Among the post-pulp digests, the fantasy-horror-and-sf
magazines, such as THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE
FICTION and FANTASTIC, have been seen as already so eclectic
that, more often than in the "purely" science fiction or even
the fairly eclectic Crime Fiction magazines, no one has
worried too much that work that can only be considered
Speculative Fiction/fantastic fiction by ridiculous
stretching has appeared (Algis Budrys remembers that one of
his stories, for Z-D's abortive TALES OF THE SEA, was also
plopped into FANTASTIC despite no fantastic elements). I
remember pretty well that in the '70s, Edward Ferman had
little problem running (mildly hb) Edward Wellen and Isaac
Asimov "Black Widowers" stories in F&SF that weren't at
all sfnal, likewise Ferman's former assistant ed Ted White,
then moved on to editing FANTASTIC, ran at least one Jack
Dann and a few other stories that were not inherently
fantastic.
Meanwhile, back at Ziff-Davis, Browne hated sf, liked
fantasy, and loved CF. You can see how his ghost job would be
Made to Fit, to get Huggins's name on the cover and because
Browne had indeed written the damned thing (this last from
the perspective of having to rush a substitute story out, a
la the
"Spillane"). I haven't read that one, so don't know why or if
the fantasy element is weak, but will check to see if I have
the relevant issue. TM
-----Original Message----- From:
DJ-Anonyme@webtv.net [mailto:
DJ-Anonyme@webtv.net]
I just finished reading Man in the Dark in Browne's
Incredible Ink, the story Browne wrote as Roy Huggins. As
Browne explains in the Memoirs essay, Huggins had said he
would write a story for Fantastic, but had to back out after
his name was already on the cover, so Browne wrote a story,
but credited it to his friend.
Now I don't know a whole lot about the individual pulp
magazines, pretty much all of my reading in that area has
been in later anthologies, but I'm not quite sure why this
was a "Fantastic" story. When Browne originally approached
Huggins to write it, he asked, "if he could do a detective
story with fantasy elements in it." So I would guess that
when Browne set out to fill the gap he wrote to the same
formula. So where was the "fantasy element" in this
story?
Now please don't take this as a criticism. I prefer my
detective stories without fantasy and this is a pretty good
little mystery story about a man trying to convince everyone
his wife is not dead as everyone else thinks, but I was
wondering if anyone could tell me exactly what
"fantasy" means in this context.
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