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| Cover art by Morris Scott Dollens for Gamma 2 (1963) |
A guide to the short-lived fiction magazine based in Hollywood which published many of the science fiction film and television writers of the day.
Gamma
was a digest-sized fiction magazine
which appeared on newsstands in the spring of 1963, around the time the fourth
season of The Twilight Zone was
coming to a close. Reluctant to label itself science fiction, the magazine was instead
subtitled “New Frontiers in Fiction” and featured an eclectic and sometimes
experimental (poetry, drama, etc.) assortment of science fiction, fantasy, and
horror fiction, along with interviews and original art. It lasted two years,
with five issues irregularly appearing between 1963 and September, 1965. A
sixth issue was advertised and anticipated but never appeared. An irregular
publishing schedule and distribution problems plagued the magazine from the
beginning and ultimately caused its demise as a dedicated readership was difficult
to cultivate under those conditions.
Gamma was
published by Star Press, Inc., a venture out of North Hollywood created by Jack
Matcha (1919-2003), a journalist and playwright turned novelist who assumed the
roles of Publisher and Executive Editor on Gamma
as well as the short-lived crime fiction magazine Chase published by Health Knowledge, Inc. As a novelist Matcha wrote a hardboiled paperback for
Fawcett Gold Medal (Prowler in the Night,
1959), several Brady Bunch
mysteries for the Tiger Beat (from the teen magazine) imprint of New American
Library, and novels of erotic pulp sleaze, the latter a service he also
provided under the pseudonyms John Barclay and John (or James) Tanner. The Star
Press team also included Publisher/Editor Charles E. Fritch and Managing Editor
William F. Nolan, who departed his position after three issues.
Gamma can be
counted among the many genre fiction magazines which folded as financial
problems or a crowded newsstand brushed them away after a few issues. What
separated Gamma, however, were the
contributors to the magazine. Modeling itself on the high literary standards set
by Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and,
especially, The Magazine of Fantasy and
Science Fiction, Gamma served as a showcase for the Southern California
Group of writers and their associates, many of whom were also writing for film
and television at the time. The Southern California Group (so-named by The Los Angeles Times literary critic
Robert Kirsch) was a collective of close friends who formed creatively under
the mentorship of Ray Bradbury (and later Charles Beaumont) and were those writers
Rod Serling gathered around him to bring The
Twilight Zone to life on television.
Nearly every major contributing
writer to The Twilight Zone can be
found in the pages of Gamma. Rod
Serling, Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, Ray Bradbury, George Clayton
Johnson, and John Tomerlin all appear in the first issue and most would appear
again later. Other names, such as Robert Bloch, Ray Russell, Fritz Leiber,
Robert Sheckley, Dennis Etchison, Patricia Highsmith, and Forrest J. Ackerman,
will certainly ring familiar. Gamma also
distinguished itself by including work from writers not known for speculative
fiction, such as William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, and Bernard Malamud.
Gamma crowded
a lot of material into its five issues, including dense but concise contributor
biographies and insightful interviews. For a brief time in the early 1960s the
magazine was the perfect vehicle of expression for a group of writers who would
exert a wide-ranging influence upon American popular culture.
Below is a cover gallery, contents list,
and notes for the five issues of Gamma. A
gallery of the magazine’s interior art follows.
Gamma 1 (vol. 1, no.
1, 1963)
Cover art: Morris Scott Dollens
Editor & Publisher: Charles E.
Fritch
Executive Editor: Jack Matcha
Managing Editor: William F. Nolan
Contents:
-“About
Our Cover Artist” – Biographical
essay on Morris Scott Dollens (1920-1994) who was also a successful commercial
photographer with many of Ray Bradbury’s book jacket author photos to his
credit.
-“Gamma” – Mission statement editorial.
-“Mourning
Song” by Charles Beaumont. Beaumont
(1929-1967) was struggling with the ill-effects of early-onset Alzheimer’s at
this time and “Mourning Song” was one of the last pieces of fiction he would
write. It is also one of his finest, an ironic and meditative dark fantasy
about fate and consequence. Judith Merril included the story in The 9th Annual of the Year’s Best
SF (1964) and it was collected in the career retrospective Charles Beaumont: Selected Stories, ed.
Roger Anker (1988).
-“Crimes
Against Passion” by Fritz Leiber. A short
play.
-“Time
in Thy Flight” by Ray Bradbury. This
story originally appeared in the June-July, 1953 issue of Fantastic Universe. It was collected in the second of Bradbury’s
two collections for younger readers, S Is
for Space (1966).
-“The
Vengeance of Nitocris” by Thomas Lanier “Tennessee” Williams. The first reprinting of an early story from the American
playwright which originally appeared in the August, 1928 issue of Weird Tales.
-“Itself!”
by A.E. van Vogt. This is reprinted
from the January, 1963 issue of Scientific
American. It was collected in The
Far-Out Worlds of A.E. van Vogt (1968).
-“Venus
Plus Three” by Charles E. Fritch.
Fritch (1927-2012) was a prolific novelist and short story writer equally adept
at science fiction and suspense. He was a core member of the Southern
California Group and memorialized the group in perhaps his best-known story,
“Big, Wide, Wonderful World,” from the March, 1958 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
“Venus Plus Three” was collected in Horses’
Asteroid (1970).
-“A
Message from Morj” by Ray Russell. Russell
(1924-1999) was the fiction editor for Playboy
until he moved from Chicago to Los Angeles in the early 1960s to begin a
screenwriting career working with directors Roger Corman and William Castle. Russell
collaborated with Charles Beaumont on the script for Corman’s The Premature Burial (1962).
-“To
Serve the Ship” by William F. Nolan. This
story was reprinted a few months later in Nolan’s Impact-20 (1963). Some time back we interviewed Nolan about his
long career. You can read that here.
-The
Gamma Interview: Rod Serling. This interview is relatively brief but insightful and
much of the discussion centers on The
Twilight Zone.
-“The
Freeway” by George Clayton Johnson. Johnson
(1929-2015) remains well known for his television scripts, including such The Twilight Zone episodes as “A Game of
Pool,” “Nothing in the Dark,” and “Kick the Can.” “The Freeway” was reprinted
by William F. Nolan in the anthology Man
Against Tomorrow (1965) and collected in the career retrospective All of Us Are Dying and Other Stories (1999).
-“One
Night Stand” by Herbert A. Simmons. A
science fiction story from the reclusive African American writer. William F.
Nolan reprinted the story in the 1970 anthology A Sea of Space.
-Advertisement
for the sale of copies of The Ray
Bradbury Review. The Ray Bradbury Review, a 1952 booklet featuring essays from Anthony Boucher,
Chad Oliver, and Henry Kuttner, among others, was the first of William F. Nolan’s
biographical and bibliographical works on Bradbury, which also includes The Ray Bradbury Companion (1975) and Nolan on Bradbury (2013).
-“As
Holy and Enchanted” by Kris Neville. Neville
(1925-1980) was a highly-regarded specialist in the SF short story who had
largely abandoned SF writing by the time this tale appeared, reprinted from the
April, 1953 issue of Avon Science Fiction
and Fantasy Reader.
-“Shade
of Day” by John Tomerlin. Tomerlin
(1930-2014) was a novelist, short story writer, and scriptwriter for such
television programs as Thriller and Wanted: Dead or Alive. He collaborated
with Charles Beaumont on the 1957 suspense novel Run from the Hunter, published under the joint pseudonym Keith
Grantland, and adapted Beaumont’s 1952 story “The Beautiful People” for the
fifth season Twilight Zone episode,
“Number 12 Looks Just Like You.”
-“The
Girl Who Wasn’t There” by Forrest J. Ackerman. This story was originally written by Tigrina (1921-2015)
(Edythe Eyde), a secretary at RKO Studios and fanzine editor now remembered for
creating the first lesbian periodical in the U.S., Vice Versa in 1947. Ackerman supplied the ending to the story for
its first appearance in the fanzine Inside.
For its appearance in Gamma, the
story was rewritten by Charles E. Fritch and William F. Nolan. It was
reprinted, with credit to all four authors, in Science Fiction Worlds of Forrest J. Ackerman & Friends (1969).
-“Death
in Mexico” by Ray Bradbury. A second
appearance by Bradbury in the issue with this poem, collected in When Elephants Last in the Dooryard Bloomed (1973).
-An
Editorial – More or Less. Brief essay
explaining the type of fiction a reader can expect from the magazine and the
reason the magazine is reluctant to label itself a science fiction magazine.
-“Crescendo”
by Richard Matheson. Matheson
(1926-2013), Grandmaster of fantasy and writer of such Twilight Zone classics as “Nick of Time,” “The Invaders,” and
“Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” appears with a lesser-known tale. It was collected
in Shock III (1966).
Gamma 2 (vol. 1, no.
2, 1963)
Cover art: Morris Scott Dollens
Interior art: Burt Shonberg, Luan
Meatheringham
Editor/Publisher: Charles E. Fritch
Executive Editor/Publisher: Jack Matcha
Managing Editor: William F. Nolan
Contents:
-Not
Really an Editorial, But. Essay
detailing the response to the first issue of the magazine. Lists a number of
writers expected to appear in a future issue, most of whom do not.
-“The
Granny Woman” by Dorothy B. Hughes. A
tale of witchcraft from the noted mystery writer Hughes (1904-1993). The tale
was reprinted in the 1970 MWA anthology Crime
Without Murder.
-“The
Old College Try” by Robert Bloch. Forever
to be known as the author of Psycho (1950),
Bloch (1917-1994) was the prolific author of scores of horror, fantasy, science
fiction, and mystery novels and stories, many of which were adapted for film
and television, often by Bloch himself. Bloch wrote the novelization of Twilight Zone: The Movie (Warner Books,
1983), which we reviewed. “The Old College Try” was reprinted by William F. Nolan in A Sea of Space (1970) and collected in Fear Today, Gone Tomorrow (1971).
-“Michael”
by Francesca Marques. A debut story.
-“Deus
Ex Machina” by Richard Matheson. Collected
in Shock Waves (1970).
-“The
Kid Learns” by William Faulkner. An
early story from the American Nobel Laureate. The story originally appeared in
the New Orleans Time Picayune during
Faulkner’s time living in the city.
-“King’s
Jester” by Jack Matcha. A story from
the Publisher and Executive Editor.
-“Here’s
Sport Indeed!” by William Shakespeare, assisted by Ib Melchior. Melchior (1917-2015) was the Danish-American son of
the opera singer Lauritz Melchior. Ib is best-remembered for his scriptwriting
work on such films as Robinson Crusoe on
Mars (1964) and Planet of the
Vampires (1965). Here he selects passages from Shakespeare’s works which
reflect a tour through our solar system.
-Portfolio
by Burt Shonberg. Shonberg
(1933-1977) was an American artist and fixture on the Southern California art
scene. He co-owned the controversial Laguna Beach coffee house Café
Frankenstein with George Clayton Johnson and provided paintings for Roger
Corman’s films House of Usher (1960)
and The Premature Burial (1962).
Shonberg also provided the cover for George Clayton Johnson’s career
retrospective, All of Us Are Dying and
Other Stories (1999).
-Everybody
Out There Likes Us . . . Quoted
praise for Gamma from an impressive
roster of talents, including Rod Serling, Robert Kirsch, Ray Bradbury, Anthony
Boucher, and August Derleth.
-“The
Undiscovered Country” by William F. Temple. A reprint of the British SF author’s 1958 story, first published in Nebula Science Fiction, number 35. William
F. Nolan reprinted the tale in A Sea of
Space (1970) and it was collected in A
Niche in Time and Other Stories (2011).
-Chase.
An advertisement for the crime fiction magazine. Chase lasted
only three issues, with the first issue dated January, 1964 and ending with
issues in May and September of that year.
-The
Gamma Interview: Robert Sheckley. An
interview with the prolific SF writer. Sheckley (1928-2005) frequently
contributed to the early issues of Rod
Serling’s The Twilight Zone Magazine, including a brief tenure as books
reviewer.
-Attention
SF Fans! Advertisement for William F.
Nolan’s first collection of SF stories, Impact-20,
published by Paperback Library in November, 1963. There is brief quoted
praise from Rod Serling, Alfred Hitchcock, and Anthony Boucher. The book
included an introduction from Ray Bradbury.
-“Castaway”
by Charles E. Fritch. Reprinted by
William F. Nolan in the 1969 anthology A
Wilderness of Stars.
-“Something
in the Earth” by Charles Beaumont. Reprinted
in The Bradbury Chronicles: Stories in
Honor of Ray Bradbury, ed. William F. Nolan and Martin H. Greenberg (1991).
I reviewed that volume here.
-Soon
to Be Released – An advertisement for
the imminent release of “a suspenseful paperback anthology,” A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the
Morgue, which I could not verify ever appeared, at least under that title. Contributing
authors included Ray Bradbury, Charles Beaumont, Richard Matheson, Robert
Bloch, and Anthony Boucher.
-“I’m
Only Lonesome When I’m Lonely” by William F. Nolan. Reprinted in the German horror anthology Horror Expert (1972).
-A
Note on Ernest Hemingway. A short
essay explaining that the editors originally planned to reprint a fantasy story
from the American Nobel Laureate, “The Good Lion,” first published in the
March, 1951 issue of Holiday magazine,
before being denied by the late author’s publishers, Scribner’s. The essay also
directs the reader to another Hemingway work, Today Is Friday.
-“Sombra
Y Sol” by Ray Bradbury. Collected, as
“El Dia de Muerte,” in The Machineries of
Joy (1964).
Gamma 3 (vol. 2, no.
1, 1964)
Cover art: Morris Scott Dollens
Interior art: Luan Meatheringham
Editor/Publisher: Charles E. Fritch
Executive Editor/Publisher: Jack Matcha
Managing Editor: William F. Nolan
Contents:
-“The
Girl of Paradise Planet” by Robert Turner. The brief biography which accompanies this tale states that Turner
(1915-1980) sold over one thousand stories to magazines. Turner also wrote for
television, notably two episode of Alfred
Hitchcock Presents. His collection Shroud
9 (1970) collects 18 of his short crime and horror stories.
-“The
Feather Bed” by Shelly Lowenkopf. Lowenkof
(b. 1931) is a retired UCLA writing professor and prolific novelist who at this time was also the Associate Editor of the short-lived crime fiction magazine Chase.
-About
Our Interior Artist. A biographical
essay on Luan Meatheringham.
-“Angel
Levine” by Bernard Malamud. Reprinted
from the author’s 1959 debut collection The
Magic Barrel, winner of a National Book Award.
-“The
(In)visible Man” by Edward W. Ludwig. Collected,
as “The Visible Invisible Man,” in The 7
Shapes of Solomon Bean (1983).
-“Inside
Story” by Miriam Allen deFord. deFord’s
(1888-1975) 1961 story, “A Death in the Family,” was adapted by Rod Serling for
the second season of Night Gallery, directed
by Jeannot Szwarc, starring E.G. Marshall and Desi Arnaz, Jr., broadcast
September 22, 1971.
-“The
Birth” by George Clayton Johnson. Collected
in All of Us Are Dying and Other Stories (1999).
-The
Gamma Interview: Soviet Science Fiction. An interview with a Russian magazine editor going under the pseudonym
Ivan Kirov. The interview was conducted at the Frankfort Book Fair.
-“Buttons”
by Raymond E. Banks. The prolific
Banks (1918-1996) was a fixture of the science fiction magazines in the 1950s
and 1960s, writing under a number of pseudonyms.
-“Society
for the Prevention” by Ron Goulart. Goulart
(b. 1933) is a prolific and versatile writer best known for his humorous short
stories and his works on the history of American comic books. Goulart was a
member of the Southern California Group who later contributed often to the
early issues of Rod Serling’s The
Twilight Zone Magazine. “Society for the Prevention” was reprinted by
William F. Nolan in the 1970 anthology A
Sea of Space.
-“The
Snail Watcher” by Patricia Highsmith. The
first appearance of one of Highsmith’s (1921-1995) most oft-reprinted tales, a
modern horror classic. The American expatriate writer was best known for her
novels which have been made into films, including Strangers on a Train (1950) and The
Talented Mr. Ripley (1955).
Gamma 4 (vol. 2, no.
2, February, 1965)
Cover art: John Healey
Editor/Publishers: Charles E. Fritch,
Jack Matcha
Special Outer Space Issue
-Changes
this issue. Gone is Managing Editor William F. Nolan and cover artist Morris
Scott Dollens.
Contents:
-Remember
. . . Brief editorial describing the
Special Outer Space Issue, a nostalgic issue in tribute to the older style of
pulp science fiction when “you didn’t need a slide-rule and a couple years of
calculus to figure out what was going on.”
-“The
Clutches of Ruin” by H.B. Fyfe. Horace
Browne Fyfe, Jr. (1918-1997) was a prolific writer of short stories during the
Golden Age of science fiction, his career as an SF author fading out with the
1960s.
-“The
Towers of Kagasi” by William P. Miller. A
well-known mystery writer of the time contributing a science fiction story.
-“Food”
by Ray Nelson. An early story from
Nelson (b. 1931) who’s had a dual career as an SF author and cartoonist.
-“Hans
Off in Free Pfall to the Moon” by E. A. Poe. An abridged version of Edgar Allan Poe’s Hans Phall – a Tale, first published in the June, 1835 issue of Southern Literary Messenger.
-The
Gamma Interview: Forrest J. Ackerman
-“Open
Season” by John Tanner. Tanner was a
pseudonym of Publisher and Editor Jack Matcha.
-“The
Woman Astronaut” by Robert Katz. A
short play.
-“Happily
Ever After” by William F. Nolan. Reprinted
in the 1969 anthology A Wilderness of
Stars and collected in Alien Horizons
(1974).
-“Don’t
Touch Me I’m Sensitive” by James Stamers. Stamers was a pseudonym for a California based CPA and Doctor of Law.
He published a number of SF stories in the periodicals of the time under the
name.
-“The
Hand of Mr. Insidious” by Ron Goulart. A
satirical story of the mysteries of the orient.
Gamma 5 (vol. 2, no.
5, September, 1965)
Cover art: John Healey
Interior art: William F. Nolan, Luan
Meatheringham, Bernard Zuber, Burt Shonberg
Editor/Publishers: Charles E. Fritch,
Jack Matcha
Note
the irregularity in numbering.
Contents:
-Across
the Editor’s Desk – Editorial on the
wildly different types of mail being sent into the Gamma offices. The editorial also includes a brief biographical
sketch from the cover artist John Healey.
-“Nesbit”
by Ron Goulart. A short novel. John
Healey’s cover illustration depicts a scene from the narrative.
-“Policy
Conference” by Sylvia Dees and Ted White. Dees is described as a professional photographer, an award-winning
artist, and an amateur musician. Ted White (b. 1938) made his mark primarily as
a longtime editor in the SF field, lifting the literary quality of such
magazines as Fantastic, Amazing Stories, and
Heavy Metal. White was also a notable
SF fan in his early years and enjoyed a long career as a fiction writer.
-“Auto
Suggestion” by Charles Beaumont. This
story about a car which begins to communicate with its owner is one of Beaumont’s
fugitive pieces, not appearing in any collection under the author’s name. It
was reprinted by editor William Pattrick (Peter Haining) in Mysterious Motoring Stories (1987),
reprinted in paperback the same year as Duel:
Horror Stories of the Road.
-“Welcome
to Procyon IV” by Chester H. Carlfi. A
pseudonymous work by Charles E. Fritch. The story was collected in Crazy Mixed-Up Planet (1969).
-“Interest”
by Richard Matheson. A lesser-known
story from Matheson. It was reprinted in Matheson’s Collected Stories, issued by Dream Press in 1989.
-“Lullaby
and Goodnight” by George Clayton Johnson. Collected in All of Us Are Dying
and Other Stories (1999).
-“A
Careful Man Dies” by Ray Bradbury. Reprinted
from the November, 1946 issue of New
Detective. It was collected in A
Memory of Murder (1984).
-“The
Late Mr. Adams” by Steve Allen. Allen
(1921-2000) was a popular and influential television personality and comedian
who co-created The Tonight Show. “The
Late Mr. Adams” is reprinted from Allen’s 1955 collection of short stories Fourteen for Tonight.
-“Wet
Season” by Dennis Etchison. Etchison
(1943-2019), who recently passed away on May 29, is now regarded as one of the
finest short stories writers of horror and dark fantasy in the latter half of
the twentieth century. At the time of this story Etchison was still in college,
having sold a handful of stories to science fiction magazines. Etchison was a
student in a UCLA writing course taught by Charles Beaumont and recounts the
experience in his introduction to Beaumont’s “Free Dirt” in Charles Beaumont: Selected Stories (1988).
“Wet Season” was collected in Red Dreams (1984).
Interior
Art:
Gamma 2:
Burt
Shonberg portfolio:
Illustration
by Luan Meatheringham:
Gamma 3:
Illustrations
by Luan Meatheringham:
Gamma 5:
Illustration
by Luan Meatheringham:
Illustration
by Bernard Zuber:
Illustration
by Burt Shonberg:
Cover
gallery for Chase, the short-lived crime fiction magazine which shared many of the contributors to Gamma:
Grateful acknowledgement for information
contained in the text and cover images:
Transformations:
The Story of the Science-fiction Magazines from 1950-1970 by Mike Ashley (Liverpool University Press, 2005)
Galactic Central (philsp.com)
The Internet Speculative Fiction
Database (isfdb.org)
The Internet Archive (archive.org)
