sf Impulse: A random review of nothing you’ll read

sf Impulse Vol 1 No 7

Roberts & Vinter, 1966

160 pages

This is the seventh issue of Impulse/sf Impulse, the successor magazine to Science Fantasy. It’s the last issue edited by Kyril Bonfiglioli, and in that way possibly marks the beginning of the end — not many more were to come.

The cover of sf Impulse volume 1 number 7. Quite a good cover, I think.

If this is anything to go by, it’s not hard to see why.

It contains 70 pages of Make Room, Make Room!, Harry Harrison’s overpopulation novel, the one that led to the movie Soylent Green, and that is far and away the best thing in it. Most of the rest is taken up by ‘The Rig’, a vaguely interesting but very silly story by Chris Boyce. The rest is better left unnamed. It’s not even an interesting cultural artefact, because there aren’t any funky old adverts or naff but nifty examples of internal art. The cover is probably the second best thing about it.

You’ll never see a copy of it anyway, but this is really only for the completist collector or someone who weirdly has the other parts of the serial. It cost me 50¢ as a curiosity many years ago. I finally got around to reading it and I should have waited longer.

Strange highways.