Introducing the Analog Sci-Fi Collection
Makes you regret tossing out old magazines
Some folks think that finding treasure poking around at auctions doesn’t happen with the transparency of the internet — wrong! While not for everyone, we stumbled upon pure science fiction gold at a recent online event.
Arriving in four boxes and totaling more than 200 pounds of beautiful covers and great stories were a couple hundred issues of Analog Science Fiction & Fact and Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine (both still in publication from Dell Magazines).
Analog is the longest running science fiction magazine out there and has a trophy case to show for it (50+ Hugo/Nebula awards for stories, 8 time Nebula Best Magazine of the year winner, the list goes on…). The first issue was published by Clayton Magazines in 1930 under the title Astounding. Over the year the magazine traded hands several times and has seen six different editors. Some of the leading science fiction authors got their start authorizing serialized versions of works that were later turned into novels. Perhaps one of the most noteworthy — in the 1960’s, Frank Herbert, father of Dune — considered to be the best selling science fiction novel of all time, introduced the world to spice through two serialized short series appearing in Analog under the titles Dune World and The Prophet of Dune (kudos to those of you that can spot the cover of one of these issues above!).
If you would like a full history, check out the Science Fiction Encyclopedia’s entry here or the wonderful bibliography compiled by Phil Stephensen-Payne of Galactic Central here. While you do that, we will continue to catalog the haul and prepare these for listing on the website. If you have a large collection of similar publications that are gathering dust — let us know we would love to help you clean your house!
