The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, later Fantasy and Science Fiction (and often referred to as just F&SF), is a digest-size speculative-fiction magazine first published as a quarterly in 1949 by Mystery House and as a bi-monthly by Fantasy House (1950-1958). Both houses were subsidiaries of Lawrence Spivak's Mercury Publications. In 1958, responsibility for the publication of the magazine was taken on by Mercury Press. In October 2001, Gordon Van Gelder bought the magazine from Mercury. He subsequently moved its offices from New York to New Jersey and published it through his newly formed company Spilogale Inc. Today, the magazine is the world's second-longest-running science-fiction magazine, surpassing Amazing Stories in total number of issues published and exceeded only by Astounding/Analog.
In his history of science-fiction magazines, Mike Ashley writes:
'The Magazine of Fantasy was to all intents and purposes a slick in digest format, and its cover price of 35 cents, at a time when almost all other fiction magazines were priced at 25 cents, was indicative of this upper-class approach. The magazine contained a mixture of new and reprint stories, and the editors frequently reprinted stories from the slick magazines by major-name authors such as Richard Sale, Guy Endore and Robert Myron Coates. Only the cover on the first issue betrayed any pulp influence, and this was radically amended from the second issue onwards as the covers became more stylized and surreal.' (Transformations: The Story of the Science-Fiction Magazines from 1950 to 1970, Liverpool University Press, 2005, pp.21-22.)
The magazine's editors have been J. Francis McComas (1949 - 1954), Anthony Boucher (1949 - 1958), Cyril M. Kornbluth (1958), William Tenn (1958), Robert P. Mills (1958 - 1962), Avram Davidson (1962 - 1964), Joseph W. Ferman (1964 - 1965), Edward L. Ferman (1966 - 1991), Kristine Kathryn Rusch (1991 - 1997), and Gordon Van Gelder (1997 - present).
Further Reference:
'Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, The'. Wikipedia. Online. (Sighted: 15/08/2011)