New Worlds Profiles is the latest addition to the downloadable free books available in multiple electronic formats at the Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund’s website, where they also hope you’ll make a little donation to the fund.

David Langford compiled the book and explains in his introduction why fans will want to have it:

For a little over a decade while John Carnell was editor of New Worlds Science Fiction, there was a tradition of running author and artist profiles on the magazine’s inside front cover. These appeared from the eighteenth issue in November 1952 to the 134th in September 1963 […and] often contain opinions and scraps of personal information not elsewhere available. Which seemed a good reason for compiling this collection.

Find the 33,000-word book here. (A paperback edition is also available for sale.)

There are 120 profile features in all, some covering more than one person. Authors represented, often in their own words and many with multiple appearances, include Brian Aldiss, J.G. Ballard, Alfred Bester, John Brunner, Kenneth Bulmer, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, Harry Harrison, Philip E. High, Damon Knight, C.M. Kornbluth, Robert Silverberg, Theodore Sturgeon, E.C. Tubb, James White and John Wyndham. Other profiles are of artists (Alan Hunter, Brian Lewis, Gerard Quinn, Sydney Jordan), editors (John Carnell himself, Groff Conklin, H.L. Gold) and even one television anthology host: Boris Karloff for Out of This World. Also included are contemporary photographs of all the profile subjects, as published in New Worlds itself.

Langford thanks Michael Moorcock for giving his blessing to the collection.

P.S. Given the paucity of women writers in those New Worlds days, it’s more than symbolic that Langford has documented the way a woman was literally erased from this 1957 Hugo Awards photo before it ran in the magazine!