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 Amazing Stories magazine, sometimes retitled Amazing Science Fiction, was first published in April 1926 in New York City, 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. After the April 2005 issue, the magazine went on "hiatus" and as of March 2006, the magazine's current publisher announced that it would no longer be published.
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.
[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 science ficton: 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 March 1929, however, Gernsback had been forced into bankruptcy (see Experimenter Publishing bankruptcy), and lost control of Amazing, which continued publication without interruption under its new owners. In July 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
 June 1947 issue of Amazing Stories, featuring the "Shaver Mystery" 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.[1] 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.[2]
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, two years after Amazing changed from pulp to digest format, and Fantastic Adventures was merged with the more successful digest Fantastic, which had been founded in 1952. Both digest magazines attempted a more sophisticated or at least "slick" approach during these years, but were soon back to publishing space opera, under editor Howard Browne and his successor, Paul W. Fairman.
In 1959, Cele Goldsmith became editor, and began to publish some of the better new writers, including Ward Moore and Ursula K. Le Guin. She was the first to publish Roger Zelazny, Thomas M. Disch, Keith Laumer and others in a professional magazine.
Amazing continued publication more or less continuously from 1926 until the 1990s under various editors, publishers and formats, after Fantastic had been merged with it in 1980. 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.
[3]
[edit] Publication details
[edit] Similarly named publications
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.
The title Amazing has also been used for unconnected publications including the British science fiction magazine Amazing Science Stories (1951).
[edit] Editors
 Star Trek: The Amazing Stories cover 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 Sol Cohen (Ultimate Publishing Company).[4] During Cohen's first years, the magazine was edited entirely by Joseph Wrzos, who signed himself "Joseph Ross." Cohen concentrated on acquiring artwork (both old and new) and on layouts and production. 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] Media crossovers
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.[citation needed]
Between 1998 and 2000, Amazing Stories published the first (and, to date, only) officially licensed magazine short stories based upon the Star Trek franchise. In 2002, these stories were reissued by Pocket Books in the collection Star Trek: The Amazing Stories.
Amazing Stories also published several Babylon 5 stories written by J. Michael Straczynski.
A short story by science fiction author Isaac Asimov, "Birth of a Notion", tells how a time-travelling physicist briefly visits Hugo Gernsback and plants the idea for the title Amazing Stories.
[edit] July, 1926 issue
Amazing Stories, Volume 1, Number 4, gives a feeling of the original magazine.
[5]
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).
[edit] Other Notable Issues
The August 1928 issue of Amazing Stories has become a sought-after collectors item.[citation needed] 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.
The July 1940 issue of Amazing featured an illustration by Frank R. Paul on the back cover. It showed 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.[6]
[edit] References
- ^ "Advertising News and Notes", New York Times, January 18 1938, pp. 28. "Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, New York and Chicago, has purchased Radio News Magazine and Amazing Stories."
- ^ 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.
- ^ Carlson, Walter. "Advertising: Death and Taxes and Insurance", New York Times, June 23 1965, pp. 62. " [P]urchase by the Ultimate Publishing Company, Inc., of two science-fiction magazines from Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. [Amazing Stories and Fantastic.] … according to Sol Cohen, president of Ultimate."
- ^
Paul, Frank R.. Amazing Stories July 1926 cover. Frank R. Paul Gallery. Frank Wu. Retrieved on 2006-04-02.
- ^
Ackerman. "Amazing! Astounding! Incredible! Pulp Science Fiction", World of Science Fiction, 116-117.
[edit] Further Reading
[edit] External links
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