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Wavelength, v. 1, issue 3, Fall 1941
31858063099622_009
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9 [illustration of globe printed in brown ink on right side of page. Text above image: "VOICE of the Imagi-nation" Text around banner surrounding globe: "GLOBE CIRCLING GIRTH W-earth its wait! (Issued every 2 mos.)" Text below image: "10c" and "Box 6475 Met Sta Los Angeles Cal" Image takes up 1/4 page; text wraps around image on left side.] [title centered] BAPTISM OF FIRE (Cont. From 2) ditto can pick out the right amount of wordage. But laying them out correct-ly picking good titles to substi-tute poor ones used by the author, and knowing just [underlined] what to cut is the job of an editor. There is also the matter of blurbs and stuff on the cov-er. Remember: it has to attract at-tention, then hold attention long en-ough for the prospective buyer to look it over. And what he sees has got to make him want to buy; what he reads to make him come back next time for more. It took me several hours to do those layouts, but at last the job is done. The came the artwork. I'd assumed that I'd have nothing to say about it, except, perhaps I could make a few suggestions. However, as things have turned out, I have had the say so far. There's only been one rub: time. Not knowing that it wouldn't be auto-matically taken care of, I'd just typed out instructions for the illus-trations and left them there. So now I had about three days to get all the illustrations for the issue, except for the Paul double speed which the boss would order himself. Fortunately, I knew some some artists. ( Fred Pohl had complete say with his artwork at first, and more time than I, but he didn't know any artists. ) I rushed over to Hannes Bok with one, gave another to Dan Bur-ford, who'd been drawing samples for some time, and gave the other two to Dave Kyle ( with a bit of sweating because the things he'd done on the 1st "Stirring" were pretty bad; however, I'd seen his original for "The Time Capsule" and that gave me courage. ) . They got by. Hannes with honors, Dave with interest, and Danny squeezed through. Mr. Sundell wanted to know if Dave was a love story artist. ( He saw the "Genius Bureau" drawing first. ) A little while later, the proofs came back. Then I got my second Bap-tism of Fire. Mr. Silberkleit gave me a list of just what pages were to have full page ads and what pages half-page ads. I had tofit my material in if I could and throw out ( or set aside for later issues ) what I couldn't. First casualties were the Morley article and my editorial. Then I found that I would have to cut the letter department to a page and a half. So, out went all letters except that first one. Futurian Times look-ed pretty bad; that is, it wasn't set up the way I wanted it. The head-line wasn't big enough; I'd wanted bold face on the sub-headlines, and lines between columns. But by the time I'd wrestled with the rest of the mess, I was too damn tired to do the extra laying out and instructions to the printer. For the first time I realized how editors have to work. They just can't do things the way they want to. It's rush rush rush at the last minute, then you sit back and wait. Well, next time, I'll see to it that Station X gets in the middle of the magazine and arrange to have stuff in those no-man's-land pages which can be mutilated or thrown on the fire without hurting anyone. So, that's the way things are at "Future Fiction" and "The Quarterly." I
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9 [illustration of globe printed in brown ink on right side of page. Text above image: "VOICE of the Imagi-nation" Text around banner surrounding globe: "GLOBE CIRCLING GIRTH W-earth its wait! (Issued every 2 mos.)" Text below image: "10c" and "Box 6475 Met Sta Los Angeles Cal" Image takes up 1/4 page; text wraps around image on left side.] [title centered] BAPTISM OF FIRE (Cont. From 2) ditto can pick out the right amount of wordage. But laying them out correct-ly picking good titles to substi-tute poor ones used by the author, and knowing just [underlined] what to cut is the job of an editor. There is also the matter of blurbs and stuff on the cov-er. Remember: it has to attract at-tention, then hold attention long en-ough for the prospective buyer to look it over. And what he sees has got to make him want to buy; what he reads to make him come back next time for more. It took me several hours to do those layouts, but at last the job is done. The came the artwork. I'd assumed that I'd have nothing to say about it, except, perhaps I could make a few suggestions. However, as things have turned out, I have had the say so far. There's only been one rub: time. Not knowing that it wouldn't be auto-matically taken care of, I'd just typed out instructions for the illus-trations and left them there. So now I had about three days to get all the illustrations for the issue, except for the Paul double speed which the boss would order himself. Fortunately, I knew some some artists. ( Fred Pohl had complete say with his artwork at first, and more time than I, but he didn't know any artists. ) I rushed over to Hannes Bok with one, gave another to Dan Bur-ford, who'd been drawing samples for some time, and gave the other two to Dave Kyle ( with a bit of sweating because the things he'd done on the 1st "Stirring" were pretty bad; however, I'd seen his original for "The Time Capsule" and that gave me courage. ) . They got by. Hannes with honors, Dave with interest, and Danny squeezed through. Mr. Sundell wanted to know if Dave was a love story artist. ( He saw the "Genius Bureau" drawing first. ) A little while later, the proofs came back. Then I got my second Bap-tism of Fire. Mr. Silberkleit gave me a list of just what pages were to have full page ads and what pages half-page ads. I had tofit my material in if I could and throw out ( or set aside for later issues ) what I couldn't. First casualties were the Morley article and my editorial. Then I found that I would have to cut the letter department to a page and a half. So, out went all letters except that first one. Futurian Times look-ed pretty bad; that is, it wasn't set up the way I wanted it. The head-line wasn't big enough; I'd wanted bold face on the sub-headlines, and lines between columns. But by the time I'd wrestled with the rest of the mess, I was too damn tired to do the extra laying out and instructions to the printer. For the first time I realized how editors have to work. They just can't do things the way they want to. It's rush rush rush at the last minute, then you sit back and wait. Well, next time, I'll see to it that Station X gets in the middle of the magazine and arrange to have stuff in those no-man's-land pages which can be mutilated or thrown on the fire without hurting anyone. So, that's the way things are at "Future Fiction" and "The Quarterly." I
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