Introduction

The British edition of Venture was published by Atlas Publishing and Distributing Company, Ltd., as a sister publication initially to the British edition of Fantasy and Science Fiction (FSF2). It ran for 28 monthly issues, from September 1963 to December 1965, and continued for eighteen months after FSF2 had folded.

This version of Venture must be the most deceptively-named of any reprint edition. At no time did its publication overlap with the original US magazine, which ran from 1957 to 1958, then 1969 to 1970. Of 103 stories published in its first twelve months, only 28 were from Venture, while 64 were from Fantasy & Science Fiction. One issue (the last, #28) contained not a single story from the original Venture - it was entirely composed of material from FSF. Of the five pictorial covers, at least four were from FSF, none from Venture. The magazine would have been more appropriately called "Fantasy and Science Fiction, Part II". Whatever the source of the material, there was a clear marketing advantage in having two separate titles.

Only the first five issues of VEN1 carried pictorial covers. The remainder were entirely plain, carrying only the magazine title, the names of the main authors featured and the title of the lead story. Four of the five are definitely from F&SF, as shown below; I have been unable to identify the source of the fifth.

The Mel Hunter cover on #2 has almost certainly been repainted; the quality of the detail is nothing like as good as on the original. I cannot say whether this is the case for any of the others.

Numbering and Dating

VEN1 is numbered consecutively from #1 to #28. Curiously, the magazine carries two dates inside. The earlier date is the date of UK publication and is the one used here. All of the issues I have seen also carry a date for publication in Australasia two months later than the UK date, presumably to allow for the shipping time. On the Australian issues, the only external difference is in this later date and the local price, as you can see at right where the two versions of #14 are compared.

Source of Images

All of these images were scanned from my own collection. Please contact me if you are able to provide any of the missing issues, or better images than some of the heavily-marked copies shown here. Please contact me also if you are able to identify the mystery cover on #4.