Vertex
Entry updated 19 February 2024. Tagged: Publication.
US magazine, in Slick letter-size saddle-stapled format, April 1973 to April 1975, and tabloid format June 1975-August 1975. 16 issues, 13 bimonthly, the last three monthly, published by Mankind Publishing, Los Angeles; edited by Donald J Pfeil. Subtitled "The Magazine of Science Fiction", Vertex was a magazine of imaginative layout and much internal illustration, the first real Slick magazine in the sf field. The covers were often semi-abstract. Like most SF Magazines since the 1970s, Vertex ran many nonfiction pieces: Interviews with authors and good science-fact articles. Stories were by, among others, Ed Bryant, F M Busby, Terry Carr, George Alec Effinger, Joe Haldeman, William Rotsler, Robert Silverberg and Norman Spinrad. Vertex was something of a showcase for up-and-coming US authors like Alan Brennert, William Carlson, George R R Martin, Steven Utley and John Varley, and in quality was the strongest of the new sf magazines from the first half of the 1970s; but financial problems (at $1.50 it was unusually expensive) and a paper shortage forced a change to newspaper format on cheap paper for the last three issues, then closure. [PN/FHP]
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