Horace L. Gold

Horace L. Gold (born April 29, 1914, Montreal, Que., Canada—died Feb. 21, 1996, Laguna Hills, Calif., U.S.) was a Canadian-born American science fiction editor and author who, as founder and editor of the magazine Galaxy Science Fiction, published many of the most prominent science fiction stories of the 1950s.

Gold sold his first short story, “Inflexure,” to Astounding Stories in 1934 under the pseudonym Clyde Crane Campbell. He made his living writing short stories for “pulp” science fiction, mystery, and romance magazines and scripts for radio programs. From 1939 to 1941, he worked as assistant editor at the science fiction magazines Startling Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories. During the early 1940s, he also worked as a writer at Detective Comics (DC Comics) on several comic books, including Superman and Batman. He served in World War II with the U.S. Army in the Pacific, where he was struck with acute agoraphobia.

In 1950 Gold founded the monthly magazine Galaxy Science Fiction, which emphasized satires on the contemporary United States—such as “Gravy Planet” (1952, published in book form as The Space Merchants [1953]) by Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth, which concerned a future dominated by advertising agencies—and stories with ideas drawn from the social sciences and psychology—such as Theodore Sturgeon’s “Baby Is Three” (1952, published in book form as More than Human [1953]), about six outcast children with extrasensory powers who form a group mind. Other major stories published in Galaxy include Ray Bradbury’s “The Fireman” (1951), about a future in which all books are banned and which was later expanded into the novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953); Alfred Bester’s novels The Demolished Man (1953), about crime in a telepathic society, and The Stars My Destination (1956), a story of revenge in the 25th century, based on Alexandre Dumas père’s The Count of Monte Cristo; and Isaac Asimov’s The Caves of Steel (1953), a mystery in which a human and a robot detective investigate a murder in the overpopulated underground New York of the future. In 1953 Gold shared the first Hugo Award for best professional magazine with John W. Campbell, Jr., the editor of Astounding Stories. In 1959 Gold also became editor of the science fiction magazine If when it was bought by Galaxy’s publisher, Digest Publications.

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Because of his agoraphobia, Gold edited both Galaxy and If almost entirely from his New York apartment. After a car accident in 1961, he retired from editing.