James Nicoll Reviews

Jim Baen’s¹ Destinies, February-March 1980 is the first issue in the second volume of Destinies, ​“The Science Fiction Magazine” (to quote the cover), or alternatively ​“The Paperback Magazine of Science Fiction and Speculative Fact” (to quote the masthead).

Given that my copy of this book is five years short of its first half-century, it’s standing up very well. No loose pages, not much yellowing, and only minor spine creasing. How do the contents stand up?

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Jim Baen’s 1980 Galaxy: The Best of My Years selects the best pieces from Jim Baen’s 1974 to 1977 run as editor of Galaxy Magazine. Or rather, as Baen puts it, Baen’s version of a single perfect issue.

As Baen was no doubt aware, although he does not note it in the text, this science fiction anthology was also a requiem.

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Although the masthead asserted that Destinies would be published four times a year, Destinies, October-December 1979 was the fifth issue in the first volume of the science fiction bookazine Destinies. Destinies was edited by Jim Baen, who is credited as James Baen on the cover and James Patrick Baen within¹.

Volume One, Number Five has some vexing issues, but it did at least provide noteworthy juxtapositions.

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1979’s Destinies Aug – Sept ​’79 is the fourth issue of the first volume of Destinies, the ​“paperback magazine of science fiction and speculative fact”¹. Destinies was edited by Jim Baen, who is credited as James Baen on the cover and James Patrick Baen within.

Honestly, I thought I would have reviewed more issues of Destinies by now.

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Destinies, April-June 1979 was the third issue in the first volume of Destinies, the ​“paperback magazine of science fiction and speculative fact¹.”

As previously established, Destinies is a long-defunct magazine for which I have memories both fond and spotty. Those two characteristics may be linked. This is one of the issues for which I have no particular memories on looking at the cover. Enticement to look inside!

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Jim Baen’s 1976 The Best from If, Volume III is the third volume in the Best from If series of science fiction anthologies. It collects the best stories from If magazine, a fact you may have deduced from the title. 

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Jim Baen’s Destinies January – February 1979 is the second issue of Destinies, a bookazine (defined later) published by Ace in the before times. 

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Barney Cohen and Jim Baen’s The Taking of Satcon Station is an SF mystery. It is also the sole Jim Baen novel of which I am aware. This is not entirely a bad thing. 

Despite the best efforts of UN red tape to impede space enterprise, a century of development has seen the building of space facilities spanning Earth orbit to the Asteroid Belt. Once the US Space Command enforced the rules. Now that is the domain of Fleet Agents like Bockhorn, working for space concerns like MexAmerican & Pacific. 

As the book opens, Bockhorn is stubbing out his cigarette before disembarking at Satcon Station. In its day, Satcon was a hotbed of cutting-edge research. Most people would say those days are long behind the eighty-eight-year-old station. Most people would be wrong: there’s a very bold project underway on Satcon. Bockhorn is going to find himself up to his … let’s say eyebrows… in it.

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Destinies, November – December 1978 was the debut issue of Jim Baen’s bookazine Destinies. Destinies ran from late 1978 to summer of 1981. There were eleven issues, each the size of a mass market paperback; there was a Best-of anthology as well¹. Back in the day, I was an avid magazine reader and this was one of my favourite magazines. 

Odd that until I reread this volume I did not remember it at all. 

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When I first encountered Galaxy Magazine (I had picked up the April 1977 issue on a whim¹) it was only three years away from its final issue². Of course I had no idea that it was doomed, nor that the issue I selected was the product of something of a renaissance for the magazine, thanks to editor Jim Baen. That first encounter was satisfying enough that I bought newsstand copies until the demise of the magazine made that impossible.

How does the issue stand up two generations later?

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