Anthony Boucher may not have been quite the first to bring the civilizing touch of the knowledgeable bookman and tasteful literary critic to pulp science fiction (actually, that quixotic deed was performed by A. Langley Searles with his Fantasy Commentator of 1943-1958), but he was certainly paramount in initiating the broad dissemination of that touch through his long-lived Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Under Boucher's editorial direction the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction became a publication that successfully emulated the donnish style of the pre-1960 Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine in an arena of magazines hitherto best typified by the lurid superlatives of their titles, such as Astounding, Startling, Astonishing, and (perhaps most ambitiously) Cosmic. Launching the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in the fall of 1949 (initially as the Magazine of Fantasy) with close friend and bibliophile J. Francis McComas as coeditor, Boucher wrote a story...