Five Issues of the Hugo-Winning "Worlds of If" with Fiction from Leigh Brackett, Fritz Leiber, and Larry Niven, 1966-1974

A five-issue group of "If," the Hugo-winning digest, spanning the magazine's arc from Frederik Pohl's celebrated mid-1960s editorship to its final year. "If" won the Hugo Award for Best Professional Magazine three years running, from 1966 to 1968, during Pohl's tenure; these issues trace its course from that peak through Ejler Jakobsson's editorship and into James Baen's 1974 numbers from the magazine's final year. Together they document science fiction's passage out of specialist digest culture into the wider American literary and commercial field, preserving serialized novels, editorials, reader columns, and complete tables of contents that show how "If" presented major genre writers to a growing readership. The group's contains first printings, opening with Gardner Dozois's first published story, "The Empty Man" (September 1966), written when he was seventeen, years before he became the most decorated editor in the field. The August 1967 issue carries the opening installment of James Blish's "Faust Aleph-Null," the first appearance of the text later issued as the Nebula-nominated novel "Black Easter." The August 1974 holds "Angel Fix," the first story ever published under the Raccoona Sheldon pseudonym of Alice B. Sheldon, better known as James Tiptree Jr., together with "Half-Baked Publisher's Delight," billed as Isaac Asimov's first science fiction collaboration. Two serialized novels also begin here in first appearance: Leigh Brackett's "The Ginger Star" and Poul Anderson's Flandry novel "A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows." Beyond these, the run gathers fiction by writers central to postwar and New Wave science fiction, among them Fritz Leiber, Larry Niven, Fred Saberhagen, Christopher Priest, Norman Spinrad, and Pamela Sargent. Worlds of If" Science Fiction. New York: Galaxy Publishing Corporation and UPD Publishing Corporation, 1966-1974. Five digest-format issues.1] September 1966. Vol. 16, No. 9, Issue 106. Edited by Frederik Pohl, with stories by A. Bertram Chandler, Mack Reynolds, C. C. MacApp, James Blish, and Fred Saberhagen; cover by Morrow for Chandler's "Edge of Night." 2] August 1967. Vol. 17, No. 8, Issue 117. Edited by Frederik Pohl, with James Blish's "Faust Aleph-Null," Fred Saberhagen's "The Winged Helmet," Philip José Farmer's "The Felled Star," and Keith Laumer's "Clear as Mud." 3] February 1974. Vol. 22, No. 3, Issue 170. Edited by Ejler Jakobsson, with the first installment of Leigh Brackett's The Ginger Star, Hal Clement's "Mistaken for Granted," and stories by Pamela Sargent, Norman Spinrad, Christopher Priest, and Gordon Eklund. 4] August 1974. Vol. 22, No. 6, Issue 173. Edited by James Baen, with Fritz Leiber's "Midnight by the Morphy Watch," Fred Saberhagen's Berserker's Planet, and contributions by Bob Shaw, Larry Niven, and Jerry Goodz, plus features by Dick Geis and Richard C. Hoagland. 5] October 1974. Vol. 22, No. 7, Issue 174. Edited by James Baen, with Poul Anderson's "A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows," Colin Kapp's "Mephisto and the Ion Explorer," and work by Edward Kimmel, Jan Trenholm, and John C. White, with a letters column. By the late 1960s and 1970s, American science fiction magazines were no longer simple pulp entertainment; they had become proving grounds for writers, editors, fan communities, and paperback publishers as the genre moved toward award culture, university syllabi, film adaptation, and a mass-market readership. These issues capture If at that turning point, Pohl's award-era magazine giving way to Baen's editorial world of serialized fiction, recurring departments, and reader correspondence. Covers and spines show rubbing, creasing, toning, edgewear, and handling soil, with small handwritten prices to the rear covers; interiors toned but legible. Overall good condition.