AustLit

Established in Budapest, Hungary in 1972 Galaktika went on to became the country's most popular science fiction magazine through until its demise in 1995. At its peak the magazine sold more than 94,000 copies per issue. Each issue, edited by Péter Kuczka, also tended to be organised around one of three themes - 'thematic,' 'national' and 'mixed.' The stories published in the first type invariably concentrated on a similar theme, while the second comprised selections from the literature of a specific country. The third type of issue involved a combination of different themes and authors from different countries.

The first issue, comprising 125 A5 pages, was published in the summer of 1972 and sold 38,000 copies. From issue #60 (1985) the format changed to the larger A4 format, but with a reduction in the number of pages (to 96). It returned to the A5 format in 1993. During its 23 years of existence Galaktika published 2,257 short novels and articles by more than 1,000 authors.

Galaktika was vitally important to emerging Hungarian and Eastern-European authors, as it was one of the very few magazines prepared to published their works. It also allowed many of the world's most popular science fiction authors to get translated versions of their works published in Hungary. Some of the issues also contained black-and-white versions of comic books such as Conan The Barbarian and The Adventures of Funky Koval.

The magazine eventually folded due to both the rising costs of printing and royalties. The magazine, with new format, editorial structure and ownership, was restarted in November 2004, with issue #176.

[Source: www.galaktika.scifi.hu]