Gateways to Forever: The Story of the Science-Fiction Magazines from 1970 to 1980 (Book Review‪)‬

The Turbulent 1970s. Mike Ashley. Gateways to Forever: The Story of the Science-Fiction Magazine from 1970 to 1980. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007. 422 pp. $27.50 pbk. * Mike Ashley's third installment in his series The History of the Science-Fiction Magazine is everything you would expect from one of his books--informative, well written, and exhaustive. Beginning with the historic July 1969 moon landing, Gateways to Forever chronicles the difficult decade of the 1970s for the professional science fiction magazines. Although Gateways advertises itself as focusing on the science fiction magazine, it discusses the larger publication world. This includes smaller semi-pro and fanzine publications as well as the rise of the paperback anthology that gave science fiction magazines such trouble in the 1970s. In broadening his look at these other publishing avenues for science fiction, Ashley helps the reader to understand the external and internal forces that worked to shape the science fiction publishing industry in the 1970s. Furthermore, Gateways also offers a wealth of statistical information concerning the financing and distribution of the science fiction magazine. In his appendixes, Ashley compiles data that gives an intriguing snapshot of the actual circulation of science fiction magazines in the 1970s. Indeed, the appendixes and bibliography are worth the cover price alone. Besides the meticulous historical research, Gateways to Forever also makes use of very up-to-date interviews conducted with major authors and publishers in order to present the best well-rounded picture possible. However, it is Ashley's attention to the cultural and economic forces affecting the science fiction magazine that sets this apart from other works detailing the material history of science fiction. He meticulously traces the effects on publishing that science fiction conventions had as well as the change in printing necessitated by a growing environmental movement. Although Ashley explains in his conclusion, "The problem in assessing the seventies is the large number of different initiatives moving in different directions under the control of different editors and publishers" (383), he does a masterful job in untangling these different historical strands and clearly explicates the complicated relationships and forces that forever changed the face of science fiction publishing in the 1970s.