Introduction

There have been two British reprint editions of F&SF. The first ran for twelve monthly issues, from October 1953 to September 1954, and was published by the Mellifont Press of London. The second ran for 55 monthly issues, from December 1959 to June 1964, published by the Atlas Publishing and Distributing Company, also of London. The Australian edition ran irregularly for 14 issues from 1954 to 1958..

FSF1

The first British edition of F&SF, despite its short life, had a complicated relationship with the US original and is a classic example of why people go to the trouble of documenting reprint editions, which might otherwise seem to be a tedious and uninteresting task.

First, there was no simple correspondence between the contents of the British and US magazines. Fortunately, the contents of both FSF1 and FSF2 are indexed in SFFWF, so you can find the full details there. But in summary, though the British magazine drew most of its contents from the by now four-year inventory of F&SF, any individual issue reprinted stories from several different US originals and there were quite a few stories from other sources as well.

Then the covers, though all based on originals from the US magazine, had to be extensively changed to allow for the different contents. The Mercury Publications symbol, US price and publication date disappeared and were replaced with a British price and issue number and in several cases the title bar was changed as well. Then about the bottom inch of the cover was overprinted with the text of the new contents against a plain-coloured background. The British magazines, by the way, were fractionally smaller than their US counterparts, perhaps because the standard paper sizes differed in the two countries. The advertisements on the back covers are different, of course; in some cases, the British edition carried adverts for companion magazines in the Mellifont stable, such as Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.

A close examination of these covers leads me to believe that some were repainted rather than reprinted, though I can't say for sure that they all were. There are distinct differences in colouring, but that could be accounted for by different inks and paper quality - most of the US covers are on matt paper, while all of the British ones have a glossy finish. There are telling differences in detail, though - look at this face from no 8 (right) and the corresponding detail from Kirberger's original of March 1954 (left). Even where there are no obvious differences you can put your finger on, the British covers seem more crudely drawn than the originals. It is interesting to note also that the artist's name has been obliterated on all of the covers, even when it was not overprinted by the new contents bar. That seems a whimsical and unnecessary thing to do if the covers were not repainted locally.

No credit is given in the British magazine to the artist, either to the original or the British understudy if there was one. The table below shows on which US original the British cover was based.

Note that this edition was also numbered in volumes of four, from v1#1 to v3#4. This is shown on the title page inside and on the spine of all but #1, but the cover always gives the whole number.

FSF2

This second series of F&SF is a little more straightforward in its relationship with the original. After the first three numbers, the reprint edition drew most of its contents from one US issue, usually three or four months behind. There was a scattering of stories from other sources, sometimes other issues of the US edition, sometimes elsewhere. The reprint never reproduced the whole contents of the US magazine, however; with only 112 pages, there was insufficient space. The table below shows both where the cover and most of the content came from. The cover often corresponded with the issue from which the content was mainly drawn, but not always.

Besides changing the date, price and the text announcing the story titles, there was another complication at this period. Some of the original US covers wrapped around from front to back, while the British reprints never did - they always carried the same advertisement (for International Correspondence Schools) on the back cover. Several of the reprinted covers, therefore, were adapted to incorporate some of the elements from the back cover on the front. They must, therefore, have been at least partially repainted. Whether any of the others were is very hard to say; if they were, it was with a great deal more care and skill than in the first series. Minor differences in detail can be seen, but they are so small that I cannot be sure that they were not a product of the printing process. Many of the covers were credited on the contents page to the original artist, and the signature are still visible on some. This is not a reliable clue, however; credit is given in some cases even when the cover has been adapted from a wraparound.

From November 1961 onwards, home-grown covers began to appear, sporadically at first and then more regularly. These were mostly undistinguished, plain designs against which the story titles were displayed and one imagines that they were used to save money with cheaper printing processes. There were a couple of oddities, as well. The October 1963 issue reprinted Emsh's cover from June, but in a rather startling blue and orange scheme rather than the original colours. And the June 1963 issue bears a picture of a radio telescope credited to Emsh, though it is hardly up to his usual standard and never appeared in that form on any issue of the US Fantasy and Science Fiction. The closest I can come to it is the cover of September 1960, which is on the same theme but is utterly different in detail and execution.

The last Issue of FSF2, June 1964, carried a drawing adapted from the back cover of the US issue of December 1963. It was of the Hugo awarded to F&SF at the 21st Worldcon, held that year in Washington, for Best Science Fiction Magazine. It was the fourth time F&SF had collected this award, having won it already in 1958, 1959 and 1960. Ironically, Atlas now announced the end of the British reprint edition, but with a special offer for a subscription to the US magazine. If British readers had taken up the subscription offer, the earliest issue they would have been likely to see would be August. Since the British magazine was already running four months behind, that meant that they were missing out on at least five months of F&SF. Meanwhile, however, F&SF's sister publication, the British reprint of Venture, continued. Had readers had the patience to wait for the last British issue of "Venture", in December of the following year, they would have been rewarded with a a dozen of the missing F&SF stories from March-June 1964.

UK Price-Marked Covers

After the second series ended, the US edition began to be distributed regularly in the UK and some covers of the US edition were overprinted with the UK price. On the July 1964 and some subsequent issues, this appears next to the US price. On many issues, however, there was a distinct version of the cover printed specially for the UK market. The roundel in the top right hand corner, where normally the "Mercury Publications" symbol appears, is replaced with a coloured circle showing "UK" and the price in shillings and pence. It is clear that this was a distinct variant for the UK as I have seen many issues which appear in both versions, with the UK price or the Mercury symbol. This practice continued at least until the middle of 1970, though I am not sure whether there were parallel versions for every issue. So far as I can tell, these UK variants were identical in every other respect to the US version, even to the advertisements. They were printed on the same stock, of a kind not commonly used in the UK, so it seems probable that they were printed in the US along with the primary version. The last one I have seen with the UK price circle is June 1970. Thereafter, the magazine carried the UK price next to the US price and continued to do so until 1993, when it was dropped. Presumably there was no need for it, as the magazine no longer has any general news-stand distribution in the UK and is only available on subscription or through specialist bookshops.

Numbering

The second series was numbered in volumes of twelve, from v1#1 to v5#7, the last volume being incomplete. The numbers are shown only inside, on the contents page.

FSF3 - Australian Edition

Consolidated Press of Sydney, Australia published an Australian edition of F&SF from 1954 to 1958. This edition is fully indexed in SFFWF, but the dates there are only given as a year with no month of publication. The dates I have used here are those quoted by Donald H Tuck. According to an overprint on the first few covers, the magazine was distributed by Shakespeare Head Press of Melbourne. Unlike the original US and British reprint editions, the Australian version was bound by two staples through the centre fold - I believe this is technically called "saddle-stitched". You can see this most clearly in the scan of #13.

Many of the stories in the first few issues of this edition were not from F&SF at all. Later in the run, they were drawn mainly from F&SF, but not all from a single number of the US edition. In only the last few issues was the lead story drawn from the same original issue as the cover. All of the front covers had to be adapted, therefore. Alistair Durie, who provided these scans, has examined the covers closely and believes that they were all repainted. Some of the differences are subtle variations in detail and colour but some are more obvious. Look at the figures in the foreground of number 14, for example. For this reason, I have listed the Australian issues in the artist index as "After Emsh", "After Kirberger", &c, rather than under the original artist. SFFWF credits the original artist in most cases but gives "unknown" in some, apparently those where the original artist's signature has been obliterated. As you can see with #14, this is not a reliable guide.

The correspondence with the original US covers is as follows:

Source of Images

All of the British covers were scanned from copies in my own collection. Please contact me if you are able to provide better images of the few copies that are damaged or heavily marked.

The Australian covers were kindly provided by Alistair Durie from his own collection

Fantasy and Science Fiction is still going strong after more than 600 issues and you can find it at http://www.fsfmag.com. Covers of F&SF are reproduced with the kind permission of Gordon van Gelder, the current publisher.