Even though it's celebrating its 70th birthday, Analog -- or Astounding as it was known before 1960 -- isn't the oldest SF magazine currently in publication.
The first issue of Amazing was published in 1926, while Astounding Stories of Super-Science (to use its full original title) was established four years later by the Clayton magazine group as a slightly tardy competitor.
For all that, though, Amazing has suffered long periods of bi-monthly or quarterly publication, eventually going dormant about three years ago until its new publisher, Wizards of the Coast, revived it last year.
Astounding/Analog, on the other hand, has enjoyed a reliable publication schedule for three generations now, month after month, year after year.
The five steersmen
In its first three-score-and-ten years, Astounding/Analog had only five editors-in-chief: Harry Bates, F. Olin Tremaine, John W. Campbell, Jr., Ben Bova, and Stanley Schmidt. Campbell held the post the longest, from 1938 until his death in 1972, but Stan has been in charge for over 20 years now and gives no indication that he's ready to retire.
Yet the longevity of its editors -- considering the frequency with which mastheads at other magazines change -- is only part of the reason why Analog is still with us while Galaxy, once its strongest competitor, has long-since disappeared.
Rocket to respectability
Astounding began as a Johnny-come-lately imitator to Amazing -- the cover of the January 1930 issue features a dude in an aviator's helmet punching out a giant beetle while a girl in a leather mini-skirt cowers behind him.
Within three years, Clayton would sell the magazine to Street & Smith and Tremaine took over the editorship from Bates. As a result, Astounding gradually became more sophisticated while Amazing remained stuck in a pulp formula of bug-hunts and bimbos.
Tremaine added science articles as a regular feature, while pushing for stories that were slightly less lurid and more serious in intent if not always in execution. After 1935, the magazine's edges were trimmed, so it looked less like a pulp.
Even its title changed. The magazine had already dropped the "Super-Science" to become simply Astounding Stories in 1931. After Campbell became editor in 1938, the name changed again, this time to Astounding Science Fiction.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the word "Astounding" was printed so small on the covers that from the distance, it seemed as the magazine was simply titled "Science Fiction."
After World War II, when Street & Smith folded its pulp line of Depression-era stalwarts like The Shadow, Doc Savage, and Detective Stories, only Astounding remained alive.
The magazine owed its survival to more than its digest format, which all the S&S pulps had adopted due to wartime paper shortages. Moreover, while its cover art remained distinctive compared to the house styles of Amazing, Startling Stories, or Thrilling Wonder, it would take more than paint to keep Astounding alive.
In no small respect, Astounding lived through the 1940s and '50s because it was lucky enough to count John W. Campbell Jr. as its editor.
Under Campbell's firm hand, Astounding -- and indeed, science fiction itself -- went upscale, even became semi-respectable. By adapt to changing times, the magazine set a survival pattern of literary Darwinism that would see it through another half-century.
The hall of fame
Let's climb back up to the loft and pull some of these magazines out of their wrappers.
You want great writers? Not only do we find Robert A. Heinlein, A.E. van Vogt, Theodore Sturgeon, Jack Williamson, Isaac Asimov, Alfred Bester and Poul Anderson, but also authors not commonly associated with Astounding/Analog: H.P. Lovecraft, John D. MacDonald, Harlan Ellison, Norman Spinrad, John Brunner and Roger Zelazny.
During the Golden Age of the 40s, Astounding published more bona fide SF classics than any other magazine: Heinlein's "The Roads Must Roll"; Sturgeon's "Thunder and Roses"; "Vintage Season" by C.L. Moore; Williamson's "With Folded Hands"; "First Contact," by Murray Leinster....
The list is very long, and those aren't even a fraction of the highlights. Pick an issue at random from 1939 through 1942, and you'll find something by Heinlein, Asimov, Sturgeon, Bester, or L. Sprague De Camp every month!
Novels first serialized in these pages include several trailblazing works by Heinlein (Methuselah's Children, Revolt in 2100, Double Star, Citizen of the Galaxy), Asimov (the stories which comprise I, Robot and the entire "Foundation" trilogy), Frank Herbert (Under Pressure, Dune, Children of Dune) and Hal Clement (Needle, Iceworld, Mission of Gravity) .
What else? Landmark works like van Vogt's Slan, E.E. "Doc" Smith's "Lensman" novels, Poul Anderson's Satan's World, Zelazny's Doorways in the Sand, George R.R. Martin's Dying of the Light, Robert Silverberg's Shadrach in the Furnace, John Varley's Titan ... the hits just kept (and still keep) on coming.
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