Boardman, Tom
Entry updated 23 September 2024. Tagged: Author, Editor.
Working name of UK publisher and editor Thomas Volney Boardman Jr (1930-2017), who went to work for the family publishing company, T V Boardman, in 1949, and stayed on as managing director when the company changed ownership in 1954. This company published primarily mysteries, but also some sf and Comics including Swift Morgan (1948-1953). T V Boardman sf titles of some note include Peter George's Two Hours to Doom (1958; vt Red Alert 1958) as by Peter Bryant, and the first UK editions of Fredric Brown's The Lights in the Sky Are Stars (1953) as Project Jupiter (1954) and E E Smith's Triplanetary (1948) as Triplanetary: A Tale of Cosmic Adventure (1954).
Tom Boardman was sf adviser, successively, to Gollancz, Four Square Books, Macdonald and New English Library. He was business manager of the short-lived critical magazine SF Horizons. He edited five sf reprint Anthologies: Connoisseur's Science Fiction (anth 1964), The Unfriendly Future (anth 1965), An ABC of Science Fiction (anth 1966), Science Fiction Horizons 1 (anth 1968) – copyrighted "S F Horizons Ltd" and remarking in its foreword that "it was born out of a magazine called Science Fiction Horizons" – and Science Fiction Stories (anth 1979), the last being for children (see Children's SF). The conceit of An ABC of Science Fiction is that there is a contributor for each letter of the alphabet, from Brian W Aldiss to Roger Zelazny, with the difficult letter X represented by the avowed Pseudonym "B T H Xerxes" – whose three limericks are presumably a repeat appearance by Aldiss since they include one from the risqué sequence "Aldiss's Sexual Survey of Habits in Our Little-Explored [Solar] System" (December 1960 PITFCS ed Theodore R Cogswell).
Boardman later worked in educational publishing. [MJE/DRL]
Thomas Volney Boardman Jr
born Bronxville, New York: 20 December 1930
died Sunningdale, Berkshire: 15 June 2017
works as editor
- Connoisseur's Science Fiction (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1964) [anth: pb/Esso Research photo]
- The Unfriendly Future (London: Four Square, 1965) [anth: pb/Gino D'Achille]
- An ABC of Science Fiction (London: Four Square, 1966) [anth: pb/Barry Evans]
- Science Fiction Horizons 1 (London: Dennis Dobson, 1968) [anth: hb/Richard Weaver]
- Science Fiction Stories (London: Octopus, 1979) [anth: hb/Terry Oakes]
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