This is the fourth volume of my history of the science-fiction magazines. It covers the years from 1981 to 1990, though the end date is flexible to allow coverage of certain relevant magazines that appeared or concluded soon after.

It was a decade that saw science fiction undergo radical changes and movements, the best known of which was cyberpunk. The title of this volume, Science Fiction Rebels, is deliberately ambiguous. ‘Rebels’ works both as a noun and a verb. So it refers on the one hand to the authors and editors who, through their work, sought to rehabilitate science fiction to make it more relevant to the new age of technological revolution and, in some countries, social and political freedoms. It also refers to the form of science fiction itself which, in the hands of many, seemed to rebel against its strictures and broaden its remit to allow for a greater variety of interpretation of the impact of change upon human beliefs, potential and abilities.

It was not the first time that science fiction (or ‘sf’ as I shall frequently call it hereinafter) had rebelled. By its very nature sf is subversive and radical and can be the literature of rebellion in portraying how people and cultures may need change and how they will react to it. But, like all forms of creative endeavour, it has its lowest common denominator and sf can easily fall into a formulaic rut. When that happens there will always be those creative souls who rebel against conformity and ring new changes.

The previous three volumes have charted these earlier revolutions, almost all of which have been instigated in or by the sf magazines. In volume 1, The Time Machines, which covered the years 1926 to 1950, we saw that sf had all too easily settled into a rut by the early 1930s. Forward-thinking editors such as David Lasser (in Wonder Stories), F. Orlin Tremaine and, in particular, John W. Campbell, Jr (both in Astounding Stories), introduced their own criteria to jolt sf out of its formulaic complacency. It was also the period that saw the first amateur magazine produced with the deliberate intent of revitalizing sf, Marvel Tales, under William L. Crawford.