Boardman, Tom
Entry updated 17 July 2023. Tagged: Author, Editor.
Working name of UK publisher and editor Thomas Volney Boardman Jr (1930-2017), who went to work for the family publishing company, T V Boardman, in 1949, and stayed on as managing director when the company changed ownership in 1954. This company published primarily mysteries, but also some sf and Comics including Swift Morgan (1948-1953). T V Boardman sf titles of some note include Peter George's Two Hours to Doom (1958; vt Red Alert 1958) as by Peter Bryant, and the first UK editions of Fredric Brown's The Lights in the Sky Are Stars (1953) as Project Jupiter (1954) and E E Smith's Triplanetary (1948) as Triplanetary: A Tale of Cosmic Adventure (1954).
Tom Boardman was sf adviser, successively, to Gollancz, Four Square Books, Macdonald and New English Library. He was business manager of the short-lived critical magazine SF Horizons. He edited the five sf reprint Anthologies Connoisseur's Science Fiction (anth 1964), The Unfriendly Future (anth 1965), An ABC of Science Fiction (anth 1966), Science Fiction Horizons 1 (anth 1968) – copyrighted "S F Horizons Ltd" and remarking in its foreword that "it was born out of a magazine called Science Fiction Horizons" – and Science Fiction Stories (anth 1979), the last being for children (see Children's SF). The conceit of An ABC of Science Fiction is that there is a contributor for each letter of the alphabet, from Brian W Aldiss to Roger Zelazny, with the difficult letter X represented by the avowed Pseudonym "B T H Xerxes" – whose three limericks are presumably a repeat appearance by Aldiss since they include one from the risqué sequence "Aldiss's Sexual Survey of Habits in Our Little-Explored [Solar] System" (December 1960 PITFCS ed Theodore R Cogswell).
Boardman later worked in educational publishing. [MJE/DRL]
Thomas Volney Boardman Jr
born Bronxville, New York: 20 December 1930
died Sunningdale, Berkshire: 15 June 2017
works as editor
- Connoisseur's Science Fiction (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1964) [anth: pb/photographic]
- The Unfriendly Future (London: Four Square, 1965) [anth: pb/Gino D'Achille]
- An ABC of Science Fiction (London: Four Square, 1966) [anth: pb/Barry Evans]
- Science Fiction Horizons 1 (London: Dennis Dobson, 1968) [anth: hb/Richard Weaver]
- Science Fiction Stories (London: Octopus, 1979) [anth: hb/Terry Oakes]
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