1976 was a great year for Galaxy Magazine

As I entered my teen years my periodical buying switched from comics to science fiction magazines. I bought them all. Analog was clearly the leader in the early 70s, having the best production values, the best cover artists and the best authors. But by mid decade Galaxy was really pulling hard, or else my taste in fiction was changing! 1975 and 1976 issues of Galaxy gave us plenty of John Varley and Larry Niven. And 1976 had something worthwhile in each and every issue:

January--look at that awesome Rick Sternbach cover!  This issue introduced us to Niven & Pournelle's MOTE series, a SF favorite. Also a short story by Spider Robinson- It's a Sunny Day.

February gave us more Larry Niven--"Down and Out", the first part of  the novel "A WORLD  OUT OF TIME", which was continued in the Smoke Ring novels.

March 1976--stories by Spider Robinson and Fred Saberhagen. Not top of the heap stuff, but I did like the Stephen Fabian cover.

They skipped April, but May 1976 had one of my favorite John Varley stories-Overdrawn at the Memory Bank. This was made into a movie starring Raul Juila.

July's issue had Varley's "Gotta Sing Gotta Dance", a much overlooked story in my opinion. Fabian did the cover representing said story.

September's issue began Niven's  "The Children of the State" which was the bulk of his novel A WORLD OUT OF TIME. Rick Sternbach cover.

October not only had part 2 of "The Children of the State" , but another John Varley story . Fabian cover.

November- The first UPC code defacement of the front cover was an omen of the decline of the SF magazine genre in the next few years, But this issue had not only the conclusion of Noven's novel, but the beginning of Fredrick Pohl's Gateway, the start of his multi-volume HEECHEE series. I think that this is the first Vincent DiFate cover I'd seen depicting people and real objects. I liked his abstracts better.

The final issue of 1976 continued Gateway, and also had a science article by Robert Forward.