The Year's Best Science Fiction 9

In the introduction to a story called “The Last Day of Summer,” in the first annual SF, I referred to the author, E. C. Tubb, as “almost unknown in this country, but probably Britain’s most popular writer of s-f. ..” The next annual included the first published story of a young writer named J. G. Ballard: “Prima Belladonna.” In the third, Brian W. Aldiss, then already becoming known in England, made his American debut with “Let’s Be Frank.”

All of these stories, and many that appeared in later volumes, were from the British Nova publications. Science Fantasy and New Worlds, both of which were, at that time, as little-known here as the authors. I am happy to say that this is no longer true either of the magazines or of the substantial group of authors (John Brunner, John Rackham, James White, among others) who developed in their pages under the editorial guidance of E. J. Cornell.

In the past year Mr. Cornell, who has been publicist, critic, business manager, and (probably at times) mailboy as well, since the beginning of the publishing venture, went on to a new position at Corgi Books. The magazines were to cease publication, but happily passed into new hands instead. Some of the best and brightest new ideas in science fiction in the last decade have come from this source.

Nova has not, however, been the sole source of good British s-f. Arthur C. Clarke, John Wyndham, A. B. Chandler, John Christopher, to name a few, were writing for the American magazines all along, as were several others whose reputations were primarily “mainstream.”

Whether Gerald Kersh, now residing in New York Stale, can still be called a British writer, I do not know. That he is one of the finest and most consistently entertaining writers of imaginative literature, I am sure.