The story of New Worlds in North America has many twists and turns, as befits a magazine with such a complex history. If you want a full account of New World's efforts to enter the US market, you should read Ted Carnell's editorial in NW 99, but I will give you a recap here.
Carnell
said that NW had a Canadian edition in 1956-7, but that dock strikes and transportation
delays had brought an end to this. Either the delays were extraordinary, or
Carnell's memory was at fault, because I have seen a NW with a cover price in
cents as early as #32, which was published in the UK in March 1955. Can anyone
provide further images or give more exact details of this early Canadian edition?
Arrangements were then made, he said, to distribute all three Nova magazines in North America from October 1959. See SFA and SFY for more details and examples from 1960 and 1961. New Worlds was pulled back from this arrangement - as the best-selling and best-known of the three, it was thought that it deserved a "proper" US edition, printed in the US and with national distribution. Arrangements were made with a New York company called Great American Publications, Inc.
This was from the start an unhappy arrangement. Before the first issue of the US New Worlds was even off the news stands, Great American pulled out of the deal. Four more issues were in production and they appeared, but the magazine folded after number five and Great American went bust. "We leave our readers to draw their own conclusions" said Carnell, in the slightly starchy, disapproving tone of a Brit who had been taken for a ride by those rude, brash Yanks. Always an evangelist for British science fiction, he seemed particularly hurt that no credit at all had been given to the British origins of the magazine and it appeared in all respects like an original US publication.
The
plans to distribute NW independently in the states were then taken out and dusted
off, and NW appeared in America in similar form to the other two magazines,
with only the price and date changed on the covers. I believe that it was still
printed in Great Britain, though. It ran from #99 at least until #124, the last
issue I have seen in this form, and the date was always one month adrift of
the UK publication. Here is one example, number 102 of February 1963 (UK January
1963). Can anyone provide more?
The Great American series, then, was the first genuine US edition of New Worlds. It ran from March to July 1960. The first cover was by Valigursky and was borrowed from Fantastic Universe, April 1955. The remainder were all by Brian Lewis and were reprinted from earlier editions of New Worlds - in order, #s 86, 87, 88 and 83. The US edition ahd a different title logo and cover layout and the artwork had in all case to be cropped to fit. If you want to see them fully indexed, you will have to consult SFFWF but, even on a cursory glance, it is clear that there is no exact correspondence from the US edition to individual issues of NW, the departments are mostly different and, to confuse matters further, some of the stories have been renamed.
After this debacle, which must have been commercially painful for Nova, they reverted to distributing the UK magazine as described above. How long this continued and whether the Roberts and Vinter paperback-sized issues achieved any US distribution, I cannot say and I would appreciate any further information on this. The large format, Arts Council issues from 178 to 193 carried a 75c or $1 price tag along with the UK price although, considering the problems NW had with UK distributors at that time, it is hard to know what success they achieved in the US.
The other genuine US edition - in the sense of being produced and distributed by a US publisher - was the New Worlds Quarterly series, published first by Berkley and then by Avon. There were six of these. corresponding to UK numbers 1 to 4, 6 and 7. The covers were quite different. I have been able to reproduce five of them here, courtesy of Cuyler Brooks and Alan Husby, and would welcome any others.
What happened after that? Were there US editions of the Gollancz trade paperbacks? All information gratefully received.