Fantasy Tales 45th Anniversary Special: Phantasmagoria magazine

 October 2023 is Spooky StORIES MOnth 
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Fantasy Tales 45th Anniversary Tribute

Phantasmagoria Magazine, 2022

Following in the footsteps of Justin Marriott, a number of enterprising U.K. fantasy and science fiction fans have begun issuing print-on-demand bookzines of professional appearance. So it is that Trevor Kennedy of Belfast has been publishing Phantasmagoria magazine. As of the Fall of 2023, it's up to issue number 23. Along with regular issues, Phantasmagoria also puts out periodic 'special issues', devoted to a single topic, and in 2022 a special issue devoted entirely to Fantasy Tales was published.

Fantasy Tales was a semi-professional magazine published in the UK from 1977 to 1991 for a total of 24 issues (spaced over two Volumes). 

Editors Stephen Jones and David Sutton consciously modeled their magazine on the classic pulp Weird Tales, and thus, Fantasy Tales published as many (if not more) horror stories than fantasy, and featured black-and-white and graytone illustrations by artists such as Stephen Fabian and Jim Pitts. 

Fantasy Tales can be seen as the British counterpart to American semi-professional magazines of the 1970s and 1980s, such as Whispers, Grue, Cemetery Dance, and Midnight Graffiti. The magazine has come to occupy a special place in the hearts and minds of U.K. fantasy fiction devotees, and is remembered with much affection.

[ My reviews of anthologies compiled from Fantasy Tales are presented here and here. ]

The 45th Anniversary Tribute issue of Phantasmagoria is a thick chunk of a trade paperback, measuring 10 x 7 inches and 364 pages. It uses a larger, quite readable font / typeface, and numerous black-and-white and graytone illustrations with reasonably good resolution.

Along with reprinting stories and illustrations that originally appeared in Fantasy Tales, the 45th Anniversary Tribute issue also provides interviews with authors and editors of the magazine. These interviews and reminiscences often are accompanied by photographs, some of these taken decades ago. Somewhat eerily, there is a group photo that includes Karl Edward Wagner, taken less than a week before he died of alcoholism-related causes............

The end chapters in the 45th Anniversary Tribute issue provide listings of the contents of each issue of Fantasy Tales, along with capsule summaries of films and television shows (e.g., Candyman) derived from stories that appeared in the magazine.

When all is said and done, if you are a fan of Fantasy Tales and the British horror and science fiction scene, then Phantasmagoria's special 45th Anniversary Tribute issue is worth picking up.