The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and Boucher became interested in the idea of a fantasy companion to "Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine", and spoke to Dannay about it. Dannay was interested in the idea, but paper was scarce because of World War II. The following year Boucher and McComas suggested that the new magazine could use the Ellery Queen name, but Dannay knew little about fantasy and suggested instead that they approach Lawrence Spivak, the owner of Mercury Press, which published "Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine". In January 1946, Boucher and McComas went to New York and met with Spivak, who let them know later in the
Pen name Asadullah Khan Ghalib", or just "Mirza Ghalib". The French phrase "nom de plume" is occasionally still seen as a synonym for the English term "pen name": this is a "back-translation" and originated in England rather than France. H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler, in "The King's English" state that the term "nom de plume" "evolved" in Britain, where people wanting a "literary" phrase failed to understand the term "nom de guerre", which already existed in French. Since "guerre" means "war" in French, "nom de guerre" did not make sense to the British, who did not understand the French metaphor.