Forgotten Books: A Requiem for Astounding -- Alva Rogers

A Requiem for Astounding is a 30-year history of a particular magazine that had the word astounding in its title. The most famous title, and the one for the longest part of that 30 years was Astounding Science Fiction. In 1960, the title was changed to Analog Science Fact & Fiction or some variation thereof, and that remains the name now.

Alva Rogers writes as a fan, not a literary critic, and he communicates some of the "warm and happy memories of countless hours of reading pleasure" that the magazine gave him. He discusses the editors, the writers, the stories, and the artists. Not all of them, of course, and he admits that his choices are subjective. He writes about the ones that had the most appeal to him, and he manages to communicate some of the excitement and anticipation readers felt in the days of the pulps and early digests, the days when magazines full of stories were easy to find in drugstores newsstands and bookstores. 

I started reading Astounding in the middle '50s, when it was still thought of as the premier magazine in the field, though F&SF and Galaxy weren't far behind. In fact, I preferred them and even some others, but I bought and read Astounding just about every month, and I felt the same excitement with each new issue of all the magazines that Rogers felt with Astounding.

You can't go home again, but you can read a book like this one.  It's an fine account of a wonderful time, so it's the next best thing.