This page is intended to give a little more background on the site, the rationale behind it, and my plans for the future, for those who might be curious about such things. Currently it's divided into five sections:
The idea behind the magazine database started many years ago when I started writing bibliographies for sf authors (such as James Blish and Clifford Simak) who had published extensively outside the genre and realised that, while the world of sf/fantasy/horror magazines was fairly well documented, things were very different in the outside world. Not only were there typically no indexes for other genres (such as westerns or sports magazines), but nobody even seemed to know quite which issues of which magazines existed.
Recent bibliographic efforts by people such as Mike Ashley, Bill Contento, Larry Estep, Steve Miller & Leonard Robbins suggested that it might, one day, be possible to index all these magazines, but I was greatly frustrated at the amount of overlap between the different indexes and the fact that there was still no clear definition of exactly what had not been indexed. This latter has been partially addressed by the sterling efforts of Doug Ellis, John Locke and John Gunnison in The Adventure House Guide to the Pulps but their volume, while admirable, only covers a small fraction of the magazines published.
My ongoing goal is for this site to be a definitive reference to exactly what magazines exist, what issues were published and, by extension, where they are indexed. Because this area is so ill-defined and full of rumour, only a fluid format such as a web site provides scope to update the status of entries as further information comes in. At the same time it, hopefully, provides a central location where fans can easily pass on information they have to be recorded for posterity, without having to write a formal article to be published in one of the many (fine) magazines around or to risk it being buried in the archives of a discussion group such as FictionMags or PulpMags.
There is obvious room to expand the scope of magazines covered almost indefinitely, and this will no doubt happen over time - for example, there are any number of fanzines in the various genres, many of which contain relevant material, only a handful of which are covered. The guiding principle throughout will be that something will only be added if its addition is felt to add value to the content of the site - but if you have an index to the fiction in all issues of Smith's Magazine (or anything else) please let me know and I'd be happy to publicise it.
As you will see when browsing through the magazine lists, there are many worthy magazines that have never been indexed, and many others which have been indexed but for which one or more issues are missing. No matter how modest your collection, please take a moment to scan the separate list of major magazines with some or all issues unindexed and see if you have some of the missing issues. If so, please send an e-mail so that I know, at least, where the issues are held.
One of the issues I had to address when compiling the magazine checklists was that of how to describe the size of the magazines. At one extreme, I could have included the physical dimensions in inches or centimetres but, while this had a certain attraction from a purist standpoint, I soon realised that it actually conveyed little in the way of useful information to the average reader. Conversely, it did seem desirable to distinguish between, say, magazines that were published as mass-market paperbacks and those published as pulps. When the website was first created I adopted a list of 32 sizes that had been proposed on the FictionMags mailing list but, over time, this has proved to be both too complex (in having too many terms) and too simplistic (in being rather too prescriptive in the definition of those terms).
As a result of further discussions, the recommended list of terms is now as follows:
Author bibliographies are still my real passion, and all else follows from there. However, I am uncomfortably aware of two facts:
As such, I'm desperately keen to encourage as many people as possible to indulge in this exciting hobby (or perverse obsession if you prefer) so please if you have a bibliography you'd like to publish, or a trunkload of information on your favourite author that you'd like to preserve for posterity, or would just like to give a hand in the various projects.
To help avoid duplication I intend to extend the list in due course to cover extensive author bibliographies that have been published in magazines and also to mention projects that are "in progress" - in each case, obviously, I'd welcome any information anyone can give me.
This site was originally constructed using Microsoft FrontPage, using a custom theme purchased from ThemePak (for the princely sum of $5). In the time since I have fine-tuned the HTML somewhat by hand to avoid some of the format limitations (and size overheads) of vanilla FrontPage and to remove any Microsoft-specific extensions.
Because of the large amount of information that needs to be displayed (particularly on the magazine pages) I have designed the pages specifically for a screen resolution of 1024x768 pixels, and suspect it will not display very well on a lower-resolution screen. If this causes you hassles, please let me know ASAP, but I am assuming that most/all modern PC's support screens of this resolution. Conversely, I have tried to limit the amount of unnecessary "flash overhead" on the site to minimise access times.
At the moment the site uses vanilla HTML, but I'm continually toying with techniques for improving the layout of some of the pages and from time to time this involves using constructs that are not supported by all browsers (such as <nobr>) and would be interested to hear from anyone for whom this might cause problems - I'm only doing it for cosmetic reasons and don't want to do so if it will have a negative effect on anyone. One day I might drag the whole site into the 21st century by using structured CSS and such-like but it won't happen any time soon.
For those of you who (like me) disable scripting on web pages, feel free to ignore the scripting on these pages. The only purpose of the scripting is to enable the pretty "sliding book" graphics in the header and can safely be forgotten if you don't want to run the risk.
If anybody is interested in seeing earlier versions of the website, it was archived for a couple of years by the British Library as part of the UK Web Archive. This seems now to have been superseded by annual backups of the whole .uk domain, which excludes this website, but so it goes.
For help with the site itself, I would like to acknowledge the assistance of:
I would also like to thank all of those who have supplied me with cover scans (in some cases hundreds of them):
Erin Ash Richard Fidczuk Denny Lien Dave Reeder Mike Ashley Bob Gaines David Lindman Roger Robinson Ruben Azcona Kevin Garrett John Locke Fred Salter Craig Barnett Gary Gentile Steven Lomazov Ben Samuels Graham Bates Terry Gibbons Don Longmuir David Saunders John Benson Geoff Goodman John Loyd Judith Schwarz Scathe meic Beorh Guy Gordon Juergen Lull Joan Shields Dennis Billows Simon Gosden Joel Lyczak Bob Shook Michael Bloom Arthur Gullotti Nick Mamatas John Squires Dave Borski Ted Haigh Louis Mandakis Ray Steptoe John Boston Richard Hall James C. Mattson Cary Sternick Christopher B. Boyko Geoff Harrison Paul McAlduff Dan Stevenson Ned Brooks Jess Harrison Jan McGregor Tim Stroup Brian Earl Brown Will Hart Joe McLaughlin Bill Thom J.C. Byers Heather Hernandez
Chris McMillen TJ Ron Casey Monte Herridge Marylouise Meda Bill Taylor Camille Cazedessus Miro Hetzel Steve Miller Barry Traylor Ben Chapman Theo Hristakos George Morgan Ufikus (Evzen Jindra) Mike Christie Maria Huybens Matt Moring Inam Ulhaq Jim Clements Bob Ishmael Stephen Myall Gary Underwood Beau Collier Roland J. Robert Myre Detlef Urbschat Ian Covell Bob Jackson Dorman Nelson Riccardo Valla Ron Cook Kent Johnson Rias Nuninga Jeff Vorzimmer Tom Daniels Tom Johnson David Overett Gary Wahski David Datta Herschel Kanter Susanne Paradis Morgan Wallace Steve Davidson Wayne Keil Chris Parente Mike Ward Bob Deis Robert Kent Gregg Parmentier Chris Warren David Drake Ron Kihara Marlene Paterson Chad Whicker Alistair Durie Matthew King Scott Pell Glyn Williams Charles D. Eckhaus John Knott Curt Phillips Paul Flo Williams John Eggeling Joe Koomen Richard Polt Peter Williams Peter Enfantino David Kopaska-Merkel Laurie Powers Matt Willis Grant Erickson William Lampkin Rob Preston Brian Woodard Larry Estep Larry Latham Rick Rann Chris Woodman Ed Farrell Bill Lawrence Douglas Raymond Chris Yates Mike Feldman Doug Lee James Reasoner Terry Zobeck Colin Fiat Xavier Legrand-Ferronnière Jared Prophet the estate of the late Carl Robinson Kim Hull and the team at the Merril Collection in Toronto Public Library Brian Conant, Lynne Thomas and the team at Northern Illinois University