Beyond Fantasy Fiction
The surrealist cover of Beyond Fantasy Fiction #1, July 1953 by Richard M. Powers
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| Editor | H. L. Gold |
|---|---|
| Categories | fantasy magazine |
| Frequency | bimonthly |
| Publisher | Robert Guinn |
| First issue | July 1953 |
| Final issue — Number |
January, 1955 Volume 2 No 4 |
| Company | Galaxy Publishing Corporation |
| Country | United States |
Beyond Fantasy Fiction was a US fantasy fiction magazine edited by H. L. Gold, with only ten issues published from 1953 to 1955. The last two issues carried the cover title of Beyond Fiction, but the publication's name for copyright purposes remained as before.
Although not a commercial success, it included several short stories by authors such as Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury and Philip K. Dick. The publication has been described by critics as a successor to the tradition of Unknown, a fantasy magazine that ceased publication in 1943. It was noted for printing fantasy with a rational basis such as werewolf stories that included scientific explanations. A selection of stories from Beyond was published in paperback form in 1963, also under the title Beyond.
James Gunn, a historian of science fiction, regarded the magazine as the best of the fantasy magazines launched in the early 1950s, and science fiction encyclopedist Donald H. Tuck contended it printed very good material. Not every critic viewed Beyond as completely successful, however; P. Schuyler Miller, in a 1963 review, commented that the stories were most successful when they did not try to emulate Unknown.
Beyond Fantasy Fiction was a fantasy-oriented companion to the more successful Galaxy Science Fiction, which launched in 1950; Beyond had been planned by editor H. L. Gold from the time Galaxy was launched, but it had to wait until Galaxy was firmly established.Beyond's first issue, dated July 1953, included an editorial by Gold in which he laid out the magazine's scope, excluding (in his words) only "the probably possible" and "the unentertaining". Gold recruited Sam Merwin, who had recently quit as editor of Fantastic Universe, to help in editing, though the masthead of both magazines listed Gold as editor. A typical issue of Beyond included several stories that were long enough to be listed as novellas or novelettes, with the contents augmented with shorter works, usually for a total of at least seven stories.
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