Transformations: The Story of the Science Fiction Magazines from 1950 to 1970

Transformations is the second volume in the three-volume History of the Science-Fiction Magazine. This volume covers the period from 1950 to 1970, which was both a turbulent time in magazine history and, at least in part, the true Golden Age of the science-fiction magazine. It was a period of boom and bust: for a moment the science-fiction magazine dominated the bookstalls and then, at the dawn of the Space Age, many foundered never to recover. It was the time when the pulp magazines folded, when the digest magazine appeared and when science fiction tried to reinvent itself not just once but several times: first as sophisticated social science fiction in the pages of Galaxy Science Fiction, then as avant-garde speculative fiction in the ?new wave? revolution led by New Worlds, and then, with the popularity of Lord of the Rings, as science fantasy in magazines like Worlds of If. This period saw the arrival of such major writers as Philip K. Dick, Robert Sheckley, Frank Herbert, Walter M. Miller, Jr, J. G. Ballard, Brian W. Aldiss, John Brunner, Harlan Ellison, Roger Zelazny, Thomas M. Disch, Ursula K. Le Guin, Anne McCaffrey and many more, all of whom emerged in the pages of the science-fiction magazines. This volume charts the many transformations that science fiction underwent during these twenty years, from the McCarthy era and the Korean War to the New Age hippies and the Vietnam War, and explores how the magazines and writers reacted to and influenced the world about them.