New Worlds
(Did you mean the Ted Carnell fanzine of the same name or the Swedish semiprozine?)
New Worlds was a British prozine published regularly from 1949 to 1971 with occasional issues thereafter into the twenty-first century.
After World War II, Ted Carnell revived New Worlds, the pre-war fanzine, in 1946, with three issues published by Pendulum Publications in 1946 and 1947. In October 1947, after Pendulum went bust, the Nova Mob (not to be confused with the Australian Nova Mob), a group of fans and pros who were part of the White Horse pub meetings (including Carnell, Frank Edward Arnold, Walter Gillings, Eric C. Williams and John Wyndham) formed Nova Publications to revive New Worlds as a prozine in 1949 with Carnell continuing as editor through 1964. During this period, it was the major force in British SF and helped launch the careers of Brian W. Aldiss, J. G. Ballard, John Brunner, Kenneth Bulmer, Colin Kapp, E. C. Tubb and James White
In 1964, it was taken over by Roberts & Vinter with Michael Moorcock as editor and published as a monthly. Moorcock continued as editor after the Arts Council took it over in 1967 to its collapse in 1970. During this time, Moorcock was assisted by a number of other people including Graham Charnock, Graham Hall, Langdon Jones and James Sallis with Charles Platt as editor of the last four issues. This incarnation of New Worlds was much more avant-garde, and helped to launch the New Wave. It may have been a critical success, but was not particularly well-liked among readers. Writers from this period included Barrington J. Bayley, John Clute, M. John Harrison, Robert Holdstock, Langdon Jones, David I. Masson and Ian Watson.
New Worlds was revived again in 1971 through 1976 as a series of original anthologies edited in various combinations by Moorcock, Charles Platt, and Hilary Bailey. It was revived again in 1978 as more of an underground fanzine with several issues through 1979. It was revived again in 1991 by David S. Garnett, with Moorcock as Consulting Editor as a series of anthologies which continued under several publishers through to 1997 with the last being #222 in the overall series. Another resurrection came in 2011 in what was intended as a print and online incarnation billed as Michael Moorcock's New Worlds, although in the end it was online only, published content in two issues, and was pronounced dead by October 2014. The website is no longer active. In 2022 PS Publishing an anthology called New Worlds with a cover re-worked from the first issue and while it was intended as the first in an anthology series it seems it is also #223. Most recently, #224 was published in 2024 to mark the sixtieth anniversary of Moorcock's takeover of the magazine with #142 (May/June 1964).
Hans Stefan Santesson edited a US edition of New Worlds in 1960, primarily reprints from the British version.
- Entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.
- New Worlds at isfdb.org
| Publication | 1946—2024 |
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