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target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_c94a8a6c-74bc-5791-8304-2a09ca8aa755">4. Passingham was also an SF writer in his own right, having contributed stories with such titles as “Atlantis Returns” and “When London Fell” to the UK magazines Modern Wonder and The Passing Show. Walter Gillings, “The Way of the Prophet,” Vision of Tomorrow, May 1970, p. 63.

      1: BIRTH AND NEAR-DEATH (1946-47)

      In his editorial in 3, John Carnell says “We apologize most profoundly to all our readers who have been wondering when this issue of New Worlds would appear. Probably no magazine issue has been beset by so many obstacles since it went into production, almost all of them in the technical departments. In the main, we were caught by the power cuts and have only just managed to recover.” Britain had endured its most severe cold weather of the 20th century, and the postwar electricity supplies were overwhelmed.

      Like American pulp magazines, the Pendulum New Worlds had a fair amount of advertising not exactly tailored to its content. The back covers and inside front and back covers bear ads for baldness cures; a career guide from the British Institute of Engineering Technology; “Attack Your Rheumatism through PURE Natural Stafford Herbs”; British Glandular Products Ltd. (“Glands Control Your Destiny!” For men, “testrones”; for women, “overones”); Charles Atlas, who will use Dynamic Tension to build you a more manly body; the British Institute of Practical Psychology (“Inferiority Complex eradicated for ever”); and (my favorite)—jockstraps.

      This last is headed “Wherever men get together...” and has nice little drawings (much better done than anything illustrating the fiction) of a man getting his petrol tank filled by an attendant, a man reading something off a clipboard to another man wearing an eyeshade and seated at a typewriter, and a man cutting another man’s hair in a barber’s chair. None of these activities ever seemed to me to call for an athletic supporter (though I confess I have never actually cut anyone’s hair—maybe it’s more strenuous than it looks), but the pitch of Fred Hurtley, Ltd., for the Litesome Supporter is quite global: “You can be sure that wherever men get together—there you’ll find ‘Litesome.’ It’s grand to buy something and know you couldn’t have done better. You get that feeling with ‘Litesome’ once you’ve experienced its comfort and protection and the increased stamina and vitality which this essential male underwear gives to every man. Whatever your age or condition, whatever your work or your recreation—‘Litesome’ will help you to feel a different, better man!” There are also interior ads in 2 and 3, some of similar ilk, some for more related items such as Fantasy Review and Outlands.

      From the beginning, New Worlds contained non-fiction and tried to connect with its readership. 1 has an editorial, small print placed filler-style at the end of one of the stories, which is mostly blather:

      The past is fixed and unalterable. Of that there can be no doubt.... But from here on, the future looms ahead as a bewildering Land of If.... The dazzling heights of achievement and the dark depths of failure can all be found in those miriad [sic] possible “tomorrows.” [Etc.]

      Comments are invited, and readers are advised to place an order with their newsdealers for the next issue, due in eight weeks. Interestingly, there is nothing about subscriptions here or anywhere else in the magazine. The word is uttered in the editorial in 2, but no rates are mentioned and there is no subscription information anywhere in 2 or 3, though back issues are for sale.

      Issue 2’s editorial has not much more than 1’s that is concrete: thanks for the letters, keep them coming, we’re going to make things better, tell us what you want (and do you want a letter column?), and something brief about atomic bomb tests and public consciousness of SF. 2 also contains a one-page article by L(eslie) J. Johnson, sometime contributor to Walter H. Gillings’ Tales of Wonder and collaborator with Eric Frank Russell, on how science is catching up with SF (more blather though less vague than Carnell’s), along with Forrest J. Ackerman’s report on the Pacificon science fiction convention, held in 1946 after being delayed by World War II, with an attendance of 125 and “a dynamic hour’s speech entitled ‘Tomorrow on the March’” by guest of honor A. E. van Vogt.

      Also in 2, “The Literary Line-Up” first appears, readers’ story ratings from the first issue, comparable to the US Astounding Science Fiction magazine’s “Analytical Laboratory” (also Astounding’s “In Times to Come,” since it predicts the next issue’s stories), but without the actual numerical averages that gave John W. Campbell’s “AnLab” its air of spurious precision. “The Literary Line-Up” persisted through the Carnell era and even into Michael Moorcock’s editorship after mid-1964, though he retitled it “Story Ratings.” In 3, the submission of ratings is encouraged by offering five guineas to the reader whose ratings anticipate the aggregate ratings or come the closest (one would think there would always be multiple winners any time more than a dozen or so readers responded). Also in 3, “The Literary Line-Up”

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