NEBULA SCIENCE FICTION

An Appreciation by Brian Aldiss and Ted Tubb.

 

 

NEBULA  : an  appreciation

by      Brian W. Aldiss  

 

What is it Hamlet says about acting to the players... "Its end both at the first and now, was and is to hold, as- 'twere, a mirror up to nature " ? This NEBULA index is a sort of mirror up to the past, and some strange reflections it prompts one to.

The first copy of NEBULA I ever saw was issue No. 3. I picked it up while on holiday on the South Coast ; the stories gave me the idea that I might do almost as well myself ( how much of life is emulation!). So it followed naturally that the first tales I wrote I submitted to Peter Hamilton. He was a sympathetic editor to a beginner. He was also a patient editor - and one had often to be a patient contributor; although he was the first person to accept a story from me, he lost much of his hope of glory Hereafter by sitting on it for three years before publishing it.

Still, I'm sure that the other authors who contributed regularly - many of them more regularly and certainly more imposingly than I -  will testify with hand placed on pocket that Hamilton always paid very well. Perhaps that was why he had to cease publication so comparatively soon. Amateurish though the magazine was in format, its loss really was a loss. The British scene has always been too short of sf magazines, especially ones that - as this BSFA index shows - produced such a good crop of good stories as NEBULA did. And not only stories; I always used to turn first to Walt Willis's and Ken Slater's columns.

A correspondent in VECTOR said recently that my stories were better when I began writing than they are now.  Well, there’s a selection of my early stories in NEBULA, and an unlicked bunch they make, brief little gasps of writing, in the main.  I hope that correspondent will buy a copy of the Index and change his mind. I hope that everybody will buy a copy, and not mind their change. Support the BSFA though nebulas perish!

  Brian Aldiss

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NEBULA - an  introduction

by  E.C. Tubb.  

 

When Peter Hamilton was reluctantly forced to cease publication of his magazine, he did more than cut down the production of home-made science fiction magazines; he also killed a friend.

This is certainly true in my case and, I venture to assert, of many other authors who came to regard NEBULA as not-just another market, but as something with which they could have a peculiar emotional affinity. This, in no short measure, was due to the rather unique position of the editor.

Peter Hamilton did not only edit the magazine, he published it at his own expense, had a hell of a job trying to distribute it, stubbornly refused to admit defeat time after time when, if his efforts had been dictated by the cold factors of economics, he would have given up many times and, somehow, managed to instil the magazine with his own enthusiasm.

Such an ebullient enthusiasm was contagious. Authors wrote for NEBULA with financial reward taking but secondary place, the desire of submitting a good story being of primary importance. This attitude of mind was encouraged by the policy of the editor who was always willing to experiment and print stories which other magazines may have found unacceptable. The end result was a form of gestalt in which the writers and contributors felt as if NEBULA was "their" magazine, and all that became a happy, well-integrated family.

For myself this paid dividends. It was possible to experiment and to extend an idea or theme knowing that such stories would be received with enthusiasm and sympathy. Many such stories saw publication which, of course, as any author knows, is the finest encouragement of them all.

Because the editor was the sole arbiter of policy the magazine could, and did, present a wide variety of material which, together with the various departments, enabled it to come as close as any SF magazine to the fans idea of the "perfect" prozine, managing to achieve, by reflecting Peter's intense love of the medium, a high sense of "togetherness", the same affinity between author/editor/reader which Gernsback aimed at in his WONDER STORIES and which every editor tries to get.

NEBULA is gone, but its passing left a void which nothing has replaced. At one time it was the third leg of the British science-fiction tripod - the other two being AUTHENTIC and NEW WORLDS.

We can only mourn the passing of a friend.

E.C. Tubb.

 

Reprinted  from  Nebula: An Index  ed. Maxim Jakubowski (BSFA: 1963).

Text from the original kindly scanned by Greg Pickersgill.

 

 

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