SF Horizons
Entry updated 19 February 2024. Tagged: Publication.
UK critical journal edited by Brian Aldiss and Harry Harrison, with Tom Boardman acting as business manager. Digest-sized; two 64pp issues only, Spring 1964 and Winter 1965. An early attempt to establish a serious critical sf journal – and as such a precursor of Foundation – SF Horizons carried critical articles by James Blish and others, including both editors. Aldiss also wrote as C C Shackleton, whose initials allegedly stood for Charles Charleston. The most notable solo piece is Aldiss's "Judgement at Jonbar" in #1, an extended discussion of Jack Williamson's The Legion of Time (May-July 1938 Astounding; rev 1952). Also featured were Interviews with C S Lewis and Kingsley Amis (jointly – a three-way discussion with Aldiss), and with William S Burroughs, plus verse reprints from Robert Conquest and C S Lewis. SF Horizons was literate, quirky, caustic and short-lived; its main problem was that it appeared several years before there was a sufficient audience for such a magazine. Both issues were reprinted by Arno Press in a single volume as SF Horizons (anth 1975). In a hopeful but not continuing initiative, the title page of Aldiss and Harrison's nonfiction Original Anthology, Hell's Cartographers: Some Personal Histories of Science Fiction (anth 1975) included the series tag, "An SF HORIZONS Publication". [DRL/MJE]
see also: Jonbar Point.
further reading
- Brian W Aldiss and Harry Harrison, editors. SF Horizons (New York: Arno Press, 1975) [nonfiction: anth: reprints both issues of SF Horizons 1964-1965: hb/]
- Brian W Aldiss and Harry Harrison, editors. Hell's Cartographers: Some Personal Histories of Science Fiction (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975) [nonfiction: anth: in the publisher's An SF HORIZONS Production series: no further titles issued: hb/Nicholas Sutton]
- Brian W Aldiss. The Jonbar Point: Essays from SF Horizons (Reading, Berkshire: Ansible Editions, 2020) [nonfiction: coll: two studies first published in SF Horizons: introduction by Christopher Priest: pb/photographic]
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