Neat to see on HN. My grandfather, Horace Leonard Gold (H.L. Gold), created Galaxy Magazine. It was kind of a hot little startup in 1950s N.Y. He had some very strong opinions about what made good scifi, liked to pay writers more than was standard, but also pissed off a number of them (including Asimov).
I still haven't sat down and read them all cover-to-cover but I've been meaning to for a long time. I hope they stay up on archive.org. I'm sure he would want as many people as possible to enjoy them.
I believe they worked together very well actually, but my grandfather could apparently be far too harsh with his feedback. Asimov complained bitterly in his autobiography about this, but also gave him some grudging respect.
I think my grandfather thought he was helping by pushing writers really hard to do their best work. He probably was right to some degree but clearly took it too far at times.
Galaxy was a very important magazine for the science fiction literature, but slightly off-topic question: is the content really supposed to be public domain?
For everything published in 1950 the original copyright length was 28 years, but it was retroactively extended with the 1976 copyright act. Or is it another case of unregistered copyright, like Night of the Living Dead?
"For everything published in 1950 the original copyright length was 28 years, but it was retroactively extended with the 1976 copyright act."
Not necessarily. Works published prior to 1964 have fallen into the public domain in the United States unless the owner explicitly filed a copyright renewal.
Anything published in 1964 or afterward did get automatic renewal and extension to the new 95 year period under the 1992 Copyright Act, so the magazines after 1964 are definitely questionable.
The Stanford library has a database that lets you look up the copyright status of post-1923 (before that is definitely public domain), pre-1964 works.
the magazine itself may be out of copyright but not necessarily all of its content. for example stories would revert to the writers copyright, which is how writers make more money off of successful stories going in anthologies etc.
When visiting Toronto last year I stumbled upon the Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation & Fantasy http://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/merril/ and took part in an amazing tour. They also have Galaxy Magazine there to look at and lots of other gems.
I absolutely love treasure troves like this - it is an instant quality-of-life improvement to have an archive of such magazines available for easy reading, and I am grateful that the copyright holders have allowed this to occur - otherwise, Galaxy would have been very much ignored in my part of the world.
But because of this instant sharing of high-value content that occurs in our culture, my kids - 8 and 5 years old - have something amazing to put on their iPads' to replace the dreck of the modern age. This archive will go down in our family history, I'm quite sure, as a significant turning point in the cultural development of our boys, who otherwise would not have had a chance to expose themselves to these classics, circumstances being what they are ..
I still haven't sat down and read them all cover-to-cover but I've been meaning to for a long time. I hope they stay up on archive.org. I'm sure he would want as many people as possible to enjoy them.