New Worlds (magazine)
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New Worlds was a British science fiction magazine which was first published professionally in 1946. For 25 years it was widely considered the leading science fiction magazine in Britain, publishing 201 issues up to 1971.
Since 1971 the name of "New Worlds" has been kept alive with a series of original anthologies and a few magazine-like publications; these totalled 21 by 1997.
Throughout the 1950s New Worlds was similar in editorial policy and look to Astounding Science Fiction, publishing authors including Brian Aldiss and J G Ballard. It was edited until 1963 by John Carnell. At that point the magazine changed radically. Now edited by Michael Moorcock, it first was published as a cheaply-printed paperback, then a large format magazine. It quickly embraced the so called new wave of science fiction, publishing material that proved to be controversial. The material led to difficulties with distribution, and hastened the eventual demise of the magazine, despite financial assistance from the Arts Council.
Although New Worlds undoubtedly played a leading role in establishing some of the best of the “new wave” writers, this term was more usually applied at the time to work by comparable American based authors, of whom Harlan Ellison was the most visible exponent. For a time New Worlds’s editors favoured the description of its contents as “speculative fiction”.
In the late 60s and early 70s the magazine became somewhat regarded as a literary magazine and formed a fraternal relationship with Ambit [1], another London based little magazine. As well as contributors primarily associated with science fiction it also published work by poets such as Christopher Logue, George MacBeth and Ron Padgett, cult writers Jack Trevor Story, Thomas Pynchon and Alan Burns, avant garde publisher John Calder and experimentalists like Carol Emshwiller. The magazine maintained a presence within the era’s underground press scene alongside publications such as International Times and Running Man. Among the interests that linked New Worlds with the counterculture was a strong regard for the writings of William Burroughs, psychedelic drug experiences, the mass media theories of Marshall McLuhan and sexual liberation.
In its second phase, authors published included Aldiss and Ballard, who also embraced the new wave enthusiastically, and much work by Moorcock (including some under the pseudonym James Colvin). A notable feature of the magazine were stories of Jerry Cornelius, created by Moorcock, but often written about by others. Other renowned authors include Norman Spinrad (whose novel Bug Jack Barron caused particular issues with distribution), Harlan Ellison, Philip José Farmer, M. John Harrison, Pamela Zoline, Barrington J. Bayley and John Sladek; also an early story by Terry Pratchett and poetry by D. M. Thomas.
After the demise of the original magazine the title was continued as a paperback anthology series in the style of a magazine, complete with articles and illustrations, officially entitled New Worlds Quarterly although it seldom maintained a regular schedule. This series ran to ten issues, which are considered by some collectors as issues 202 through 211 of the magazine; subsequently the title was revived as an irregularly-published magazine and did indeed resume numeration from 212. Later the title once again switched to book format, this time in the form of trade paperbacks, with consecutive numbering continued on the title pages.
A US-based New Worlds magazine published five issues in 1960.
There have been a number of magazines that subsequently drew inspiration from New Worlds and these have included Corridor and Wordworks (both published by New Worlds contributor Michael Butterworth), Interzone [1] and more recently the UK magazine The Edge [2].
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- Partial index by author, through issue 201
- Article by Michael Moorcock on the decision to publish Bug Jack Barron and its consequences; with an insight into the artistic world surrounding New Worlds in 1967, height of the "second phase".
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