Although the earliest proto-science-fiction magazines may be traced to Europe as already discussed in Chapter One, these were always one-off cases and a genre of magazines did not emerge outside the United States until after the Second World War. Even then it was powered by the US publishers. Most of these non-US magazines emerged in Europe and in the Latin American countries, and most contained reprints from American and British magazines, and thus did little to develop science fiction. Even those magazines which sought to encourage writers from within their countries had negligible influence beyond their borders and it would not be until the sixties that the depth of sf around the world would be justifiably recognized and considered by English-language publishers.

In the late forties American pulp publishers were quick to recoup income from sales of stories to foreign magazines, seeking to secure those sales officially before stories were pirated in places where copyright regulations were not enforced. The quickest sales were to Mexico and Argentina.

Argentina

Argentina's Narraciones Terrorificas (Terror Tales) had been reprinting material from the horror and terror pulps since before the Second World War. Most of its stories came from pre-war pulps issued by Popular Publications and thus contained little sf, but those published from 1945 onwards (when for a period it sustained a monthly schedule) carried increasingly more sf, particularly from Astonishing Stories, Super Science Stories and Famous Fantastic Mysteries. By the end of 1946, however, the magazine had become irregular again, its last eight issues being spread over four years until it folded in January 1950. During this period Argentina had another but much shorter lived magazine, Hombres del Futuro (Men of the Future) which had three monthly issues published between August and October 1947. It also reprinted from American magazines and little is known of its content.

Mexico

Mexico's leading pulp magazine of the period was Los Cuentos Fantasticos (Fantastic Tales) which published 44 issues between July 1948 and May 1953. It is an important if overlooked magazine. Not only did it reprint stories legitimately from a variety of sources, it also published new material, some by Latin American writers and some by British and American writers courtesy of Forrest Ackerman's literary agency.