Amazing Stories
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- This article is about the magazine. For the television show, see Amazing Stories (TV series)
Amazing Stories magazine, sometimes retitled Amazing Science Fiction, was first published in April 1926, thereby becoming the first magazine devoted exclusively to publishing stories in the genre presently known as science fiction (SF). It is regarded as the world's first science fiction magazine.
Created by Hugo Gernsback, with many of its covers by the legendary Frank R. Paul, it featured a much-imitated logo of the magazine name in ever-shrinking letters. Amazing Stories was filled with stories of "scientific romance". Gernsback coined the portmanteau word "scientifiction" (abbreviated "STF") as a name for the genre which, over the years, became science fiction.
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[edit] The Gernsback Amazing
Gernsback attempted to create a premium product, and had visions of a world made anew by science. Pulp magazines were about 180 x 250 mm, with ragged (uncut) edges; Amazing Stories was larger, 200 x 280 mm, the so-called bedsheet format, with neatly trimmed edges and a slightly higher cover price.
Gernsback frequently reprinted those writers he considered the fathers of stf: H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, and Edgar Allan Poe. There were frequent reprints, as it took a few years to build up a level of available new writers for more original material.
Amazing was the first science fiction magazine, but it did not appear out of the blue. Gernsback had been publishing magazines like Modern Electrics since 1909, with the emphasis on science and invention, but with the occasional stf story thrown into the mix. It was the popularity of the stories in those pages which prompted Gernsback to try publishing an all-fiction magazine like Amazing.
By 1929, however, Gernsback had been forced into bankruptcy, and lost control of Amazing, which continued publication without interruption under its new owners. In 1929, Gernsback launched the first rival to the magazine he had founded — Science Wonder Stories.
Modern science fiction fandom dates its birth to these two magazines. Amazing printed reader comments in a letter column which included the full addresses of its correspondents, which allowed fans of the genre to begin contacting each other in person and via the mails, while Wonder Stories began chartering local fan clubs under the umbrella of the Science Fiction League.
[edit] After Gernsback
The new publishers of Amazing installed T. O'Conor Sloane as editor; he had served as Gernsback's managing editor. He continued until 1938, when the title was sold to Ziff Davis. Amazing altered its format to the more traditional pulp size with rough-cut pages and for some years it followed a less serious bent under editor Raymond A. Palmer, achieving commercial success but critical derision for its "Shaver Mystery" stories of creatures allegedly inside the Earth which were presented as fact rather than as SF.[1] At Ziff Davis, Amazing soon gained a companion title, Fantastic Adventures, also edited by Palmer, which quickly became a more fantasy-oriented magazine. Fantastic Adventures was published until 1954, when both magazines changed from pulp to digest format, and Fantastic Adventures changed its name to Fantastic. Both magazines briefly attempted a more sophisticated look, but were soon back to publishing space opera, under editor Howard Browne. In 1980, the two magazines merged under the title Amazing Stories.
In 1959, Cele Goldsmith became editor, and began to publish some of the better new writers, including Ward Moore and Ursula K. Le Guin.
Amazing continued publication more or less continuously from 1926 until the 1990s under various editors, publishers and formats. During its final decade it was published erratically, and eventually Wizards of the Coast cancelled a version published by Pierce Watters.
In 2004 it was relaunched by Paizo Publishing, but after the April 2005 issue, the magazine went on "hiatus". In March 2006, Paizo announced that it would no longer publish Amazing. [2]
[edit] Trivia
- In its early actual pulp years, there were companion titles including Amazing Stories Quarterly and Fantastic Adventures Quarterly. At the time, "returns" were complete copies of the magazines, so they were stripped of their original covers and three consecutive issues would be bound together under one new cover and offered for sale again.
- A Frank R. Paul illustration gracing the back cover of the July 1940 issue of Amazing featured a model of an Earthling, as imagined by Martians, that included a small image of Earth as a cloudless blue planet. Forrest J Ackerman cites this as one of the earliest corrections to the popular pre-spaceflight image of Earth as a green world.[3]
- The title Amazing has also been used for unconnected publications including the British science fiction magazine Amazing Science Stories (1951).
- Director Steven Spielberg licensed the title for use on an American television show called Amazing Stories that ran from 1985 to 1987. Spielberg named it after the magazine, which his father had read since he was a child.
- The August 1928 issue of Amazing stories has become a sought-after collectors item. It is important in the history of the space opera subgenre because it includes Armageddon 2419 A.D - the first appearance of Buck Rogers - and E.E. Smith's The Skylark of Space, considered one of the first space opera novels. Though Armageddon 2419 A.D was not a space opera, the comic strip based on it certainly was.
[edit] Editors
- Hugo Gernsback (April 1926-April 1929)
- Arthur Lynch (May 1929-October 1929)
- T. O'Conor Sloane (November 1929-May 1939)
- Raymond A. Palmer (June 1939-December 1939)
- B.G. Davis (January 1940-May 1946)
- Raymond A. Palmer (June 1946-December 1949)
- Howard Browne (January 1950-August 1956)
- Paul W. Fairman (September 1956-December 1958)
- Cele Goldsmith Lalli (January 1959-June 1965)
- Sol Cohen (August 1965-October 1967)
- Harry Harrison (December 1967-September 1968)
- Barry N. Malzberg (November 1968-January 1969)
- Ted White (March 1969-February 1979)
- Elinor Mavor (May 1979-August 1981 under the pseudonym Omar Gohagen, November 1981-September 1982 under her own name)
- George H. Scithers (November 1982-July 1986)
- Patrick Lucien Price (September 1986-March1991)
- Kim Mohan (May 1991-1995 and 1998-2000)
- David Gross (May 2004-October 2004)
- Jeff Berkwits (October 2004-March 2005)
B.G. Davis held the title of Editor at all Ziff-Davis magazines but had little daily involvement at Amazing. After Browne's departure, Norman Lobsenz was Editorial Director (writing editorials but not buying stories) until the magazine was sold to Cohen. Under Cohen's first years, the magazine was edited largely by Joseph Wrocz, who signed himself "Joseph Ross". Elinor Mavor used the title Editorial & Art Director for a while before dropping "Omar Gohagen" completely. Pierce Watters was "Executive Editor" and superior to Mohan during Mohan's second term.
[edit] July, 1926 issue
Amazing Stories, Volume 1, Number 4, gives a feeling of the original magazine. [4] The cover features a Frank R. Paul illustration of giant house fly, many times the size of a man. It is attacking a naval vessel, which is firing artillery at it. The lower-right corner boldly proclaims "Stories by H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, Garrett P. Serviss". At the bottom of the cover is the legend "Experimenter Publishing Company, New York, publishers of Radio News — Science & Invention — Radio Review — Amazing Stories — Radio Internacional" [sic].
There were 96 pages, but the page numbering continued from the previous issue. The only non-fiction is a 1-page editorial in which Gernsback expands on the magazine's motto: Extravagant Fiction Today . . . Cold Fact Tomorrow.
The contents page lists:
- G. McLeod Windsor, Station X (part 1 of 3 parts)
- H. G. Wells, The Man Who Could Work Miracles
- Jacque Morgan, The Scientific Adventures of Mr. Fosdick: The Feline Light and Power Company Is Organised (a humorous piece about trying to generate usable static electricity from cats)
- Garrett P. Serviss, The Moon Metal
- Curt Siodmak, The Eggs From Lake Tanganyika
- Hugo Gernsback, The Magnetic Storm
- Edgar Allan Poe, The Sphinx
- Jules Verne, A Trip To The Centre of The Earth (last part of serial)
- Clement Fezandié, Doctor Hackensaw's Secrets: The Secret of the Invisible Girl
Each story has a full page illustration. There are a very few small advertisements (magic tricks, trusses, etc.) and classified advertisements (For sale: Rharostine "B" Eliminator, $15).
[edit] References
- Ackerman, Forrest J (1997). Forrest J Ackerman's World of Science Fiction. Los Angeles: RR Donnelley & Sons Company. ISBN 1-57544-069-5.
- ^ Ackerman. “Amazing! Astounding! Incredible! Pulp Science Fiction”, World of Science Fiction, 117-118.
- ^ Amazing Stories And Undefeated Magazines Cancelled. Paizo Publishing. Retrieved on 2006-04-02.
- ^ Ackerman. “Amazing! Astounding! Incredible! Pulp Science Fiction”, World of Science Fiction, 116-117.
- ^ Paul, Frank R.. Amazing Stories July 1926 cover. Frank R. Paul Gallery. Frank Wu. Retrieved on 2006-04-02.
