The McCarthy Years

Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine (hereinafter Asimov's) had been launched in January 1977 (issue dated Spring) and met with considerable success in the capable editorial hands of George Scithers. Admittedly it also had the selling power of Asimov's name and the commercial acumen of Joel Davis. In its first year, Asimov's outsold Analog as the top-selling sf magazine. Scithers's role in this should not be underestimated, as he tapped into a lost vein of younger readers.

The major sf magazines of the previous 20 years, especially Analog, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (F&SF) and Galaxy, had targeted an ‘older’ readership. A survey undertaken by Analog at the end of 1980 revealed that ‘the median age is now closer to thirty-five, with relatively more older readers and fewer younger ones’. A year later F&SF conducted a similar survey which revealed, if anything, an even older readership. Edward Ferman wrote, comparing to an earlier survey, ‘We still have a young, primarily under 45 audience, but we wonder what has happened to the large percentage of teen-age readers.’ These results were upheld by Sherry Gottlieb, owner of the bookshop A Change of Hobbit in Santa Monica, California, who responded to the poll results by saying, in part:

As I explored in Gateways to Forever, many younger readers had been siphoned away from the traditional sf magazines to other media, primarily role-playing games and science-fiction movies and their associational media magazines. It was into this lucrative younger market that Scithers was able to pitch Asimov's. It was not a conscious decision at the outset, but arose from the nature of some of the early contributors and the approachable tone set by Asimov himself. His relaxed, informative writing style made his work accessible to all age groups.