Unknown (also known as Unknown Worlds) was an American pulp fantasy fiction magazine, published from 1939 to 1943 by Street & Smith, and edited by John W. Campbell. Unknown was a companion to Street & Smith's science fiction pulp, Astounding Science Fiction, which was also edited by Campbell at the time; many authors and illustrators contributed to both magazines. The leading fantasy magazine in the 1930s was Weird Tales, which focused on shock and horror. Campbell wanted to publish a fantasy magazine with more finesse and humor than Weird Tales, and put his plans into action when Eric Frank Russell sent him the manuscript of his novel Sinister Barrier, about aliens who own the human race. Unknowns first issue appeared in March 1939; in addition to Sinister Barrier, it included H. L. Gold's "Trouble With Water", a humorous fantasy about a New Yorker who meets a water gnome. Gold's story was the first of many in Unknown to combine commonplace reality with the fantastic.
Campbell required his authors to avoid simplistic horror fiction and insisted that the fantasy elements in a story be developed logically: for example, Jack Williamson's Darker Than You Think describes a world in which there is a scientific explanation for the existence of werewolves. Similarly, L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt's Harold Shea series, about a modern American who finds himself in the worlds of various mythologies, depicts a system of magic based on mathematical logic. Other notable works included several novels by L. Ron Hubbard and short stories such as Manly Wade Wellman's "When It Was Moonlight" and Fritz Leiber's "Two Sought Adventure", the first in his Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series.
Unknown was forced to a bimonthly schedule in 1941 by poor sales and canceled in 1943 when wartime paper shortages became so acute that Campbell had to choose between turning Astounding into a bimonthly or ending Unknown. The magazine is generally regarded as the finest fantasy fiction magazine ever published, despite the fact that it was not commercially successful, and in the opinion of science fiction historian Mike Ashley it was responsible for the creation of the modern fantasy publishing genre.
Background and publication history + Issues of Unknown, showing volume/issue number. Year Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec 1939 1/1 1/2 1/3 1/4 1/5 1/6 2/1 2/2 2/3 2/4 1940 2/5 2/6 3/1 3/2 3/3 3/4 3/5 3/6 4/1 4/2 4/3 4/4 1941 4/5 4/6 5/1 5/2 5/3 5/4 1942 5/5 5/6 6/1 6/2 6/3 6/4 1943 6/5 6/6 7/1 7/2 7/3 John W. Campbell was editor throughout."Unknown Worlds", in Tuck, Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy, Vol. 3, pp. 582–583.
In May 1923, the first issue of Weird Tales appeared, from Rural Publications in Chicago. Weird Tales was a pulp magazine that specialized in fantasy stories and material that no other magazine would accept. It was not initially successful, but by the 1930s had established itself and was regularly publishing science fiction (SF) as well as fantasy.Robert Weinberg, "Weird Tales", in Tymn & Ashley, Science Fiction, Fantasy and Weird Fiction Magazines, pp. 727–736. Weird Tales was the first magazine to focus solely on fantasy, and it remained the pre-eminent magazine in this field for over a decade.Ashley, Time Machines, p. 41. In the meantime, science fiction was starting to form a separately marketed genre, with the appearance in 1926 of Amazing Stories, a pulp magazine edited by Hugo Gernsback. In 1930 pulp publisher Clayton Publications launched Astounding Stories of Super Science,Ashley, Time Machines, p. 69. but the company's bankruptcy in 1933 led to the acquisition of the magazine by Street & Smith.Ashley, Time Machines, p. 82. The title was shortened to Astounding Stories, and it became the leading magazine in the science fiction field over the next few years under the editorship of F. Orlin Tremaine.Ashley, Time Machines, pp. 84–85.Albert I. Berger & Mike Ashley, "Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact", in Tymn & Ashley, Science Fiction, Fantasy and Weird Fiction Magazines, pp. 60–103. At the end of 1937, John W. Campbell took over as editor.
By 1938, Campbell was planning a fantasy companion to Astounding: Weird Tales was still the leader in the fantasy genre, though competitors such as Strange Stories were also being launched. Campbell began acquiring stories suitable for the new magazine, without a definite launch date in mind. When Eric Frank Russell sent him the manuscript of his novel Sinister Barrier, Campbell decided it was time to put his plans into action. The first issue of Unknown appeared in March 1939. It was a monthly at first, but poor sales forced a switch to a bimonthly schedule beginning in February 1941.Thomas D. Clareson, "Unknown", in Tymn & Ashley, Science Fiction, Fantasy and Weird Fiction Magazines, pp. 694–699.Asimov, In Memory Yet Green, p. 390. In December 1940, the subtitle Fantasy Fiction was added, and in October 1941, the main title was changed to Unknown Worlds; both changes were intended to make the genre of the magazine clearer to potential readers.Kyle, Pictorial History of Science Fiction, p. 109. When wartime paper shortages became severe in late 1943, Campbell chose to keep Astounding monthly and cancel Unknown, rather than switch the former to a bimonthly schedule as well. The last issue was dated October 1943.
Contents and reception
Campbell's plans for Unknown were laid out in the February 1939 issue of Astounding, in the announcement of the new magazine. He argued that "it has been the quality of the fantasy that you have read in the past that has made the very word anathema ... [Unknown] will offer fantasy of a quality so far different from that which has appeared in the past as to change your entire understanding of the term". The first issue, the following month, led with Russell's Sinister Barrier, the novel that had persuaded Campbell to set his plans for a fantasy magazine into motion: the plot, involving aliens who own the human race, has been described by SF historian Mike Ashley as "a strange mixture of science fiction and occult fantasy".Ashley, Time Machines, pp. 140–141. Campbell asked Russell for revisions to the story to emphasize the fantastic elements but still demanded that Russell work out the logical implications of his premises. This became a defining characteristic of the fiction published in Unknown; in Ashley's words, Campbell "brought the science fiction rationale to fantasy". The first issue also contained Horace L. Gold's "Trouble with Water", a comic fantasy about a modern New Yorker who offends a water gnome; in its whimsicality and naturalistic merging of a modern background with a classic fantasy trope, "Trouble with Water" was a better indication than Sinister Barrier of the direction Unknown would take. Campbell commented in a letter at the time that Sinister Barrier, "Trouble with Water", and Where Angels Fear ... by Manly Wade Wellman were the only stories in the first issue that accurately reflected his goals for the magazine.Chapdelaine, John W. Campbell Letters, p. 44.
Under Campbell's editorial supervision, the fantasy element in Unknown stories had to be treated rigorously. This naturally led to the appearance in Unknown of writers already comfortable with similar rigor in science fiction stories, and Campbell soon established a small group of writers as regular contributors, many of whom were also appearing in the pages of Astounding. L. Ron Hubbard, Theodore Sturgeon, and L. Sprague de Camp were among the most prolific. Hubbard contributed eight lead novels including Typewriter in the Sky, Slaves of Sleep, and Fear, described by Ashley as a "classic psychological thriller"; SF historian and critic Thomas Clareson describes all eight as "outstanding". De Camp, in collaboration with Fletcher Pratt, contributed three stories featuring Harold Shea, who finds himself in a world where magic operates by rigorous rules.Mike Ashley, Unknown, in Clute & Grant, Encyclopedia of Fantasy, p. 974. The title of one of these, "The Mathematics of Magic", is, according to SF critic John Clute, "perfectly expressive of the terms under which magic found easy mention in Unknown".John Clute, "Lyon Sprague de Camp", in Clute & Grant, Encyclopedia of Fantasy, pp. 257–258.
Other Astounding writers who wrote for Unknown included Robert A. Heinlein, whose "The Devil Makes the Law" (reprinted as "Magic, Inc.") depicts a world where magic is a part of everyday life. Heinlein also contributed "The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag" and "They", described by Ashley as "perhaps the ultimate solipsist fantasy".Mike Ashley, "Robert A. Heinlein", in Clute & Grant, Encyclopedia of Fantasy, p. 406. A.E. van Vogt, a frequent Astounding contributor, appeared in the final issue with "The Book of Ptath" (later expanded into a novel). Isaac Asimov, despite multiple attempts to write for Unknown, never appeared in the magazine. On his sixth attempt, he sold "Author! Author!" to Campbell, but the magazine was canceled before it could appear.Asimov, In Memory Yet Green, pp. 380, 390. It eventually appeared in the anthology The Unknown Five.
In addition to the overlap between the writers of Unknown and Astounding, there was a good deal of overlap between their readerships:Carter, Creation of Tomorrow, pp. 25–26. Asimov records that during the war, he read only these two magazines.Asimov, In Memory Yet Green, p. 379. SF historian Paul Carter has argued that the spectrum of fantastic fiction from Weird Tales through Unknown to Astounding was far less cleanly separated than is sometimes assumed: many stories in the early science fiction magazines such as Wonder Stories were more like the works of Edgar Allan Poe than they were tales of scientific imagination.
Fritz Leiber's first published story was "Two Sought Adventure", which appeared in the August 1939 issue of Unknown; this was the first story in his long-running Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series about a pair of adventurers in a sword and sorcery setting. Four more Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories appeared in Unknown in as many years, and Leiber's novel Conjure Wife, about a man who discovers that all women are secretly witches, was the lead story in the April 1943 issue. The protagonist, a university professor, "is forced to abandon scepticism and discover the underlying equations of magic, via symbolic logic", in critic David Langford's description.David Langford, "Fritz Leiber", in Clute & Grant, Encyclopedia of Fantasy, pp. 573–574. Leiber also contributed "Smoke Ghost" in October 1941, described by Ashley as "arguably the first seriously modern ghost story". Another writer whose first story appeared in Unknown was James H. Schmitz, whose "Greenface" appeared in the August 1943 issue.del Rey, World of Science Fiction, p. 113.