Joseph W. Ferman

Joseph Ferman (1906-1974) was a Lithuanian-Americanscience fiction publisher.

Ferman moved to the United States of America and began working on the magazine American Mercury, the primary publication of the Mercury Press, which added Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine in 1941. He was involved with the founding of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1949, and became the magazine's publisher in 1954, after Lawrence Spivak resigned to pursue his interest in the television series Meet the Press, and its official editor in 1964 (actually, his son Edward edited the magazine). Edward L. Ferman succeeded him as publisher in 1970, with JF taking the title "Chaiman of the Board" of what had become a family business.

In 1957, he founded Venture Science Fiction with Robert P. Mills as its editor. When the Fermans relaunched the magazine again more than a decade later, Edward Ferman served as editor. Other notable projects included the anthologies No Limits (1964), taken from the pages of the first run of Venture, and Once and Future Tales (1964) from F&SF but not part of the normal Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction series, both of which may've been ghost-edited by EF, and publishing such magazines as Mercury Mystery Book-Magazine, Bestseller Mystery Magazine, the nostalgia magazine P. S. and the proto-New Age magazine Inner Space.