Edward Lewis Ferman (born March 6, 1937) is an American science fiction and fantasy editor and magazine publisher, known best as the editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (F&SF).
Ferman is the son of Joseph W. Ferman, the publisher and sometime editor who established F&SF in 1949. The younger Ferman was the managing editor under Avram Davidson starting in April 1962. Joseph Ferman was again listed as editor 1964–65. Edward then formally became editor in January 1966 where he remained until June 1991. During Ferman's tenure, many other speculative fiction magazines struggled or went out of business. His magazine, along with Analog, continued to maintain a regular schedule and to receive critical appreciation for its contents. Together, the Fermans also edited and published the short-lived nostalgia and humor magazine P.S. and a similarly brief run of a magazine about mysticism and other proto-New Age matters, Inner Space.
At least in the last decade of his tenure, he worked from a table in the family's Connecticut house. He edited or co-edited several volumes of stories from F&SF and co-edited Final Stage and other collections with Barry N. Malzberg. It is probable that he also ghost-edited No Limits for or with Joseph Ferman, an anthology drawn from the pages of the first run of Venture.
Awards
Ferman won the Hugo Award for Best Professional Editor three years in a row, from 1981 through 1983 and was nominated 17 times. F&SF had previously won four Hugos as the best professional magazine under his editorship. In 1981 he received a special honor from Worldcon "for his effort to expand and improve the field'.
He was nominated 13 times for a reader polled Locus Award for his anthologies. He won in 1981 for the 30 Year Retrospective.
- The Best Horror Stories from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (Vol. 2), with Anne Jordan, (St Martins Press, 1989)
- Final Stage: The Ultimate Science Fiction Anthology, with Barry N. Malzbert, (Charterhouse, 1974)
- Graven Images, with Barry N. Malzberg, (Thomas Nelson Inc, 1977)
- Oi, Robot: competitions and cartoons from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (Mercury Press, 1995) <!--unclear whether he originated the competitions as i surmised (not the cartoons); perhaps distinctive only in his collecting without a co-editor -->
See also
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