"Science Fiction Monthly" is unique amongst SF magazines, to the best of my knowledge anyway, in its emphasis on SF art almost on an equal basis with the fiction. A brief extract from the introductory editorial in v1#1 reinforces this:
"[in Science Fiction Monthly] we have attempted a magazine that emphasises visual interpretation of science fiction….. we will present large reproductions of top artwork by well known sf artists".
In that issue, there was the first of a series of interviews with and profiles of leading artists, starting with Bruce Pennington. The format of the magazine was perfectly adapted to this, being the size roughly of a tabloid newspaper, roughly 28 by 40 cm, or 11 by 16 in. It was published by New English Library, at that time part of the Times Mirror newspaper group, who had the printing technology and presses to produce in this format. The magazine was loose folded without staples, presumably so that you could remove the artwork and display it on your wall. Colour was used extensively inside the magazine as well as outside.
The inside covers were usually a single, giant illustration across the full spread, very striking to see and I would love to show them here, but I don't have the patience to scan something four times the size of my scanner and I have in any case steered away from interior illustrations to concentrate on covers. In vol 2#1-8, these inside spreads carried a cartoon strip by Malcolm Poynter. The back covers generally carried advertising, though a couple had separate illustrations on the back and those are shown here. A few of them had a half-size reproduction of the front cover artwork, the other half of the page being taken up by advertising, suggesting that the magazine was distributed folded in half like a tabloid. For this reason and because of the flimsy, light-weight paper stock that was used, the magazines do not survive well. Many of my own issues have split down the centre near this second fold.
The magazine carried a fair amount of non-fiction content as well as fiction and artwork, and one series is particularly worth noting. v1#3 to v1#6 carried "Fifty Years of Science Fiction Magazines", by Mike Ashley, and this was later expanded and republished in both hard-back and paper-back form as "The History of the Science Fiction Magazine".
SFMB ran 28 issues from January 1974 to April 1976, v3#4. According to SFFWF, it was replaced when sales fell off "by S.F. Digest, a more conventional SF magazine". It wasn't that conventional - it was half the size of SFMB, slightly smaller than a bedsheet pulp, but saddle-stapled and printed like SFMB on very flimsy newsprint. There were still plenty of illustrations inside, including some in colour, and folded and stapled into the centre was a 54cm x 40cm (21.5in x 16in) landscape version of the front cover - the pull-out poster advertised on the cover, but not very convenient, as you would have to unstaple the magazine to remove it or even to unfold it without damage.
The magazine started with an editorial by John Brunner and stories from, among others, Robert Silverberg and Brian Aldiss, as well as some quite interesting and novel non-fiction items. Promising enough, one might have thought - but, though it was advertised as a quarterly, it only lasted a single issue. It is said that NEL had decided to concentrate on books and to abandon the magazine market.
I am indebted to Yutaka Morita who provided all of the SFMB
scans from his own collection. Particular thanks for his patience in scanning
these over-size magazines in two sections and assembling them into a single,
seamless image.