first of many in Unknown to combine commonplace reality with the fantastic.
Campbell required his authors to avoid simplistic horror fiction and insisted that the fantasy elements in a story be developed logically: for example, Jack Williamson's "Darker Than You Think" describes a world in which there is a scientific explanation for the existence of werewolves
Werewolf
A werewolf, also known as a lycanthrope , is a mythological or folkloric human with the ability to shapeshift into a wolf or an anthropomorphic wolf-like creature, either purposely or after being placed under a curse...
. Similarly, L. Sprague de Camp
L. Sprague de Camp
Lyon Sprague de Camp was an American author of science fiction and fantasy books, non-fiction and biography. In a writing career spanning 60 years, he wrote over 100 books, including novels and notable works of non-fiction, including biographies of other important fantasy authors...
and Fletcher Pratt
Fletcher Pratt
Murray Fletcher Pratt was an American writer of science fiction, fantasy and history, particularly noted for his works on naval history and on the American Civil War.- Life and work :...
's Harold Shea series, about a modern American who finds himself in the worlds of various mythologies, depicts a system of magic based on mathematical logic. Other notable stories included several well-received novels by L. Ron Hubbard
L. Ron Hubbard
Lafayette Ronald Hubbard , better known as L. Ron Hubbard , was an American pulp fiction author and religious leader who founded the Church of Scientology...
and short stories such as Manly Wade Wellman
Manly Wade Wellman
Manly Wade Wellman was an American writer. He is best known for his fantasy and horror stories set in the Appalachian Mountains and for drawing on the native folklore of that region, but he wrote in a wide variety of genres, including science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, detective...
's "When It Was Moonlight" and Fritz Leiber
Fritz Leiber
Fritz Reuter Leiber, Jr. was an American writer of fantasy, horror and science fiction. He was also a poet, actor in theatre and films, playwright, expert chess player and a champion fencer. Possibly his greatest chess accomplishment was winning clear first in the 1958 Santa Monica Open.. With...
's "Two Sought Adventure", the first in his Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser
Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser
Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are two seminal sword-and-sorcery heroes appearing in stories written by Fritz Leiber . They are the protagonists of what are probably Leiber's best-known stories....
series.
Unknown was forced to a bimonthly schedule in 1941 by poor sales, and cancelled in 1943 when wartime paper shortages became so acute that Campbell had to choose between turning Astounding into a bimonthly or ending Unknown. The magazine is generally regarded as the finest fantasy fiction magazine ever published, despite the fact that it was not commercially successful, and in the opinion of science fiction historian Mike Ashley
Mike Ashley (writer)
Michael Ashley is a British bibliographer, author and editor of science fiction, mystery, and fantasy.He edits the long-running Mammoth Book series of short story anthologies, each arranged around a particular theme in mystery, fantasy, or science fiction...
it was responsible for the creation of the modern fantasy publishing genre.
Background and publication history
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1939 | 1/1 | 1/2 | 1/3 | 1/4 | 1/5 | 1/6 | 2/1 | 2/2 | 2/3 | 2/4 | ||
| 1940 | 2/5 | 2/6 | 3/1 | 3/2 | 3/3 | 3/4 | 3/5 | 3/6 | 4/1 | 4/2 | 4/3 | 4/4 |
| 1941 | 4/5 | 4/6 | 5/1 | 5/2 | 5/3 | 5/4 | ||||||
| 1942 | 5/5 | 5/6 | 6/1 | 6/2 | 6/3 | 6/4 | ||||||
| 1943 | 6/5 | 6/6 | 7/1 | 7/2 | 7/3 | |||||||
| Issues of Unknown, showing volume/issue number. John W. Campbell was editor throughout. |
||||||||||||
Weird Tales
Weird Tales is an American fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine first published in March 1923. It ceased its original run in September 1954, after 279 issues, but has since been revived. The magazine was set up in Chicago by J. C. Henneberger, an ex-journalist with a taste for the macabre....
appeared, from Rural Publications in Chicago. Weird Tales was a pulp magazine that specialized in fantasy stories and material that no other magazine would accept. It was not initially successful, but by the 1930s had established itself and was regularly publishing science fiction (sf) as well as fantasy. Weird Tales was the first magazine to focus solely on fantasy, and it remained the pre-eminent magazine in this field for over a decade. In the meantime, science fiction was starting to form a separately marketed genre, with the appearance in 1926 of Amazing Stories
Amazing Stories
Amazing Stories was an American science fiction magazine launched in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback's Experimenter Publishing. It was the first magazine devoted solely to science fiction...
, a pulp magazine edited by Hugo Gernsback
Hugo Gernsback
Hugo Gernsback , born Hugo Gernsbacher, was a Luxembourgian American inventor, writer, editor, and magazine publisher, best remembered for publications that included the first science fiction magazine. His contributions to the genre as publisher were so significant that, along with H. G...
. In 1930 pulp publisher Clayton Publications launched Astounding Stories of Super Science
Analog Science Fiction and Fact
Analog Science Fiction and Fact is an American science fiction magazine. As of 2011, it is the longest running continuously published magazine of that genre...
, but the company's bankruptcy in 1933 led to the acquisition of the magazine by Street & Smith
Street & Smith
Street & Smith or Street & Smith Publications, Inc. was a New York City publisher specializing in inexpensive paperbacks and magazines referred to as pulp fiction and dime novels. They also published comic books and sporting yearbooks...
. The title was shortened to Astounding Stories, and it became the leading magazine in the science fiction field over the next few years under the editorship of F. Orlin Tremaine
F. Orlin Tremaine
F. Orlin Tremaine was an American science fiction editor.Tremaine became the second editor of Astounding Science Fiction in 1933 following the magazine's purchase by Street and Smith when William Clayton went bankrupt. Tremaine remained editor until 1937, when he was succeeded by John W....
. At the end of 1937 John W. Campbell
John W. Campbell
John Wood Campbell, Jr. was an influential figure in American science fiction. As editor of Astounding Science Fiction , from late 1937 until his death, he is generally credited with shaping the so-called Golden Age of Science Fiction.Isaac Asimov called Campbell "the most powerful force in...
took over as editor.
By 1938, Campbell was planning a fantasy companion to Astounding: Weird Tales was still the leader in the fantasy genre, though competitors such as Strange Stories were also being launched. Campbell began acquiring stories suitable for the new magazine, without a definite launch date in mind. When Eric Frank Russell
Eric Frank Russell
Eric Frank Russell was a British author best known for his science fiction novels and short stories. Much of his work was first published in the United States, in John W. Campbell's Astounding Science Fiction and other pulp magazines. Russell also wrote horror fiction for Weird Tales, and...
sent him the manuscript of his novel Sinister Barrier, Campbell decided it was time to put his plans into action. The first issue of Unknown appeared in March 1939. It was a monthly at first, but poor sales forced a switch to a bimonthly schedule beginning in February 1941. In December 1940 the subtitle Fantasy Fiction was added, and in October 1941 the main title was changed to Unknown Worlds; both changes were intended to make the genre of the magazine clearer to potential readers. When wartime paper shortages became severe in late 1943, Campbell made the choice to keep Astounding monthly and cancel Unknown, rather than switch the former to a bimonthly schedule as well. The last issue was dated October 1943.
Contents and reception
Campbell's plans for Unknown were laid out in the February 1939 issue of Astounding, in the announcement of the new magazine. He argued that "it has been the quality of the fantasy that you have read in the past that has made the very word anathema ... [Unknown] will offer fantasy of a quality so far different from that which has appeared in the past as to change your entire understanding of the term". The first issue, the following month, led with Russell's Sinister Barrier, the novel that had persuaded Campbell to set his plans for a fantasy magazine into motion: the plot, involving aliens who own the human race, has been described by sf historian Mike Ashley as "a strange mixture of science fiction and occult fantasy". Campbell asked Russell for revisions to the story to emphasize the fantastic elements, but still demanded that Russell work out the logical implications of his premises. This became a defining characteristic of the fiction published in Unknown; in Ashley's words, Campbell "brought the science fiction rationale to fantasy". The first issue also contained Horace L. Gold's "Trouble with Water", a comic fantasy about a modern New Yorker who offends a water gnome; in its whimsicality and naturalistic merging of a modern background with a classic fantasy trope, "Trouble with Water" was a better indication than Sinister Barrier of the direction Unknown would take. Campbell commented in a letter at the time that Sinister Barrier, "Trouble with Water", and Where Angels Fear ... by Manly Wade WellmanManly Wade Wellman
Manly Wade Wellman was an American writer. He is best known for his fantasy and horror stories set in the Appalachian Mountains and for drawing on the native folklore of that region, but he wrote in a wide variety of genres, including science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, detective...
were the only stories in the first issue that accurately reflected his goals for the magazine.
Under Campbell's editorial supervision, the fantasy element in Unknown stories had to be treated rigorously. This naturally led to the appearance in Unknown of writers already comfortable with similar rigor in science fiction stories, and Campbell soon established a small group of writers as regular contributors, many of whom were also appearing in the pages of Astounding. L. Ron Hubbard
L. Ron Hubbard
Lafayette Ronald Hubbard , better known as L. Ron Hubbard , was an American pulp fiction author and religious leader who founded the Church of Scientology...
, Theodore Sturgeon
Theodore Sturgeon
Theodore Sturgeon was an American science fiction author.His most famous novel is More Than Human .-Biography:...
, and L. Sprague de Camp
L. Sprague de Camp
Lyon Sprague de Camp was an American author of science fiction and fantasy books, non-fiction and biography. In a writing career spanning 60 years, he wrote over 100 books, including novels and notable works of non-fiction, including biographies of other important fantasy authors...
were among the most prolific. Hubbard contributed eight lead novels including Typewriter in the Sky
Typewriter in the Sky
Typewriter in the Sky is a science fiction novel written by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. The protagonist Mike de Wolf finds himself inside the story of his friend's book. He must survive conflict on the high seas in the Caribbean during the 17th century, before eventually returning to his...
, Slaves of Sleep
Slaves of Sleep
Slaves of Sleep is a science fiction novel by author L. Ron Hubbard. It was first published in book form in 1948 by Shasta Publishers; the novel originally appeared in 1939 in an issue of the magazine Unknown. The novel presents a story in which a man travels to a parallel universe ruled by Ifrits...
, and Fear, described by Ashley as a "classic psychological thriller"; sf historian and critic Thomas Clareson describes all eight as "outstanding". De Camp, in collaboration with Fletcher Pratt
Fletcher Pratt
Murray Fletcher Pratt was an American writer of science fiction, fantasy and history, particularly noted for his works on naval history and on the American Civil War.- Life and work :...
, contributed three stories featuring Harold Shea, who finds himself in a world where magic operates by rigorous rules. The title of one of these, "The Mathematics of Magic", is, according to sf critic John Clute
John Clute
John Frederick Clute is a Canadian born author and critic who has lived in Britain since 1969. He has been described as "an integral part of science fiction's history."...
, "perfectly expressive of the terms under which magic found easy mention in Unknown".
Other Astounding writers who wrote for Unknown included Robert A. Heinlein
Robert A. Heinlein
Robert Anson Heinlein was an American science fiction writer. Often called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was one of the most influential and controversial authors of the genre. He set a standard for science and engineering plausibility and helped to raise the genre's standards of...
, whose "The Devil Makes the Law" (reprinted as "Magic, Inc.
Magic, Inc.
Magic, Inc. is a novella by Robert A. Heinlein. It was originally published in Unknown Fantasy Fiction, for September 1940 under the title "The Devil Makes the Law"....
") depicts a world where magic is a part of normal everyday life. Heinlein also contributed "The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag
The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag
"The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag" is a novella by Robert A. Heinlein. It was originally published in the October 1942 edition of Unknown Worlds magazine under the pseudonym of "John Riverside". It also lends its title to a collection of Heinlein's short stories published in 1959...
" and "They", described by Ashley as "perhaps the ultimate solipsist fantasy". A.E. van Vogt, a frequent Astounding contributor, appeared in the final issue with "The Book of Ptath" (later expanded into a novel). Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov was an American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000...
, despite multiple attempts to write for Unknown, never appeared in the magazine. On his sixth attempt, he sold "Author! Author!
Author! Author! (short story)
"Author! Author!" is a fantasy short story written by Isaac Asimov.It was written in 1943, born of the author's desire to make the pages of Unknown with a fantasy. It was sold to the magazine, but never published as the magazine was withdrawn because of a wartime paper shortage...
" to Campbell, but the magazine was cancelled before it could appear. It eventually appeared in the anthology The Unknown Five.
In addition to the overlap between the writers of Unknown and Astounding, there was a good deal of overlap between their readerships: Asimov records that during the war, he read only these two magazines. Sf historian Paul Carter has argued that in fact the spectrum of fantastic fiction from Weird Tales through Unknown to Astounding was far less cleanly separated than is sometimes assumed: many stories in the early science fiction magazines such as Wonder Stories were more like the works of Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
than they were tales of scientific imagination.
Fritz Leiber
Fritz Leiber
Fritz Reuter Leiber, Jr. was an American writer of fantasy, horror and science fiction. He was also a poet, actor in theatre and films, playwright, expert chess player and a champion fencer. Possibly his greatest chess accomplishment was winning clear first in the 1958 Santa Monica Open.. With...
's first published story was "Two Sought Adventure", which appeared in the August 1939 issue of Unknown; this was the first story in his long-running Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser
Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser
Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are two seminal sword-and-sorcery heroes appearing in stories written by Fritz Leiber . They are the protagonists of what are probably Leiber's best-known stories....
series about a pair of adventurers in a sword and sorcery
Sword and sorcery
Sword and sorcery is a sub-genre of fantasy and historical fantasy, generally characterized by sword-wielding heroes engaged in exciting and violent conflicts. An element of romance is often present, as is an element of magic and the supernatural...
setting. Four more Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories appeared in Unknown in as many years, and Leiber's novel Conjure Wife
Conjure Wife
Conjure Wife is a supernatural horror novel by Fritz Leiber.Its premise is that witchcraft flourishes as an open secret among women. The story is told from the point of view of a small-town college professor who discovers that his wife is a witch....
, about a man who discovers that all women are secretly witches, was the lead story in the April 1943 issue. The protagonist, a university professor, "is forced to abandon scepticism and discover the underlying equations of magic, via symbolic logic", in critic David Langford's description. Leiber also contributed "Smoke Ghost" in October 1941, described by Ashley as "arguably the first seriously modern ghost story". Another writer whose first story appeared in Unknown was James H. Schmitz
James H. Schmitz
James Henry Schmitz was an American writer born in Hamburg, Germany of American parents.- Life :Aside from two years at business school in Chicago, Schmitz lived in Germany until 1938, leaving before World War II broke out in Europe in 1939.During World War II, Schmitz served as an aerial...
, whose "Greenface" appeared in the August 1943 issue.
Other notable stories that appeared in Unknown include Jack Williamson's "Darker Than You Think" (December 1940), which provides a scientific basis for a race of werewolves living undetected alongside human beings. Expanded into a novel in 1948, it remains Williamson's best-known fantasy, and sf historian Malcolm Edwards
Malcolm Edwards
Malcolm John Edwards is a British editor and critic in the science fiction field. He received his degree from the University of Cambridge. He is currently Deputy CEO at the Orion Publishing Group. Edwards resides in London with his wife, the CEO of a public relations company...
comments that the two protagonists' relationship is "depicted with a tortured (and still haunting) erotic frankness unusual in genre literature of the 1940s". In addition to the Harold Shea pieces, de Camp published several other well-received stories, including "The Wheels of If" (October 1940) and "Lest Darkness Fall
Lest Darkness Fall
Lest Darkness Fall is an alternate history science fiction novel written in 1939 by author L. Sprague de Camp. The book is often considered one of the best examples of the alternate history genre; it is certainly one of the most influential...
" (December 1939), an alternate history story about a time-traveler who attempts to save the Roman Empire from the coming dark ages; Edwards and Clute comment that the story is "the most accomplished early excursion into history in magazine sf, and is regarded as a classic". Also highly regarded is Wellman's "When It Was Moonlight" (December 1940), a story about Poe.
The first sixteen issues of Unknown had cover paintings, but from July 1940 the cover style was changed to a table of contents, with a small ink drawing usually accompanying the summary of each story, in an attempt to make the magazine appear more dignified. The cover art came almost entirely from artists who did not contribute to many science fiction or fantasy magazines: six of the sixteen paintings were by H. W. Scott; Manuel Islip, Modest Stein, Graves Gladney, and Edd Cartier
Edd Cartier
Edward "Edd" Daniel Cartier , was an American pulp magazine illustrator.Born in North Bergen, New Jersey, Cartier studied at Pratt Institute. Following his 1936 graduation from Pratt, his artwork was published in Street and Smith publications, including The Shadow, to which he contributed many...
provided the others. Cartier was the only one of these who regularly contributed to sf and fantasy periodicals; he painted four of Unknowns last six covers before the change to a text-heavy design.
Influence
Unknown was, along with Weird TalesWeird Tales
Weird Tales is an American fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine first published in March 1923. It ceased its original run in September 1954, after 279 issues, but has since been revived. The magazine was set up in Chicago by J. C. Henneberger, an ex-journalist with a taste for the macabre....
, an important early influence on the fantasy genre. In the foreword to From Unknown Worlds, in 1948, Campbell commented that fantasy before Unknown had been too much infused with "gloom and terror"; his approach in Unknown had been to assume that the "creatures of mythology and folklore" could be characters in an amusing tale as easily as they could be made part of a horror story. Horror stories, he said, had a place, but "horror injected with a sharp and poisoned needle is just as effective as when applied with the blunt-instrument technique of the so-called Gothic horror tale". Campbell insisted on the same rational approach to fantasy that he required of his science fiction writers, and in the words of Clareson, this led to the destruction of "not only the prevalent narrative tone but also most of the trappings that had dominated fantasy from The Castle of Otranto
The Castle of Otranto
The Castle of Otranto is a 1764 novel by Horace Walpole. It is generally regarded as the first gothic novel, initiating a literary genre which would become extremely popular in the later 18th century and early 19th century...
and The Monk
The Monk
The Monk: A Romance is a Gothic novel by Matthew Gregory Lewis, published in 1796. It was written before the author turned 20, in the space of 10 weeks.-Characters:...
through the nineteenth century to Weird Tales". Unknown quickly separated itself from Weird Tales, whose fantasies still primarily aimed to produce fear or shock. The closest predecessor to Unknown was Thorne Smith
Thorne Smith
James Thorne Smith Jr. , was an American writer of humorous supernatural fantasy fiction.He is best known today for the three Topper novels, comic fantasy fiction that sold millions of copies in the early 1930s...
, whose prohibition-era "Topper" stories also mixed fantasy with humor. Before Unknown, fantasy had received little serious attention, though on occasion writers such as James Branch Cabell
James Branch Cabell
James Branch Cabell, ; April 14, 1879 – May 5, 1958) was an American author of fantasy fiction and belles lettres. Cabell was well regarded by his contemporaries, including H. L. Mencken and Sinclair Lewis. His works were considered escapist and fit well in the culture of the 1920s, when his...
had achieved respectability. In Ashley's opinion, Unknown created the modern genre of fantasy, though commercial success for the genre had to wait until the 1970s.
Clareson also suggests that Unknown influenced the science fiction that appeared in Astounding after Unknown folded. According to this view, stories such as Clifford Simak's City series would not have appeared without the destruction of genre boundaries that Campbell oversaw. Clareson further proposes that Galaxy Science Fiction
Galaxy Science Fiction
Galaxy Science Fiction was an American digest-size science fiction magazine, published from 1950 to 1980. It was founded by an Italian company, World Editions, which was looking to break in to the American market. World Editions hired as editor H. L...
and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction is a digest-size American fantasy and science fiction magazine first published in 1949 by Mystery House and then by Fantasy House. Both were subsidiaries of Lawrence Spivak's Mercury Publications, which took over as publisher in 1958. Spilogale, Inc...
, two of the most important and successful science fiction and fantasy magazines, were direct descendants of Unknown.
Unknown is widely regarded as the finest fantasy magazine ever published: Ashley says, for example, that "Unknown published without doubt the greatest collection of fantasy stories produced in one magazine." Despite its lack of commercial success, Unknown is the most lamented of all science fiction and fantasy magazines; Lester del Rey
Lester del Rey
Lester del Rey was an American science fiction author and editor. Del Rey was the author of many of the Winston Science Fiction juvenile SF series, and the editor at Del Rey Books, the fantasy and science fiction branch of Ballantine Books, along with his fourth wife Judy-Lynn del Rey.-Birth...
describes it as having gained "a devotion from its readers that no other magazine can match". Edwards comments that Unknown "appeared during Campbell's peak years as an editor; its reputation may stand as high as it does partly because it died while still at its best".
Bibliographic details
| Spring | Summer | Autumn | Winter | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | |
| 1939 | 2/1 | 2/2 | 2/3 | 2/4 | ||||||||
| 1940 | 2/5 | 2/6 | 3/1 | 3/2 | 3/3 | 3/4 | 3/5 | 3/6 | 4/1 | 4/2 | 4/3 | 4/4 |
| 1941 | 4/5 | 4/6 | ||||||||||
| 1942 | 5/5 | 6/1 | 6/3 | |||||||||
| 1943 | 6/4 | 6/5 | (nn) | |||||||||
| 1944 | (nn) | (nn) | (nn) | |||||||||
| 1945 | 3/4 | 3/5 | 3/6 | |||||||||
| 1946 | 3/7 | 3/8 | ||||||||||
| 1947 | 3/9 | 3/10 | 3/11 | |||||||||
| 1948 | 3/12 | 4/1 | 4/2 | |||||||||
| 1949 | 4/3 | 4/4 | 4/5 | |||||||||
| Issues of the British reprint of Unknown, showing volume/issue number. Underlining indicates that an issue was dated with the season ("Spring 1945") rather than the month. John W. Campbell was editor throughout. |
||||||||||||
Bedsheet
The bedsheet format was the size of many magazines published in the United States in the first third of the 20th century. Magazines in bedsheet format were roughly the size of Life but with square spines...
-sized from October 1941 to April 1943. The last three issues were pulp-sized again. Street & Smith had planned to switch it to digest size
Digest size
Digest size is a magazine size, smaller than a conventional or "journal size" magazine but larger than a standard paperback book, approximately 5½ x 8¼ inches, but can also be 5⅜ x 8⅜ inches and 5½ x 7½ inches. These sizes have evolved from the printing press operation end...
with the December 1943 issue, but it was cancelled before that issue appeared. The price began at 20 cents and rose to 25 cents with the change to bedsheet size; it remained at 25 cents when the size changed back to pulp. It had 164 pages when pulp-sized and 130 pages while it was bedsheet-sized. It began as a monthly and switched to bimonthly from December 1940 on. The volume numbering was regular, with six volumes of six numbers and a final volume of three numbers.
The first six U.S. issues were available directly in the UK, but thereafter an abridged British reprint edition was issued by Atlas Publications, beginning in September 1939. It was pulp-sized, and priced at 9d (nine pence) throughout. It appeared on a regular monthly schedule until December 1940, after which the schedule became quite irregular, with two or three issues appearing each year until 1949. The volume numbering initially followed the corresponding U.S. editions, with some omitted numbers in 1942 and 1943, and then disappeared for four issues; from the twenty-eighth issue (Spring 1945) the magazine was numbered as if it had been given volumes of twelve numbers since the start of the run. The title was changed from Unknown to Unknown Worlds with the March 1942 issue.
Related publications
In 1948, Street & Smith reprinted several stories from Unknown in a bedsheet-sized magazine format, priced at 25 cents, with the title From Unknown Worlds. This was an attempt to determine if there was a market for a revived Unknown. Street & Smith printed 300,000 copies, against the advice of John Campbell, but although it sold better than the original, too many copies were returned for the publisher to be willing to revive the magazine. The issue was reprinted in Britain in 1952, reduced in size to 7 by 9.5 in (177.8 by 241.3 mm) and cut from 130 pages to 124; it was priced at 2/6 (two shillingShilling
The shilling is a unit of currency used in some current and former British Commonwealth countries. The word shilling comes from scilling, an accounting term that dates back to Anglo-Saxon times where it was deemed to be the value of a cow in Kent or a sheep elsewhere. The word is thought to derive...
s and six pence). Part of the run was issued in a hardcover binding at a higher price. One story from the U.S. version was omitted: "One Man's Harp" by Babette Rosmond
Babette Rosmond
Babette Rosmond was an American author.Rosmond sold her first short story to The New Yorker at age seventeen. She published short fiction of her own and with her first husband, Leonard M. Lake...
.
Three anthologies of stories from Unknown were published in the early 1960s. The Unknown Five includes four stories reprinted from Unknown and the first print appearance of "Author! Author!", by Isaac Asimov, which was sold to Unknown shortly before Street & Smith shut it down.
| Year | Editor | Title | Publisher | Length and price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1963 | D. R. Bensen Donald R. Bensen Donald Roynald Bensen , also known as Don Bensen and sometimes listed as D.R. Bensen, was an American editor and science fiction writer. Editorally he is best known for editing works of P. G. Wodehouse and his involvement in their re-issue in paperback in the United States... |
The Unknown | Pyramid: New York | 192 pp.; 50 cents |
| 1963 | George Hay | Hell Hath Fury | Neville Spearman: London | 240 pp.; 15/- |
| 1964 | D. R. Bensen | The Unknown Five | Pyramid: New York | 190 pp.; 50 cents |