Name: GOLD, Horace Leonard Aged: 81
Born: April 26, 1914 Where: Canada
Died: February 21, 1996 Where: Laguna Hills, California
Interred: _ _ _
Married: Evelyn Stein When: 1939 (div)
Married 2: Muriel "Nicky" (Nicholson) Conley When: _ _ _
Awarded: 1953 Hugo for Best Prozine Editor, 1975 Westercon Life Achievement Award, and the 1987 Milford Award.

Gold began in the field by writing "Inflexure" for Astounding in 1934 and then Fantasy stories for its later companion magazine, Unknown. Horace also worked around, catch as catch can, serving as assistant editor of Captain Future, Startling Stories, and Thrilling Wonder Stories. Partnering with a fellow would-be, Kendall Crossen, formed a successful comic script ing team, working for Action and National comics. WWII intervened and the US Army had plans for Horace in the Pacific theater as a combat engineer.

After the war, Horace busied himself with script ing for comics and radio, writing for the detective pulps, and the occasional SF story. In the process, Gold was becoming housebound (a phenomenon after wars and now recurring with the internet).

In 1949, a former employee from the Crossen days, Vera Cerutti, contacted Horace for advice on a new publishing venture. Vera had moved to editor-in-chief of World Editions. Horace laid out his plans and recommendations for Galaxy magazine and the first issue hit the stands in 1950 with Gold as editor.

Horace insisted on top money for his writers (3 cents a word), quality paper, and offset printing (allowing his artists more creativity than letterpress). Galaxy quickly drove a wedge between Astounding (bogged down in Dianetics), and Fantasy & Science Fiction (whose fairies, trolls, and gnomes still danced in the forest night). The cream of the Golden Era published here in short form. A companion Fantasy magazine, Beyond Fantasy, was added but failed after ten issues for lack of demand. Worlds of IF, was acquired which paid cheaper rates and was used as a stepping stone to Galaxy. Both survived H. L. Gold's parting in 1961 for many years, a testiment to the power that he and his staff built into them.

(The following are words from a 1961 letter to me about a dispute long forgotten but pertaining to the editorial hand in SF, disillusioned writers, and reference a Bester letter in PITFCS. GCW]

"Of course, this won't reach you in time for the convention...but I wish you could have taken Alfred Bester's letter to Cogswell's bulletin. Bester is a working writer, the same as I've been for just about as many years, and, though he has never been on the editor's side of the desk, he knows it takes both writer and editor to sweat material up to its possible best. There are naturals, to be sure, but trying to assemble issues of naturals would take like a decade per.

"On the other hand, why try to win back people who have moved on? It's like trying to unspend time and money; they're gone, exclamation point. New ones are coming in their place, God be thanked - they always have, ever since Verne, Wells, Serviss, and others left the field in supposed disgust, stating everything but the plain truth - they'd fallen out of love with it. Can lovers be won back? I doubt it.

"My regret is that so many of the loveless attend conventions and make others downright ashamed to be reading and loving science fiction. As Willey Ley said, in a recent Galaxy article, '...that good old science fiction once was good and now is merely old.' But all thanks for your sword and shield."

PEN NAMES: Clyde Crane Campbell, Dudley Dell, Harold C. Fosse, Leigh Keith, and Richard Storey.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Mine here.

OBITUARY:

WWII DATA: Army SN 42129236, Horace L. Gold, res New York, New York. Enlisted March 31, 1944 NYC. Pvt. Native Canada. Born 1914. White. 4 years high school. Married.

Send relevant email to George C. Willick