About Opentopia
Opentopia Directory Encyclopedia Tools

Amazing Stories

Encyclopedia : A : AM : AMA : Amazing Stories

This article is about the magazine. For the television show, see Amazing Stories (TV series)
First issue of Amazing Stories, art by Frank R. Paul
Enlarge
First issue of Amazing Stories, art by Frank R. Paul

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.

Contents

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.

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. 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.

Trivia

Editors

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.

July, 1926 issue

Amazing Stories, Volume 1, Number 4, gives a feeling of the original magazine.

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:

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).

References

External links

 

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

Search Titles
0123456789
ABCDEFGHIJ
KLMNOPQRST
UVWXYZ?

E-mail this article to:

Personal Message: