An Amazing Experiment
1—Prehistory
When Amazing Stories appeared on the news-stands in America in April 1926 it was by no means a bolt from the blue. Science fiction readers were doubtless delighted, but they should not have been surprised. A magazine entirely devoted to science fiction was the next logical step in the progression of science fiction in magazines. Gernsback himself said: “... the concept of Amazing Stories in 1926 was not a haphazard undertaking. Its groundwork has been well prepared for 15 years!”[1]
Fifteen years takes us back to 1911, but we can go still farther back. As we shall see later, 1911 was the year in which Gernsback began publishing science fiction. True it was not called science fiction then. Gernsback would not coin that term for almost twenty years. His term was ‘scientifiction’, but more popular was scientific romance. However in this history I shall refer to it as science fiction, or in its most popular abbreviation—’sf’.
The farthest our history can go back is to the start of periodical publications. The first such periodical appeared in Paris in January 1663 and was called Journal Des Sçavans. Its purpose was to collect together articles by scientists and learned men of Europe. It was edited by Denis De Sallo (1626-1669), the founder of modern periodical criticism. It survived thirteen issues before French censorship brought about its suppression. Nevertheless it was revived the following year and lasted for many, many years.
The birth of the first general magazine in Britain came about in 1731 with Gentleman’s Magazine, founded by Edward Cave (1691-1754), and it was from the popularity of this periodical that the word magazine passed generally into the English language with that particular meaning. It was followed shortly by London Magazine (1732), Scots Magazine (1739) and Royal Magazine (1759). But all these publications had one thing in common—they were magazines of comment, and criticism. It was not until Scottish bookseller William Blackwood (1776-1834) founded Blackwood’s Magazine in 1817 that fiction began to be featured as a regular part of a periodical. It also contained poems, and went to the extent of serializing novels, its most famous contributor being Marian Evans (1819-1880) better known as George Eliot, whose first work, “The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton” was published in Blackwood’s in 1857.
The mid-1800s saw a boom in magazine publications. Many authors began their own periodicals, such as Charles Dickens and Household Words, and William Thackeray with Cornhill. It was Cornhill that was the first magazine to reach a magnificent circulation of 100,000. By January 1865 there were 544 magazines being regularly published in Great Britain and Ireland.
Obviously more and more of the public were turning to magazines. Initial periodicals were more of an ‘in-group’ field. Authors writing for authors, politicians for politicians. But the sweeping reform in education, which began in 1815 with the start of infants’ schools, and reached a peak with the 1870 Education Act, meant that more and more people could read. The expansion of the railways also meant that people spent more time on trains, and a popular way to pass the time was by reading. In 1849 William Henry Smith (1825-1891) secured the privilege of selling books and newspapers at railway stations. Obviously the magazine field had to expand to cater for the greater variety of readers.
Yet we must acknowledge Blackwood’s Magazine as being the first to print science fiction, in the shape, of future war stories. This came about from a single story “The Battle of Dorking” which appeared anonymously in the May 1871 issue. The author was George Tomkyns Chesney (1830-1895), who later became the Conservative M.P. for Oxford. The story told of the invasion of Britain by Prussian troops, and the successful defeat of our army at Dorking. Appearing within a month after the Prussian success in the Franco-Prussian War, the story evoked much reaction among Blackwood’s readers. Countless imitations appeared, and there is no denying that “The Battle of Dorking” did much to bring about the inclusion of that type of science fiction in magazines.
The real break came in 1881. In that year George Newnes (1851-1910) started Tit-Bits, a pot-pourri of human interest stories. And in January 1891 came The Strand Magazine, the first magazine of its kind to sell for just sixpence. (Cornhill’s for instance had been twice that price thirty years earlier). The emphasis in Strand was on easy-to-read stories, and a mélange of factual articles on every facet of life. Strand was instantly popular, due in no uncertain terms to its publication of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes adventures.
Imitations flooded the market: Pearson’s Magazine, Ludgate Monthly, Pall Mall Magazine and The Idler being amongst the most prominent. These publications were later to feature the science fiction of such renowned authors as H. G. Wells, George Griffiths and Arthur Conan Doyle. For instance Wells’s “The War of the Worlds” was serialized in Pearson’s Magazine, starting in the April 1897 issue. George Griffith was to be found in Pearson’s Weekly with “Valdar the Oft-Born” which commenced in the February 2nd 1895 issue.
In fact from 1890 onwards the popular magazines of Great Britain were regular markets for science fiction as popularized by these authors. What’s more, at the turn of the century advances in printing techniques resulted in better-finished copies of periodicals being produced at greater speeds.
But already Britain was behind her trans-Atlantic cousin. Popular magazines had come upon the scene just in advance of George Newnes’ ideas, but even so science fiction had been a regular part of literary magazine publishing since the days of Edgar Allan Poe. Britain did not figure as a major market of science fiction for thirty years in comparison with the U.S.A.
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) won a fifty-dollar prize for his science fiction story, “Ms. Found in a Bottle”. The contest was sponsored by The Baltimore Saturday Visitor, and the story appeared in that periodical’s issue dated October 19th 1833. Shortly afterwards Poe became connected with the Southern Literary Messenger, published in Richmond, Virginia. The March 1835 issue carried “Berenice”, and within months Poe was its assistant editor. It also published his moon adventure “Hans Pfaal”. He left that magazine in 1837, and in 1839 became connected with Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine, and from 1842-1843 edited Graham’s Magazine. These were all leading American journals, and there is no doubt that Poe’s influence on American readership was significant. His fiction could be found in many periodicals, not least Godey’s Lady’s Book, which had been founded in 1830 and was renowned for its coloured fashion plates. Since most of Poe’s fiction was fantasy, it obviously contributed towards the inclusion of fantasy in other periodicals.
And consequently Poe’s successor to the bizarre, Fitz-James O’Brien (1828-1862), found a ready market for his fiction. His most famous science fiction story, ‘The Diamond Lens’ appeared in Atlantic Monthly for January 1858. The same magazine published his “The Wondersmith” (October 1859), but a major market, for such fiction as “What Was It?” was Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, which had first appeared in 1850. Many of O’Brien’s stories appeared in this magazine, which went on to regularly publish science fiction stories by the great names of literature, including Mark Twain and Edward Bellamy. Before long Overland Monthly (1868) appeared, then Scribner’s Monthly (1870). These four magazines were among the leaders in American periodicals both for the high quality of their content and their wide readership.
But a force to be reckoned with was the juvenile audience. Harper’s and Scribner’s were aimed at the American middle and upper classes. In the 1860s Irwin Beadle had commenced American Novels, a cheap, regular publication that sold for a dime. The term soon was born – dime-novels. (Britain had its equivalent in the penny-dreadfuls of the Victorian era). The dime-novel entered a boom period in the 1870s, and the prominent publisher was Frank Tousey, its leading author for science fiction, Luis Senarens (1865-1939). Tousey published a regular juvenile series called Boys Of New York, and in its issue for February 28th 1876, began serialization of “Frank Reade and His Steam Man of the Prairies” by Harry Enton. Several more Frank Reade adventures appeared, but when Enton tired of the idea Senarens took over, with “Frank Reade Jr., and His Steam Wonder”. Senarens was but fourteen at that time, although Tousey was not aware of the fact. Few readers knew of Senarens’ existence either since the stories appeared with the by-line ‘Noname’. But New York’s youngsters were agog with the Frank Reade Jr., adventures that Senarens churned out at a remarkable rate. Tousey later started another dime-novel series Young Men Of America, for which Senarens wrote a series around boy inventor, Jack Wright.
As is apparent, the theme for these adventures was always a new invention, and consequently they were termed ‘invention stories’ So popular were they that many imitations appeared from the various publishing houses, most notable being Good News from Street & Smith Publishers. Street & Smith had been formed in 1855, and were formidable rivals to Tousey to start dabbling in his field. Such rivalry was no doubt a spur to Tousey to gamble, and with Frank Reade Jr., stories still guaranteeing circulation builders he took a historic plunge.
His gamble was a regular weekly publication to be devoted entirely to ‘invention’ stories. Entitled Frank Reade Library its first issue appeared on September 24th 1892. Although strictly speaking these amounted to a series of paperback books, there is no denying that it was the first regular publication of science fiction in magazine format. The issues usually contained 32 pages of demy-octavo size (about 8¼ X 5½ inches). The series was almost exclusively written by Luis Senarens, and included reprinting all the previously published Frank Reade stories. It remained weekly up until February 5th 1897 when it went semi-monthly. Its last edition appeared 192 issues later in August 1898, when Tousey decided it was best to give the series a rest. Certainly the series was popular, and it was only the hostility of many Americans, who maintained that dime novels were harming their children’s education, that caused it to decline.
Nevertheless in 1902 Sinclair Tousey carried out his father’s wishes and published Frank Reade Weekly Magazine. It was all reprint, and its first issue was dated October 31st, just over seven weeks after Frank Tousey’s death. Frank Reade Weekly lasted until August 26th 1904, and consequently the Luis Senarens’ invention stories can lay claim to not only having given birth to the first regular sf publication, but the first regular sf reprint publication!
But by this time the dime novel was on the decline. Before Frank Reade Library had appeared in 1892 we must look back to a decade earlier, and another children’s magazine: The Golden Argosy.
Frank Andrew Munsey was born at Mercer in Maine on August 21st 1854. He moved to New York in 1882, where at the age of twenty-eight he began publication of a regular children’s weekly, The Golden Argosy, first issue December 9th 1882. As the years passed, Munsey’s interest in the children’s market waned, even though the magazine was highly profitable. He consequently changed the title to The Argosy (December 1st 1888), and began to expand his field by starting Munsey’s Magazine in February 1889. The Argosy now began to devote itself to the adult audience, and it thereby became the first adult adventure pulp magazine. It was the standard pulp magazine size (7 x 10 inches—super royal octavo). Science fiction became a regular part of its content, initially by reprinting such novels as “The Conquest of the Moon” by André Laurie (the nom de guerre of Paschal Grousset, a great friend of Jules Verne), which was serialized from its November 16th 1889 issue. Argosy became monthly in April 1894, and would remain so until September 1917. In January 1905 a companion magazine, All-Story appeared. Munsey would also publish All-American Fiction, Scrap Book, Live Wire and Cavalier among his titles. These in particular were the greatest repository for science fiction in the American magazine market from 1894 to 1926.
Munsey’s magazines were formidable rivals to the other pulp publishers, in particular Street & Smith. They launched their own pulp adventure title, Popular Magazine, in 1904, but this is not remembered with the same affection and nostalgia as the Munsey titles. Only such magazines as Herman Umbstaetter’s The Black Cat, which began in October 1895 and survived till October 1920 (by then known as The Thriller) and The Clack Book which had but twelve issues in 1896/7, evoke any such yearnings in old-time fans.
While Argosy reached its peak in 1907, and in general the adventure pulp magazine was at its height before World War I, Argosy’s strength in science fiction did not really start until 1912. This is one year after Gernsback entered the field.
Brief mention should be made here of science fiction outside America and Britain, only because we must be chagrined at the fact that science fiction magazines appeared outside the English language first. A quasi-sf magazine called Mirpriklusheniya (World of Adventures) appeared in Tsarist Russia in 1903. Its early issues, according to the late Willy Ley “... consisted mainly of translations of Jules Verne, but with a sprinkling of Russian authors, one of whom was a lady specializing in interplanetary romances.”[2] The magazine outlasted the War and Revolutions and was last sighted in 1923.
Another quasi-sf magazine appeared in Germany. Kapitãn Mors was apparently a monthly periodical at first, starting in 1908, but later missing months. It managed to survive for at least 180 issues until 1914.
A Swedish magazine, Hugin, can lay the best claim to being the first all sf magazine, although it was written single-handedly by its editor Otto Witt (1875-1923). It saw 85 issues from April 7, 1916 to January 15,1920. Its fictional quality was negligible and Witt was regarded as something of a fanatic, but his pioneering efforts should not be forgotten even if they had little if any effect on the science fiction field as a whole.
So now we come to 1911, the year Gernsback pointed to as the genesis of Amazing Stories. Hugo Gernsback was born in Luxembourg City on August 16th 1884. At the age of 19 he emigrated to the United States and set up in the dry cell battery business. One of Gernsback’s major interests was radio, having designed the first home radio set in 1905. He subsequently issued a radio catalogue, and when the battery business failed he launched the first ever radio magazine, Modern Electrics, in 1908.
In 1911, finding a space in the journal, Gernsback began an episode in the history of “Ralph 124C 41+”. This first part appeared in the April 1911 issue, and subsequently in eleven further episodes until March 1912. Thereafter science fiction became a regular art of the contents of the magazine, particularly such series as Jacques Morgan’s “Mr Fosdick” stories which began in 1913, and Clemente Fezandie’s yarns. Modern Electrics was renamed Electrical Experimenter that year, and it was in that periodical that Gernsback began his “Scientific Adventures of Baron Munchhausen”, in May 1915. In 1919 Gernsback launched Radio News, and Electrical Experimenter later metamorphosed into Science and Invention.
“Ralph 124C 41+” was subtitled ‘A Romance of the Year 2660’, and is heavy reading these days. It is remembered as a veritable encyclopedia of predictions, such as microfilm, tape recorders, vending machines, fluorescent lighting. It set the pattern for the fiction in Gernsback’s magazine, and that was essentially a scientific article in fiction form - basic technological extrapolation.
At the other extreme was the scientific romance appearing in Munsey’s magazines. Concurrent with Gernsback’s “Ralph”, Cavalier was serializing two science fiction novels, Garrett Serviss’ “The Second Deluge”, and George Allan England’s remarkable “The Elixir of Hate”. By this time Serviss was 60 years old, and had reached the peak of his career. But England, then just 34, was a rising star. Following “The Elixir of Hate”, Cavalier began publication of “Darkness and Dawn”, England’s novel of a far future, degenerate Earth. Yet, hardly was the serial underway, than All-Story began “Under the Moons of Mars” by Norman Bean. It transpired that Bean was a certain Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950), whose name appeared correctly on a second story “Tarzan of the Apes” in the October All-Story. A second Martian adventure, “The Gods of Mars” began in the January 1913 All-Story, and soon the adventures of John Carter and those of Tarzan would vie for popularity in the pulps.
The public fell head over heels for the Burroughs’s adventure stories. Obviously he would be imitated, and Munsey’s editors, particularly Bob Davis, looked for the best from the authors. It was as a result of this that people like John U. Giesy, Austin Hall, Homer Eon Flint, Charles B. Stilson, Junius B. Smith and others began to write scientific romances for Munsey. All-Story, up until now monthly, went weekly from 1914. In 1916, that one magazine would publish such stories as Austin Hall’s “Almost Immortal”, Burroughs’s “Thuvia, Maid of Mars” and “Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar”; “Box 991” by Giesy and J. B. Smith, “Minos of Sardanes” by Charles Stilson, and “The Sea Demons” by Victor Rousseau. And in 1917 it made another scoop. The issue for November 24th carried “Through the Dragon Glass”, the first story by Abraham Merritt (1884-1943). At the start of 1918, “The People of the Pit” appeared, and then in June, “The Moon Pool”.
“The Moon Pool”, and its sequel, “The Conquest of the Moon Pool” (which started in the February 15th 1919 All-Story) shot Merritt into the front of the popularity ranks. The scientific content was virtually nil. In truth the stories were fantasy, but nevertheless as works of imagination they had little equal. The effect that Merritt was to have on later science fiction writers was profound. With Merritt and Burroughs in one corner, and Gernsback in the other, science fiction would appear to be a hermaphrodite of two highly estranged parents. But surprises are always in store in the science fiction world.
The first specialist fiction magazine in the English language, outside the dime-novels, was not a science fiction magazine. It was Detective Story Magazine, selling for fifteen cents, and published weekly from October 5th 1915, by none other than Street & Smith. And it was Street & Smith who toyed with the idea of a science fiction magazine, even before Gernsback. It happened in 1919, when Harold Hersey was engaged as editor for just such a publication. Unfortunately when The Thrill Book appeared, it was only just another adventure pulp. As time is wont to distort facts, so today, over half a century since The Thrill Book appeared, the magazine has come to be regarded as a science fiction publication. But who better to deny that than the editor himself. As he said in his autobiography, “Pulpwood Editor” (1937):
“It seems that I enjoy a reputation as editor and publisher in the fantasy field, far out of proportion to my just deserts. I failed miserably with The Thrill Book in 1919, a pulp that included many excellent pseudo-science yarns by Murray Leinster and others in its several issues, but which was not entirely devoted to this type of story.”[3]
Murray Leinster is perhaps the best remembered name from the days of The Thrill Book. The magazine appeared fortnightly, priced at fifteen cents, and its first issue was dated March 1st 1919. It contained a variety of fiction, from lycanthropy in Greye La Spina’s “Wolf of the Steppes”, to straight adventure as in “The Ivory Hunters” by W. G Garey. Science fiction in the shape of Donovan Bayley’s “The Man Who Met Himself” was not far away however. Murray Leinster did not appear until the tenth issue, dated July 15th 1919, with “A Thousand Degrees Below Zero”. By that time Harold Hersey had handed over the editorship to Ronald Oliphand, and the magazine began to veer away even farther from science fiction. It contained a highly informative editorial department called “Goss-Trails” which often gave much inside information, and all in all could be viewed as a more personal magazine than many of the other adventure pulps. Certainly its letter column roared with praise, including comments from no lesser personality than Dr. John U. Giesy himself.
The Thrill Book survived sixteen issues, and died on October 15th 1919, leaving readers with a memory of what might have been.
1919 was a boom year for science fiction. Apart from The Thrill Book, All-Story and Argosy were overrun with excellent science fiction tales. Murray Leinster’s “The Runaway Skyscraper” had appeared in the February 22nd Argosy. Leinster, whose real name was William F. Jenkins (born 1896), had been selling fiction and fillers to magazines like Smart Set since 1915, and always sold to a diversity of markets. But in the memory of science fiction fans it all began with that time travel story in 1919. Less than a month later All-Story carried “The Girl in the Golden Atom” (March 15th issue), which marked the debut of Ray Cummings (1888-1957). The final issues of the year serialized George Allan England’s “The Flying Legion”. Then there was Max Brand’s “That Receding Brow” (All-Story, February 15th), Philip Fisher’s “The Strange Case of Lemuel Jenkins” (All-Story, July 26th), “The Lord of Death” and “The Queen of Life” by Homer Eon Flint (both All-Story, May 10th and August 16th respectively), John Giesy’s “The Mouthpiece of Zitu” (serialized from July 5th to August 2nd All-Story), Austin Hall’s “The Man Who Saved the Earth” (Argosy, December 13th), and his novel “Into the Infinite” (All-Story, April 12th to May 17th)... and so on and so on. Could there be any denying that the time was ripe for a magazine devoted to the genre? But still one did not materialize.
Nevertheless, the detective fiction field was booming. It attracted the interests of the Rural Publishing Corporation of Chicago, headed by Jacob C. Henneberger (1890-1969), then publishing College Humor and Magazine Of Fun. It was decided to enter the detective field, and mystery writer Edwin Baird was hired to edit Detective Tales. Henneberger, a great fan of Edgar Allan Poe, decided a companion magazine was in order, and so Baird also found himself responsible for Weird Tales, and thereby hangs a tale.
Weird Tales became not so much a magazine as an institution. Its first issue, dated March 1923, with 192 pages, and selling for the frightening price of twenty-five cents, was in no way stupendous. It carried twenty-four stories, mostly a pot-pourri of weird and straight ghost. It did however carry one important story in particular, “Ooze” by Anthony M. Rud, plus the first part of a serial “The Thing of a Thousand Shapes” by Otis Adelbert Kline. “Ooze” was illustrated on the cover, and while doubtless a horror story, the explanation of its bizarre events is completely rational and scientific. Furthermore Cranmer, one of the characters, is described by the narrator as a writer of pseudo-scientific fiction. The ‘ooze’ of the title is actually a giant amoeba, which had gotten out of hand. Today a very familiar theme, but “Ooze” marked its debut in the science fiction field.
Weird Tales was the first magazine to be devoted entirely to fantasy fiction. Obviously the emphasis was on horror fiction, but it attracted many science fiction stories. In this magazine, they were referred to as weird-scientific, but that does not alter the fact that Weird Tales, more so than All-Story or Thrill Book, soon became the major market for science fiction. Unfortunately this was not to be under Edwin Baird, even though he would first publish H. P. Lovecraft, Otis Kline, Frank Owen, Clark Ashton Smith (poetry only) amongst others. Good though Weird Tales was, it was not selling. Not sufficiently to recoup the expenses incurred. With its bumper anniversary issue, dated May-June-July 1924, Weird Tales nearly folded. It is only because of the determination of Henneberger that the magazine continued, that it survived. Real Detective Tales was sold, the money put into Weird Tales, and the title handed over to the printers, who managed to keep it going until the magazine paid off its debts.
And so Farnsworth Wright found himself editor of Weird Tales, the first issue under his control appearing in November 1924. Wright admitted that he was not over fond of science fiction, but there was no denying reader approval, and consequently it remained. By now, the “Ooze”-type of story was a regular feature. Basically the plot would tell of a scatter-brained scientist who had managed to create or invent a horrendous monstrosity which immediately broke free and was out of control. A perfect example of this was Otis A. Kline’s “The Malignant Entity” which had appeared in the anniversary issue of Weird Tales in 1924. Five years later the plot would still appear, almost unaltered, in such tales as H. F. Scotten’s “The Thing in the House”.
Apart from H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937), whose ‘Cthulhu’ Mythos was a category in its own right, only one author broke the bounds of ‘laboratory-monster’ science fiction in the early days of Weird Tales, and that was the now forgotten Nictzin Dyalhis. His first story, “When The Green Star Waned”, told of the invasion of Earth by Venusians. (He later wrote a sequel, “The Oath of Hul Jok” in the September 1928 issue). This story appeared in Weird Tales for April 1925, and was afforded a cover illustration. It was straight, bizarre science fiction adventure, but obviously the kind readers of the magazine enjoyed. It was thus possible for the road to be open for the stories of Edmond Hamilton, who took Weird Tales by storm a year later, with his Martian invasion of Earth novel, “Across Space” (September to November 1926).
Before 1926 therefore, there were three types of science fiction. Firstly the scientific romance epitomized by Burroughs and Merritt that appeared in the Munsey publications. Secondly the scientific extrapolation of Gernsback, and thirdly the weird and bizarre science fiction of Weird Tales. These types of science fiction had not come about through authors’ desire, but through the publishing policies of the magazines, something so easily overlooked today.
If you have been wondering what Gernsback was doing all this time, then wonder no more. Radio News and Science & Invention had been regular markets for science fiction for over a decade. His scientific writers were becoming more and more prolific, with the result that a backlog of fiction accumulated at Gernsback’s offices. He therefore made the August 1923 issue of Science & Invention a special ‘scientifiction’ issue; carrying six stories, plus many extrapolative articles. The issue was a success, and obviously Gernsback thought the time was right But, in his own words:
“Several years ago when I first conceived the idea of publishing a scientification magazine, a circular letter was sent to some 25,000 people informing them that a new magazine, by the name Scientifiction was shortly to be launched. The response was such that the idea was given up for two years.”[4]
When Gernsback finally went ahead, he did it without prior warning, and was not capable of second thoughts this time. But as I said earlier, no one was surprised when Amazing Stories appeared. As you can see, it was already far overdue.
* * * *
2—Three Years Alone
Gernsback was certain not to have Amazing Stories overlooked on the bookstalls. All the other multitude of pulp publications, including Weird Tales and All-Story were the standard pulp size of 7 x 10 inches. Amazing Stories was to be large-size (8½ X 11 inches, or demy quarto), and its paper of such heavy stock that its ninety-six pages were as thick as the 192 page pulps. Strictly speaking therefore Amazing Stories was not a pulp magazine. Its paper was slightly better quality, and it was essentially a companion fiction magazine to the scientific Science & Invention. It cost twenty-five cents and was published on the fifth of each month, by the Experimenter Publishing Company, with offices at 53 Park Place, New York. (President of the company was Hugo, but it is often forgotten that the Treasurer was his brother, Sidney Gernsback).
The front cover was the work of forty-five year old, Austrian artist Frank R. Paul, who had originally been a cartoonist for Jersey Journal, before Gernsback attracted him to Electrical Experimenter in 1914. The cover, showing some beaming ice-skaters on a frozen world, with the great orb of Saturn seemingly inches away, depicted a scene from Jules Verne’s “Off On a Comet”, which was serialized in two parts.
In his editorial, Gernsback explained his intentions in publishing the magazine. First he defined science fiction:
“By ‘scientifiction’ I mean the Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, and Edgar Allan Poe type of story—a charming romance intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic vision.” . . . “But with the ever increasing demands on us for this sort of story, and more of it, there was only one thing to do—publish a magazine in which the scientific fiction type of story will hold forth exclusively.”
Gernsback had high hopes for science fiction, as later in the editorial he explains:
“Not only do these amazing tales make tremendously interesting reading—they are also always instructive. They supply knowledge that we might not otherwise obtain—and they supply it in a very palatable form. For the best of these modern writers of scientifiction have the knack of imparting knowledge, and even inspiration, without once making us aware that we are being taught”[5]
Without a doubt it was Gernsback’s belief that readers would be instructed through science fiction, a belief that he always maintained. (Four years later when setting a competition for a slogan for Science Wonder Stories his own suggestion was ‘Science Taught Through Fiction’).
Unfortunately he did not back this up in the fiction he printed, the reason being that that kind of fiction was not available. It was there in small doses, but as a rule most writers did not have the knack of making their stories read excitingly and not like a lecture. Often in such a story the narrator would stop in the middle of a scene to explain, in text-book language, the reasons for some recent occurrence, sometime punctuated by cries of: “Why didn’t I realize that!” It was the saving of Amazing Stories that so few of these stories appeared. For the most part the magazine was filled with wonderful adventures, and why? Because Amazing Stories was initially chiefly reprints. Between April 1926 and July 1928 with the first eighteen serials, all but one were reprints. (Verne and Wells had five each of these). The first two issues were entirely reprint, the first new story (Wertenbaker’s “The Coming of the Ice”) not appearing until the third (June) issue.
For the record that first ever issue of a science fiction magazine contained, besides the Jules Verne serial, the following fiction: “The New Accelerator” by H. G. Wells, part one of “The Man From the Atom” by G. Peyton Wertenbaker, “The Thing From—Outside” by George Allan England, “The Man Who Saved the World” by Austin Hall and “The Facts in the Case on M. Valdemar” by Edgar Allan Poe.
If was a wise choice. There was a wide diversity of theme and style, from Wells’s amusing tale of two scientists who take a drug which accelerates their rate of living, to England’s psychological horror tale of alien invasion. However, one would have to delve deep and long to cull any great scientific knowledge from the contents. But there is little doubt that people enjoyed them, and Amazing Stories shot into the fore in circulation, within months exceeding 100,000.
Gernsback was Editor/Publisher of Amazing Stories, and while he wrote the editorials, decided the policy and had the last word, he did not do the donkey work. Two people in particular are worth mentioning here for their part in this prototype publication: C. A. Brandt and T. O’Conor Sloane.
Brandt was a chemist born in Germany in 1879. Gernsback learnt from a book dealer that Brandt had a fabulous library of science fiction, and that he was an ideal choice to help in the selection of great world science fiction. Brandt consequently became Literary Editor of Amazing Stories, and the science fiction reprints were invariably his choice. Brandt stayed with Amazing Stories for a considerable time, his major contribution being the regular book reviews that became a standard feature of Amazing Stories up until 1938. He died in 1947 before finalizing matters in connection with a new sf magazine he was intending to publish.
Thomas O’Conor Sloane was born in New York on November 24th 1851, and became the Professor of Natural Sciences at Seton Hall college in South Orange, New Jersey in 1888. A string of inventions are connected with him, mostly the self-recording photometer for determining the illuminating power of gas. In 1877 he had described a new process for determining sulphur in illuminating gas. He was also the author of several books, including “Electric Toy Making For Amateurs” (1892) and “Rapid Arithmetic” (1922). A benign, bearded old gentleman, he was seventy-four when he became Associate Editor of Amazing Stories. Essentially Sloane was the editor. He read the new fiction and moulded the magazine’s contents, leaving the gimmickry and ideas to Gernsback. Sloane, as we shall see, would later inherit Amazing Stories, which he would edit until 1938. By then he was 86, and consequently the oldest science fiction editor there has ever been. He died on August 7th 1940.
Another name figured on the masthead of Amazing Stories, that of Wilbur C. Whitehead. In his obituary in the September 1931 issue, it was said: “In the early days he influenced the conduct of the magazine by his advice. He had an extensive knowledge of scientific fiction, which was his hobby.”[6] Whitehead is better remembered as an expert on auction bridge.
Amazing Stories was scheduled as a monthly, but Gernsback put the suggestion to the readers to vote on what they thought the ideal schedule would be. The results, reported in his editorial in the September 1926 issue, were Monthly 498, Semi-Monthly 32,644. The overwhelming vote in favour of a fortnightly Amazing Stories resulted in Gernsback admitting he would try and attain such a schedule. It never came, but Gernsback offered something much greater. More of that in a moment.
Gernsback realized the potential of his readership. In the June 1926 editorial he remarked on his surprise at learning of the hidden army of fans in the country, “who seem to be pretty well orientated in this literature”.[7] Obviously Amazing Stories had attracted ardent followers who had relentlessly ploughed through the Munsey magazines in search of their favourite literature, science fiction, but who now had it ready-packaged. The future of Amazing Stories was assured when Gernsback decided to respond to this readership, and this he did in two ways.
The first was by way of competitions. It would soon become synonymous with Gernsback and his science fiction magazines that not many months would pass without some kind of competition. The first was in the December 1926 issue. The ever capable Frank Paul had drawn a startling cover, and readers were requested to submit stories based around the cover picture. An added enticement was the $250.00 first prize. The response was beyond even Gernsback’s wildest dreams. In his March editorial he declared that over three hundred and sixty manuscripts had been received.
His second achievement was the inclusion of a letter column in the magazine, called “Discussions”. Letter columns were not new in magazines, not even in specialist magazines. Street & Smith’s Detective Story Magazine carried one, and from its earliest days Weird Tales had sported “The Eyrie”. But somehow “Discussions” became something different, and this is due to the science fiction fan himself. After each letter Gernsback published the name and full address of the correspondent, and this meant that readers could write to fellow fans, and even visit them.
The first “Discussions” appeared in the January 1927 issue. For the record the first named letter writer was Professor Jack Edwards of San Francisco. (I say first named, because two other letters were quoted from, but unfortunately the readers were ridiculed, and consequently their names were not printed. One reader had said that Jules Verne was ‘a very promising writer’).
In 1927 Gernsback offered a bonus to his avid readers. To celebrate Amazing Stories’ anniversary, an Annual was issued. The intention here was to publish a complete novel, and the issue was padded out with shorter pieces. The Annual appeared in June, and the lead novel was none other than “The Master Mind of Mars”, specially commissioned by Gernsback from Edgar Rice Burroughs. The rest of the issue was all reprint, made up mostly from stories that had already appeared in Amazing Stories during its first year. Obviously Gernsback was aiming here at the Munsey audience not yet attracted to his publication. He succeeded. Even though the Annual cost fifty cents, it was a complete sell-out. It carried thirty-two more pages than the monthly, and was a very heavy and hefty package. With the Annual’s success, and repeated reader enthusiasm that Amazing Stories should go fortnightly, Gernsback compromised. Starting in January 1928, he issued a Quarterly.
Amazing Stories Quarterly was a real bonanza. 144 large size pages for fifty cents, carrying two novels, as well as several short stories. Although the first issue carried one reprint novel, “When the Sleeper Wakes” by H. G. Wells, it did carry a 20,000 plus word short novel by Earl L. Bell, “The Moon of Doom”. (This was one of the early disaster stories of the moon falling towards the Earth and the resultant catastrophes).
Since “The Moon of Doom” was of novel length it ranks as only the third original novel that Gernsback had published in his fiction magazines. As stated previously of the first eighteen serials, only one was original. This was “Beyond The Pole” by veteran author A. Hyatt Verrill (1871-1954). However it was obvious that Gernsback was in receipt of longer material, since he was serializing Ray Cummings’ novels in Science & Invention. What is more his choice of reprint novels was not entirely in line with his policy of learning science through fiction. For instance the most popular novel of the first two years was Merritt’s “The Moon Pool” in the May, June and July 1927 issues. Merritt would have been the first to admit that this story was more fantasy than science fiction. Yet this story proved to be one of the most influential he published, many authors later pointing to this work as the inspiration for their own fiction.
When Gernsback next published an original serial in Amazing Stories it made history. “The Skylark of Space” began in the August 1928 issue, as a three part extravaganza. What readers did not know was that this story had been started in 1915, and in fact had been rejected by every book and magazine publisher since 1920. The authors were Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby. Mrs Garby had actually only assisted Smith at the inception of the novel, which was virtually all his own work. The novel covered the search by super-scientist Richard Seaton for his betrothed, kidnapped by the villainous Dr. Marc DuQuesne. As a backcloth, Smith chose the entire universe, and the awesome space ship Skylark toured the cosmos encountering multifarious adventures with countless strange aliens.
Readers went berserk over Smith’s novel, and if Merritt’s “The Moon Pool” was the most influential novel of this period then Smith’s was an exceedingly close second. With this novel superscience really got underway. Hitherto the interplanetary stories of Amazing Stories had been confined to the solar system. Now there were no holds barred. Ironic that it should take a story thirteen years old to create such a precedent.
Smith’s novel closed in the October 1928 issue, leaving fans panting for a sequel. One was not forthcoming for two years, and by that time another author was following in Smith’s footsteps, the youthful John Campbell.
In the first three years of Amazing Stories and its companion Quarterly, a considerable number of authors had made their debuts. Some are sadly forgotten today, others remembered with fond nostalgia. Among the brighter stars were the following. A. Hyatt Verrill (October 1926), Miles J. Breuer (January 1927), Bob Olsen (June 1927), Francis Flagg (November 1927), David H. Keller (February 1928), Fletcher Pratt (May 1928), Harl Vincent (June 1928), Stanton Coblentz (Summer 1928), R. F. Starzl (Summer 1928), Edward E. Smith (August 1928), Jack Williamson (December 1928) and S. P. Meek (Winter 1929). These dozen authors can all claim to be Gernsback discoveries. Of them, apart from E. E. Smith, David H. Keller was by far the most popular, and 1928 was his year. Keller’s policy was to concentrate on the social implications of science, rather than the invention itself. His debut “The Revolt of the Pedestrians”, portrayed a future where the automobile has taken over, and the remaining pedestrians are treated like animals. “The Psychophonic Nurse” predicts a future where mothers leave their children to robot nurses. Keller’s fiction was a good test of the freedom of Gernsback’s publishing and editorial policy. For instance, “A Biological Experiment” in the June 1928 issue, explored a future where the urge for motherhood and fatherhood still existed in a world where all men and women are sterile. Such a story was profound for its period. Even more so was “The Menace”, the title given to four connected stories dealing with the revolution of the American Negro after he had perfected a way of turning his skin pigmentation white. When Negro scientists succeeded in extracting gold from seawater their plans for world domination come to fruition. This example shows admirably the latitude allowed by Gernsback in his publications.
Astute readers may have noticed several names missing from the twelve listed above, two in particular. Where, oh where, are Murray Leinster and Edmond Hamilton, or for that matter Ray Cummings, Ralph Milne Farley and Clare Winger Harris? All were important science fiction writers of this period. Here we come to an interesting point in connection with the Gernsback magazines. None of these authors was a Gernsback discovery, and with one exception none owes fame to Gernsback. The one exception is female author Clare Winger Harris, who was a favourite contributor to Amazing Stories during 1927 and 1928 with such tales as “The Fate of the Poseidonia” and “The Miracle of the Lily”, but the fact remains that her real start was in Weird Tales for July 1926 with “A Runaway World”. Only one other of her stories appeared in that magazine, but nevertheless she was a discovery of Farnsworth Wright.
Ralph Milne Farley’s popularity rested on the Venusian adventures related in his series about “The Radio Man” which began in Argosy in 1924. Farley (real name Roger Sherman Hoar), was essentially a Munsey author, and never once appeared in Gernsback’s Amazing Stories. He did not contribute to science fiction magazines until 1930. Much the same applies to Ray Cummings and Murray Leinster. Both were quite at home in the Munsey magazines. Ray Cummings did contribute to Gernsback’s Science & Invention, but despite his popularity he only appeared in one issue of Amazing Stories, with the lead novelette in the October 1927 number, “Around the Universe”. Even then Weird Tales had the upper hand with two Cummings’ serials within months of each other. Murray Leinster soon attracted the eye of Gernsback who reprinted many of his early stories (“The Runaway Skyscraper”, “The Mad Planet” and “The Red Dust”) in Amazing’s first year. Yet these stories were six years old. Leinster stuck to Argosy, but yet again a science fiction serial, “The Strange People” appeared in Weird Tales in 1928.
But Edmond Hamilton was quite another matter. Hamilton began in the August 1926 issue of Weird Tales with “The Monster God of Mamurth”, and in fact had six other stories in that magazine, including two serials, before he was introduced to Amazing Stories readers as a ‘new’ author in January 1928. Hamilton’s output was from the start nothing less than prolific, and Weird Tales was initially his major market. All his fiction at that time was sf, and as early as February 1929 he introduced his concept of an interstellar Council of Suns, whose laws were enforced by the Interstellar Patrol. Readers who clung to Amazing Stories and pooh-poohed the ghost-stories of Weird Tales were missing some historical writing.
There was much toing-and-froing from Weird Tales to Amazing Stories. Hamilton and Clare Harris went one way, David Keller went the other. One momentous scoop of Gernsback in this period was acquiring “The Colour Out of Space” by Weird Tales’ major author H. P. Lovecraft. The story rejected by both Wright and Davis of Argosy has since become a classic of its kind, and I wonder how many of those who have read it realized it was the first printed in the September 1927 Amazing Stories.
From April 1926 to April 1929 Gernsback had the monopoly of science fiction magazine publishing, but quite obviously not the monopoly of science fiction. Weird Tales and Argosy remained his closest rivals, and although Argosy exceeded Amazing Stories in circulation, its science fiction content was shrinking. Weird Tales on the other hand had a far smaller circulation of dedicated readers. That magazine had slight rivalry from a short-lived magazine, Tales of Magic & Mystery, which survived for five issues from December 1927 to April 1928. It succeeded in attracting Weird Tales’ contributors, notably Lovecraft, Frank Owen and Archie Binns. However it cannot claim Weird Tales’ success at having been the magazine to carry the first works of Disney writer Robert Spencer Carr (“The Composite Brain”, March 1925) and Tennessee Williams (“The Vengeance of Nitocris”, August 1928).
More of a rival was the large-size pulp magazine Ghost Stories, which had appeared two months after Amazing Stories in June 1926, as a monthly publication. Ghost Stories made some attempts at publishing so called ‘true’ ghost tales with fake photographs. It was a moderate success, coming in the wake of its big companion magazines True Story and True Detective Mysteries. The publisher was Bernarr MacFadden (1868-1955), the health fanatic who had started Physical Culture in 1898. That magazine had attained a formidable circulation, and he was duly worried at the likely success of Gernsback’s competing titles, notably Your Body.
One day Gernsback woke to find bankruptcy proceedings filed against the Experimenter Publishing Company. He was forced to sell the titles to the magazines (Science & Invention had folded in 1928, but Radio News was still published). It was purchased by Radio-Science Publications Inc. of Jamaica Avenue in New York, and subsequently by Teck Publications Inc. of Dunellen, New Jersey. The editorial offices moved first to 381 Fourth Avenue New York, and then to 222 West 39th Street.
But Gernsback was no longer its editor. Although Miriam Bourne was by now Managing Editor, Arthur Lynch was brought in as Editor-in-Chief. However the main job was done by Sloane. The change came with the May 1929 issue, and by the November 1929 issue Sloane was fully in charge. At the age of 77 he took the magazine into its second era. And what of Gernsback? He was to return later with a vengeance.
* * * *
3—A Gathering of SF
The last issue of Amazing Stories that Gernsback edited was the April 1929 number. In June 1929 he was back with the first issue of Science Wonder Stories. The new publication was published by the Stellar Publishing Corporation, with editorial offices at 96/98 Park Place, New York—within a stone’s throw of the old Experimenter Publishing Company’s offices.
Gernsback was not deserted. Many of the people he had discovered followed him, particularly Frank Paul as illustrator. At Amazing Stories Sloane had to cast around for a new cover artist. Initially Hugh MacKay and Hans Wessolowski filled a few issues, but from February 1930 onwards the mainstay of the magazine was Peruvian artist Leo Morey. Brickbats and roses have been cast upon the works of both Paul and Morey, although in my opinion neither was spectacular. Paul had to be admired for his versatility—it was claimed that he never once drew the same space ship design twice. Paul’s failing however was with people, and continuous studies of his work will soon invoke a disdain for his flat-chested, jodhpur-clad females. Morey on the other hand might not have had the imagination of Paul but was passably the more artistic of the two.
Science Wonder Stories was large-size, 96 pages, and sold for 25 cents. Monthly, its first issue began a serial “The Reign of the Ray” by Fletcher Pratt and Irwin Lester. Readers of the first issue were doubly surprised to find announcements of another magazine, Air Wonder Stories. The companion title appeared in July 1929, same format, but specializing in aerial and interplanetary adventures. That first issue led with a reprint novel, “Ark of the Covenant” by Victor MacClure.
Gernsback did not stop there. The success he had had with Amazing Stories Quarterly warranted a successor. In October 1929 Science Wonder Quarterly appeared, large-size, 144 pages for 50 cents. The lead novel was “The Shot Into Infinity” by German author Otto Willi Gail (1896-1956). To a certain extent in Amazing Stories Gernsback had tried to locate good European science fiction. He had started with Brandt’s translation of Kurt Siodmak’s “The Eggs From Lake Tanganyika”. With his new publications Gernsback ploughed this field with avid enthusiasm, and Francis Currier’s translation of Gail’s interlunar adventure led the way. Coincidentally Currier’s translation of Hermann Noordung’s “The Problems of Space Flying” was serialized in the first three Science Wonder Stories issues.
Three sf magazines were not enough for Gernsback. He also began a series of original paperback pocketbooks, the Science Fiction Series. With a special offer of twelve books for one dollar, the series led with “The Girl From Mars” by Jack Williamson and Miles Breuer, and within the next few months twelve titles were available.
To top everything, Gernsback experimented one stage further, Starting in January 1930, readers could buy a fourth magazine. Scientific Detective Monthly. Gernsback had a penchant for such stories, having reprinted many of the tales by Edwin Balmer and William MacHarg. Arthur B. Reeve, the author of the Craig Kennedy adventures, was enrolled as Editorial Commissioner, with Gernsback acting as Editor-in-Chief. The donkey work fell on the shoulders of Hector Grey, chiefly because this magazine was so specialist. Strictly speaking it was only borderline science fiction. Although it carried some excellent science fiction, it also carried much that was strictly detective with a smattering of volts. As a result the magazine fell into the chasm between two worlds. After five issues it was retitled Amazing Detective Tales. Two issues later Hector Grey was replaced by David Lasser, but too late. After ten issues, in October 1930, the magazine folded, Gernsback’s first science fiction failure. It came as no surprise though, since it was neither sought after by science fiction fans nor detective fans, other than the most devoted. Nevertheless its existence adds to the evidence for Gernsback’s verve in the publishing field. (By now he had also started Radio-Craft and Short Wave Craft, and later expanded to Everyday Science & Mechanics, Sexology, and even Pirate Stories).
Once again, as Gernsback had left the menial task of editing to Sloane at Experimenter, at Stellar the Managing Editor was David Lasser. Lasser however was some fifty years Sloane’s junior. Born in Baltimore, Maryland on March 20th 1902, Lasser had somehow entered the army in July 1918, and was a member of the U.S. expeditionary force. He was discharged as a sergeant in February 1919, still only sixteen. Then he became an Engineer at Rosendale, Newark, and afterwards an Insurance Agent and then Technical Writer. Lasser later became the Founder President of the American Rocket Society in March 1930 and wrote the first book on space travel in the English language, “The Conquest of Space” (1931). All this amply entitled him to edit a science fiction magazine, but is consequently all the more surprising when one discovers what became of him later in life.
Air Wonder Stories was chiefly a specialist publication, and attracted fewer readers than its companion title. As a saving grace, Gernsback combined the titles, and the single issue Wonder Stories appeared in June 1930. One reason for the name change was that it was felt that “the word ‘Science’ has tended to retard the progress of the magazine, because many people had the impression that it is a sort of scientific periodical rather than a fiction magazine.”[8] This seemed rather a meagre explanation however since the word ‘Science’ was printed in minute, pale print, and ‘Stories’ was always in bolder lettering. After all it had been Gernsback’s intention to teach through science fiction, so one would have thought he would have rather attracted those people interested in science.
Be that as it may, Wonder Stories appeared in June 1930, in direct opposition to Amazing Stories. But lo! Besides the Quarterlies, bookstall hunters discovered a third title, Astounding Stories. Was this yet another Gernsback title? No, it could not be, since the small flag in the top right corner proclaimed, ‘A Clayton Magazine’. What’s more it sold for 20 cents, five cents cheaper than the other magazines. And above all, it was a pulp magazine. Gernsback’s monopoly of the field was now at an end. The pulp publishers at had last decided to enter the science fiction field.
The new magazine was called Astounding Stories of Super Science, of standard pulp size with 144 pages. It was published by William L. Clayton who at one period had Harold Hersey as his head editor. Hersey recalls that he had “discussed plans with Clayton to launch a pseudo-science fantasy sheet”.[9] But obviously Clayton needed more time to think. Some two years after Hersey had left Clayton for MacFadden, and Harry Bates was now one of the lead editors, it appeared Clayton had a bee in his bonnet about having a new magazine. It was Bates who suggested a science fiction magazine, and who created the name Astounding Stories of Super Science.
Its first issue was dated January 1930, and its list of contributors was formidable: Victor Rousseau, Ray Cummings, S. P. Meek, and Murray Leinster amongst them. Apart from Meek, all were straight Munsey authors. The intent was obvious from the outset—Astounding Stories was to be an adventure magazine with just enough science fiction to warrant the title ‘super-science’. The cover, by 47 year old Hans Waldemar Wessolowski (known as Wesso), illustrated a scene from Rousseau’s serial, “The Beetle Horde”, showing our hero having a punch-up with a rather oversized, pugilistic bug. Wesso would be the Paul of the Clayton magazines, being the cover artist on all issues, and illustrative artist in most.
Astounding Stories did not always print science fiction. Occasionally the straight weird story filtered into its pages, but these appeared less and less. Astounding soon became very popular, particularly through the appearances of Ray Cummings —who had four serials and three other stories in the first two years of the magazine, and new favourites Charles W. Diffin and Anthony Gilmore. After two lesser stories, Gilmore shot to fame with his novelette “Hawk Carse” in the November 1931 issue. Here was science fiction in the manner of E. E. Smith, with the courageous Hawk Carse chasing the evil pirate Dr. Ku Sui throughout the Solar System. This novelette and its four sequels is fondly remembered as the essence of the Clayton issues. It was not known for a long time that the real authors behind the pen-name Anthony Gilmore were none other than Editor Harry Bates and his assistant editor, Desmond Hall.
Harry Bates was not solely responsible for Astounding. He already had a clutch of adventure magazines, to which Jungle Stories was later added, and from September 1931 Strange Tales. This magazine was set up in competition with Weird Tales, and it published some excellent fiction by that publication’s big names, Robert Howard, Clark Ashton Smith and Edmond Hamilton, as well as attracting many weird-scientific stories from Astounding’s authors Charles W. Diffin, S. P. Meek and Ray Cummings. Many of its stories were pure science fiction of the monster-in-the-laboratory type, but perhaps its most famous story was Jack Williamson’s “Wolves of Darkness” with his fourth-dimensional treatment of werewolves.
Weird Tales also had a companion magazine. Farnsworth Wright was partial to oriental fiction, pioneered in his magazine by Frank Owen. Later authors, particularly E. Hoffman Price, had chosen the East as the locale for their bizarre mysteries. Finally, in October 1930, a magazine appeared devoted to the sub-genre, Oriental Stories. Every other month, pulp-sized, 144 pages and costing 25 cents, it is of borderline interest to science fiction fans. It carried the occasional science fiction story, particularly when, reborn as Magic Carpet Magazine in 1933, it published Edmond Hamilton’s adventures of Stuart Merrick on the far-off world of Kaldar, with its mysterious spider people.
Of science fiction magazines, however, 1931 dawned with five major titles, Amazing Stories, Wonder Stories, their attendant Quarterlies and Astounding Stories (the suffix of Super Science was dropped with the February 1931 issue). April 1931 saw the birth of another, Miracle Science and Fantasy Stories.
Harold Hersey had left Clayton Publications in 1927 for MacFadden, where as Supervising Editor he had a hand in most publications, particular True Strange Stories and Ghost Stories. But within two years be had established his own Good Story Publishing company, where he specialized in gangster magazines. Elliott Dold was an artist in the company, and he encouraged Hersey to begin his own science fiction magazine. Elliott Dold was drafted as editor, since he commissioned the fiction, although Harold Hersey had a hand in most of the decision-making. This was one of Elliott Dold’s rare attempts at editing. His elder brother, Douglas Dold, had been a competent editor at Clayton Magazines with an adventure magazine, Danger Trail. The remarkable fact about Douglas Dold however was that as a result of an accident in the First World War, he was blind. An assistant was hired to read manuscripts. This must be one of the rare cases of a blind editor.
Miracle Stories was not exactly top quality. The standard 144 pulp pages, this magazine is today one of the rarest science fiction finds, but only the true collector is likely to search it out. The fiction was not exceptional, although the first issue included such names as Ray Cummings, Victor Rousseau and Arthur Burks. By all accounts Dold was attempting to imitate Astounding, even to the extent of including weird fiction. The lead novel to the first issue was his brother’s “Valley of Sin”, a lost race tale. The magazine was scheduled to appear every other month, and true enough a second issue appeared in June 1931. But then no more. In all likelihood Miracle was too much an imitation of Astounding to survive in those Depression days, when twenty cents was at stake. According to Hersey however, “serious illness prevented his (Dold’s) continuing services as editor-artist-writer and I decided to put the magazine aside temporarily”.[10] It was never revived.
By 1931 however, science fiction was becoming a force to be reckoned with in the publishing field. But not the scientific fiction of Gernsback. It was the adventure romance of Munsey that caused the biggest thrill, and obviously here Astounding Stories had much influence. The first ripplings that science fiction characters were saleable commodities had come with the transition of Buck Rogers from story to comic-strip. Buck Rogers had been created by Philip Francis Nowlan, and first appeared in “Armageddon 2419” in the August 1928 Amazing Stories, followed by “The Airlords of Han” in the March 1929 issue. Nowlan transcribed the adventures to be syndicated in comic-strip format in many hundreds of newspapers, as “Buck Rogers in the 21st Century”. The plot outline of super-hero versus arch-criminal was scarcely new, but it took on a different outlook. Here was a theme the pulp adventure magazines could not overlook, and before long titles appeared with whole issues devoted to adventure fiction with a long lead story about some heroic or evil character. In April 1931 came The Shadow, and by mid-1932 was appearing twice monthly. The first science fiction character to appear in such a magazine was Doc Savage, first issue March 1933. Doctor Clark Savage, Jr. had a fabulous combination of scientific skill, mental wizardry and physical prowess, and made a business of helping people out of any strange or bizarre troubles. Every adventure was scripted by Kennth Robeson, a pseudonym for a variety of authors. But virtually all the Doc Savage adventures were the work of Lester Dent. The magazine appeared regularly every month for the next fourteen years, when issues became less regular. In the early 1940’s a ‘Doc Savage’ comic-book also appeared, but that’s another story.
Doc Savage was published by the ubiquitous Street & Smith Publishing Company. One might say that this was their first science fiction magazine if you discount The Thrill Book, but strictly speaking Doc Savage was not such a publication. Usually only the lead-novel was science fiction—the remainder of the issue filled out by the usual adventure stories. It was aimed at a juvenile audience, and was probably the most popular of the character-adventure magazines. As the 1930’s progressed the pulp field became overcrowded with such periodicals. The Spider began in October 1933, Operator 5 in April 1934, Secret 6 in October 1934, and so on.
Further specialization went on in the horror fiction field. Weird Tales by now had become a prestige publication. It was an honour to appear in its pages, at least among fellow authors. Nevertheless Farnsworth Wright was never quite satisfied with the knife-edge economics of his magazine, and always had an eye on his rival publications to keep up with trends.
The competition really began with Dime Mystery Magazine, put out from the newly established Popular Publications of Chicago. Harry Steeger was the President of the Company, and Managing Editor Rogers Terrill. Dime Mystery concentrated on the weird story, and from its first issue in December 1932 proved very popular, and attracted a great deal of Weird Tales’ authors, such as Arthur Burks, Paul Ernst and Hugh Cave. Dime Mystery was certainly not aimed at a juvenile audience, there was a definite slant towards more sexy and sadistic fiction. Popular Publications soon began to expand in this field, with Terror Tales (September 1934) and Horror Stories (January 1935), and before long many imitations sprang up: Spicy Mystery Stories (July 1934), and Mystery Adventure Magazine (January 1935) amongst them.
All this influenced Farnsworth Wright into incorporating sex and sadism into Weird Tales, with the result that apart from the continued appearance of Edmond Hamilton, less and less science fiction appeared in its pages. This period denotes the start of Weird’s decline. Under Wright its heyday lasted from 1928 to 1936. Then, with the deaths of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, the retirement of Clark Ashton Smith, and virtual retirement of Otis Kline, and a move towards sadistic fiction, Weird Tales was no longer considered a regular market for science fiction. In this survey we therefore bid it a fond farewell. (Weird Tales was edited by Wright until 1940, when the magazine changed hands, and Dorothy McIlwraith the editor of Short Stories, took it over until its demise in September 1954, after 279 issues).
All this goes to show the sprouting of specialization in the pulp adventure field in the early 1930’s. Science fiction was but one branch on a tree, but a fairly profitable one nevertheless. However, times were hard. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 had heralded the American Depression, and by 1933 it had reached its nadir.
Such would naturally affect the science fiction magazines, and sure enough the first to suffer were the bulky quarterlies which at fifty cents were too expensive for the public. The last two issues of Amazing Stories Quarterly were reprints. Dated Winter 1933, and Winter 1934, the magazine was not immediately cut. There is no doubt it would have survived the depression years if it had not been for the aged Editor Sloane, for whom things were becoming too much. In answer to one readers remarks in “Discussions” he said: “The Quarterly will be somewhat irregular in dates of publication. We have sometimes felt like discontinuing it definitely”.[11] That was written in May 1935. Obviously, the feelings became insurmountable, as no more appeared.
Wonder Stories Quarterly died in January 1933 with its fourteenth issue, and in the middle of that year Wonder Stories found itself missing issues. It regained its monthly status by the end of the year, but not without several changes. The early 1930’s had really seen Wonder Stories at the top of the popularity tree, and Astounding an aspiring joint second with Amazing, which was gradually declining. Amazing kept its head above water by virtue of two authors, E. E. “Doc” Smith, and John W. Campbell, who had first appeared in the January 1930 issue. Amazing Stories however remained largesize right up until October 1933 when it at last succumbed to the standard pulp format. Teck had moved their publishing offices to Chicago, although the editorial offices remained in New York.
Wonder Stories had experimented earlier with pulp size. Starting in November 1930, Wonder soon followed Astounding as the second pulp science fiction magazine, but twelve issues later it returned to large size. This remained until October 1933, and then from November it reverted to pulp size.
Strange that these two dates should coincide in the closing months of 1933. But even stranger that Astounding Stories also underwent changes in those months.
Under Clayton, Astounding had built a formidable following, and Bates was about to instigate some revolutionary new ideas. Already he had bought E. E. Smith’s latest novel. But alas, this was not to be. Clayton bought out his partner in the firm, but the cost of raising the money in those dark days was too much. Astounding went first every other month, and then Harry Bates was forced to pay on publication. This was a blow to science fiction authors, since Astounding had been a profitable market Gernsback’s publications (both early and current) had paid only half-a-cent per word on publication. Astounding however paid two cents a word on acceptance.
March 1933 saw the end of the Clayton Astounding Stories, at a time when the magazine was growing. A regular scientific department, “Science Forum” had just begun. This corresponded to Gernsback’s “Science Questions and Answers”. But there was no promised “Doc” Smith serial.
But that was not the end of Astounding Stories. October 1933 and the magazine was back on the stands, not as a Clayton Magazine, but—’A Street & Smith Publication’. If any publishers deserved an sf magazine after much trying, this firm certainly did. The magazine differed little in format and price, but the cover was certainly not by Wesso. It was the work of veteran Howard V. Brown, who replaced Wesso as the Astounding cover artist.
The issue was not all sf either, but included many weird stories, such as “Don Mackinder’s Model” by F. S. Howard-Burleigh. But the old names were there too; Paul Ernst, Donald Wandrei, Anthony Gilmore and Nat Schachner, and obviously the magazine attracted its followers. The issue contained no editorial, nor clue as to its editor. This was not disclosed until its December issue, and eyebrows were raised at the name of F. Orlin Tremaine.
Frederick Orlin Tremaine was born on January 7th 1899 at Harrisville, New York, and became the editor of Torch in 1920. He was involved with MacFadden’s True Story Magazine in 1924, and then until 1926 edited Smart Set. In 1929 he entered the employ of William Clayton where he stayed until 1933, with a break in 1930 when he edited Everybody’s Magazine. He then passed to Street & Smith, where among other magazines he edited Top-Notch, and inherited Astounding Stories. (Tremaine was also responsible for Bill Barnes, a magazine of air stories which had some sf issues later in rivalry with Dusty Ayres And His Battle Birds edited by Edythe Seims).
Even though Tremaine had had much editorial experience be was virtually unknown to most sf fans. Nevertheless it was he who transformed science fiction in the 1930’s, and thus captured the monopoly of the field from Gernsback.
And he did it from the word go. Tremaine’s policy was for stories completely original in idea, treatment and scope. Stories that would catch the imagination. He termed them ‘thought variant’. The first such appeared in the December 1933 issue: “Ancestral Voices” by Nathan Schachner. It told of a man who travels back in time and kills a Hun who would otherwise have been a distant ancestor. As a result he and thousands of other people disappear. This was followed in the January issue by Donald Wandrei’s “Colossus”, with a theme that actually harked back to Wertenbaker’s “The Man From the Atom”, but with a far wilder treatment.
During 1934 Astounding Stories published brilliant story after brilliant story. There was “Sidewise in Time” by Murray Leinster, “Bright Illusion” by C. L. Moore, “The Man Who Stopped the Dust” by John Russell Fearn. There was Jack Williamson’s “Born of the Sun”, a story which claimed the planets and satellites were but eggs containing embryo entities. Then there were the classic serials of that year: “Rebirth” by Thomas Calvert McClary, wherein universal amnesia plunged mankind back into savagery; “The Legion of Space”, Jack Williamson’s extravaganza into the cosmos; “The Skylark of Valeron”, E. E. Smith’s climactic finale to the Skylark series; and to end the year John Campbell’s super science epic “The Mightiest Machine”. Add to that the birth of the Don A. Stuart stories, starting with “Twilight”, and you have one of the most powerful years in any magazine’s history. Then one must not forget that in March 1934 the page count increased from 144 to 160 pages, and from August the print size was reduced to allow more wordage. All this and the price remained at twenty cents, plus excellent fiction by stalwarts Harl Vincent, Raymond Gallun, Nathan Schachner, John Russell Fearn, Donald Wandrei, and Arthur Leo Zagat, and how could the magazine possibly fail! Of course it didn’t. By the end of 1934 Astounding was the undisputed leader of the field. Throughout 1935, Tremaine continued to present excellent fiction, spearheaded by the mood stories of Don A. Stuart and Raymond Gallun. Stuart was an alternative pen name for John W. Campbell, and it was he, above all other authors, that altered the sf of the mid-thirties. He even forced himself to change. This was exemplified by Tremaine’s rejection of Campbell’s sequels to “The Mightiest Machine”. Such super-science was now a thing of the past. Tremaine had succeeded in building up Astounding’s circulation by leaning heavily on the giants of super science, Smith, Campbell and Williamson. But the time was now ready for a change. As Don A. Stuart, with such stories as “Twilight”, and its sequel “Night”, Campbell wrought this change. It was soon copied by Raymond Gallun in such stories as “Old Faithful” and its sequels.
And then 1935 was the year of Stanley G. Weinbaum. But although Weinbaum presented excellent fiction in Astounding in 1935, he was not a discovery of Tremaine. Weinbaum had first appeared in Wonder Stories, and if you had been wondering what Gernsback had been doing while Tremaine was laying the foundations of modern science fiction, then now’s the time to settle your mind.
* * * *
4—Gernsback and Fandom
As I’ve already mentioned, Gernsback discovered when he issued Amazing Stories that there was a vast army of ready-made fans just waiting for such a publication. When Gernsback introduced “Discussions” into the magazine, it allowed fans to discover one another, and by and by science fiction fandom was born. Now is not the time nor place to go into a history of science fiction fandom, this has been done completely and far better than I could elsewhere. [“The Imortal Storm” by Sam Moskowitz. “All Our Yesterdays” by Harry Warner, Jnr.] But it is essential to an understanding of the science fiction magazines to at least cover some of the amateur magazines, or ‘fanzines’ of the sf fans.
Fans were particularly vociferous in the magazines’ letter departments, notably Wonder’s “The Reader Speaks”. Here would regularly be seen the names of active fans, such as Forrest J Ackerman, Donald Wollheim, Raymond Palmer, Bob Tucker, and the slightly less active Jack Darrow.
Fans discovered that other fans lived in their neighbourhood, and consequently groups were formed. One of the earliest groups was the Science Correspondence Club, formed in Chicago by Walter Dennis and Raymond Palmers. Naturally the club issued a bulletin, The Comet, a mimeographed, 8-page edition dated May 1930. This dealt mostly with science however, and not sf, but it lasted through to 1933 with seventeen variously titled issues.
Walter Dennis struck up correspondence with New York fan Allen Glasser, and Glasser formed his own club The Scienceers, and issued The Planet, another mimeographed organ, but with only some three to five pages. The Planet concentrated more on science fiction, making it the first science fiction fan magazine. Glasser edited it, and Mort Weisinger was associate editor. Glasser was determined to seek publicity for the organization, and what better place than in a pro-magazine’s letter column. Thus we find in the May 1930 Science Wonder Stones a letter from Glasser informing readers of the formation of the Scienceers, with editorial recommendation from Gernsback. Furthermore the June 1930 Wonder Stories carried another Glasser letter where he informs Gernsback that the Scienceers all voted in favour of the magazine’s change of name. Coincidental with the Scienceers, David Lasser (the Managing Editor of Wonder Stories) had formed the American Interplanetary Society. Its secretary was C. P. Mason, an associate editor of Wonder Stories, and, not to be outdone by the Scienceers, the June 1930 issue carried a letter from that group informing readers of its intentions. (Incidentally, besides Lasser and Mason, Laurence Manning was treasurer, and Fletcher Pratt librarian). Lasser impressed upon Glasser the need for their two groups to merge. Only the President, Warren Fitzgerald, joined, and the Scienceers fell apart after just seven months.
Glasser thereupon started The Time Traveller from January 1932, which lasted for nine issues during that year. In the meantime Oklahoman Fan Dan McPhail had started the first science fiction information sheet. Science Fiction News, which lasted from June 1931 to December 1936.
Gernsback was keen to discover the extent of this fanaticism. In strict competition manner he set a $500.00 prize contest in the Spring 1930 Science Wonder Quarterly: “What I Have Done to Spread Science Fiction”. Glasser won third prize, by describing the Scienceers club. The first prize was won by Ray Palmer, but of more importance was the second prize, awarded to Indiana printer Conrad H. Ruppert for his suggestion of a Science Fiction Week. Gernsback took the idea to heart and devoted the May 1930 Science Wonder Stories editorial to such a venture, from March 31st to April 7th. Gernsback’s notion that science fiction was instructional was evident: “If every man, woman, boy and girl, could be induced to read science fiction right along, there would certainly be a great resulting benefit to the community, in that the educational standards of its people would be raised tremendously.”[12] The promotional qualities of a week devoted to the furtherance of science fiction could not easily be measured, but it does seem evident that chiefly through Wonder Stories, fan activities began to snowball. Fanzines began to appear in abundance.
Conrad Ruppert offered his printing facilities and printed Glasser’s The Time Traveller from its third issue. This gave the fanzines a professional appearance. Then in September 1932 came Science Fiction Digest, edited by Maurice Ingher, printed by Ruppert, and assisted generally by Mort Weisinger, Julius Schwartz and Forrest Ackerman. Science Fiction Digest (which became Fantasy Magazine after 1933), was a semi-professional magazine which constituted a virtual encyclopedia of sf, not only with fiction, but with biography, indices, news items and criticism. It became the voice of fandom right up to its death in 1937.
A memorable achievement of Science Fiction Digest was its round-robin serial, “Cosmos” which began in the July 1933 issue with an episode by Ralph Milne Farley and lasted for seventeen instalments until Edmond Hamilton wound it up in December 1934. All the big names of sf contributed including David Keller, Francis Flagg, John Campbell, Otis A. Kline, A. Merritt, E. E. Smith, P. S. Miller and Lloyd Eshbach. (In its later issues other round robin stories would appear, indeed one weird fiction story included H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard as contributors, but none had the flair or originality of this prototype).
The peak of semi-professional magazines came when Los Angeles fan William Crawford issued Unusual Stories and Marvel Tales in 1934. Crawford attempted to solicit fiction from professional authors by offering as payment a lifetime subscription to the magazine. It worked admirably well, particularly since its few issues included the works of H. P. Lovecraft, David Keller, Robert E. Howard, Miles Breuer, Clifford Simak, Robert Bloch and P. Schuyler Miller. Several of these stories, such as Miller’s “The Titan”, Simak’s “The Creator” and Howard’s “Garden of Fear” are now acknowledged classics.
Unusual Stories never really got launched, three staggered issues appearing. Marvel Tales had moderately more success. Both were pocket-book sized, Marvel Tales increasing in page count from its first issue (May 1934) of 40 pages up to the king-size 108 pages of its fourth (March 1935) issue. Only five issues appeared in all, the magazine dying in Summer 1935. All this time Crawford tried in vain to sell the magazine from the news-stands, but alas it was not to be.
In September 1933 Charles Hornig, a seventeen year old fan from New Jersey started his own fanzine The Fantasy Fan. He sent a copy to each prozine (professional sf magazine) editor, and by one of those strange twists of fate it reached Gernsback at a time when his Managing Editor David Lasser had just been fired. Lasser, despite his presidency of the American Interplanetary Society, was all for waving the banner to help the unemployed worker, and he left Gernsback’s employ to become the Chairman of the Workers Unemployed Union, a cause that he would support thereafter.
Gernsback decided that Hornig was the man to edit the magazine from now on, and with the November 1933 issue Hornig was in charge. This meteoric rise from fan to professional would never be equalled, especially by one so young.
Why November 1933 should be so chosen as the turning point for science fiction is conjectural. Yet in the same month that Hornig assumed editorship, Tremaine was announcing his plans for Astounding Stories. Obviously, Tremaine was ahead of Wonder Stories in planning and scope, and yet Hornig would not let this be so. In rivalry to Tremaine Hornig established his ‘New’ Policy. Hornig was adamant that it was Wonder Stories that instituted the policy ahead of Astounding. In a special announcement in the December 1935 issue, Hornig said:
“In fact, this new policy was such a good idea that one of our respected rivals, obeying the maxim that ‘imitation is the sincerest form of flattery’, came along with what they called ‘thought-variants’. We are deriving great satisfaction from the belief that Wonder Stories started this new, glamorous era of science-fiction, so different from the old days of rehashed themes and stereotyped characters.”[13]
Obviously Hornig had not had time to institute a New Policy, but Gernsback had. It is quite probable that Lasser would not altogether concur with Gernsback’s views to this end, but that Hornig was fully in favour. Only this explanation would cover Hornig’s insistence that Wonder Stories was first.
Whatever the explanation there is no denying that both magazines published excellent fiction in 1934 and 1935. It was in Wonder Stories that Stanley G. Weinbaum first appeared with “A Martian Odyssey” in the July 1934 issue. That, and its sequel “Valley of Dreams” in November, took the reader through the bizarre landscape of Mars with its legion of amazingly diverse creatures. Weinbaum had a broad streak of humour running through his fiction, and he was one of the first authors to make his aliens alien-yet-human. Besides Weinbaum, Wonder cornered worthy fiction by David Keller, Edmond Hamilton, Alan Connell, M. M. Kaplan, David Daniels and Laurence Manning. 1934 could also be classed as Wonder’s top year.
The popularity of Wonder Stories had been proved early in 1934 when Raymond Palmer, chairman for the Jules Verne Prize, awarded it to the best story for 1933—Edmond Hamilton’s “The Island of Unreason”, which had appeared in the May 1933 Wonder. Since the magazine had carried several excellent stories during the year by no less than Nathan Schachner with his “Technocracy” series and Laurence Manning’s “The Man Who Awoke” stories, it was a sign of how popular Hamilton was. Wonder had also beaten Amazing, Weird and Astounding, even though those magazines had carried such memorable stories as “Shambleau” by C. L. Moore (Weird, November), “Unto Us A Child Is Born” by David Keller (Amazing, July) or Donald Wandrei’s “A Race Through Time” (Astounding, October).
But the major event of 1934 in Wonder was not its fiction. In February 1934 Gernsback instituted the Science Fiction League to enhance the popularity of sf. Within months it became quite a force in fandom. Wonder published a regular monthly feature devoted to news and suggestions, and together with league buttons, letterheads and a Certificate, one felt that fandom had never been so organized. For science fiction fans the fiction became secondary in Wonder Stories. As Robert Lowndes recalled “From the days of Charles D. Hornig in Wonder Stories ... I’ve been a sucker for the personal magazine or the magazine that presents a distinct personality. That was why I looked forward to the next issue of Wonder more regularly than Astounding in those days....”[14]
Astounding presented a fairly lively letter column, “Brass Tacks”, but this was not a patch on Wonder with its League and “The Reader Speaks”. Like wildfire various Chapters of the League were formed throughout the United States, and even in England (Maurice Hanson formed a Nuneaton Chapter, Douglas Mayer the Leeds Chapter. There was a Belfast chapter with Hugh Carswell, and even one in Sydney, Australia formed by W. J. J. Osland).
By all accounts the League was doing great stuff, but that was only on the surface. The September 1935 issue carried the announcement that three league members had been expelled for working against the League. They were Donald Wollheim, John Michel and William Sykora. Wollheim had been instrumental in forming the International Scientific Association which opposed the Science Fiction League. Their stand was that only an independent organization could develop fandom to maturity and greatness, because a professional club, by its very nature, must be commercial and would hamper the free flow of criticism.
Thus the feud was born. It lasted for two years and as a result fandom grew and grew beyond anyone’s wildest imagining. New clubs, new fanzines and above all new fans. The outcome of the battle was eventually decided when Wonder Stories found itself on the rocks.
Remember that Street & Smith at Astounding Stories paid one cent a word whereas Gernsback rarely varied from his half- or three-quarter cent a word. Obviously if writers could sell to Astounding they would. Amazing Stories paid no better, and writers were further discouraged to submit manuscripts to Sloane because he held on to them for so long. Since payment was on publication this was just not viable. By August 1935 Amazing Stories came out every other month. In November 1935 Wonder Stories also began to appear alternate months. Astounding on the other hand had begun monthly in October 1933, and by 1934 there was talk of it appearing twice monthly. This never materialized, but Astounding has never failed to appear each and every month from that day to this.
Another factor is the further specialization of other pulps. Doc Savage was a second Street & Smith winner, and with only so much money around obviously readers would go for the most value for their twenty cents. In an attempt to reach the market Wonder Stories cut their cover price down to fifteen cents in 1935 (the equivalent of about 9d), but this did not work, and in fact lowered their income drastically. Ten years after Amazing Stories had exploded into the sf scene, Gernsback was for the first time facing difficulties.
Then came the March-April 1936 issue of Wonder Stories, and for the first time the public learnt the facts. In his editorial “Wonders of Distribution” Gernsback explained how racketeering in the magazine business had grown out of all proportion. Major distributors were removing the magazine covers, and then selling them as imperfect copies at a cheaper rate to the public, keeping all the revenue themselves. Gernsback decided that the only way to avoid this was to cut out the distributor, and do the distributing himself.
Thus was devised his postal plan. In a special announcement in the issue Gernsback reveals that whereas sf was “tops” in 1926, it is now in decline, whereas detective and western fiction were the best sellers. His plan was for subscription in reverse. A special printed coupon was supplied in that issue. Readers were asked to clip this out and mail it to Gernsback. They would then receive the next issue of Wonder Stories with a bill for fifteen cents, plus a return envelope. There was no extra expense for the reader since all postage was prepaid. He would receive his magazine and pay the money afterwards.
Gernsback concluded his announcement by saying.
“And let me thank all of you in advance for making the new movement possible. I know that you will not fail me in this great experiment!”[15]
He was to be bitterly disappointed. Just two thousand replies were received, far from enough to make his scheme practicable. Gernsback sold Wonder Stories to Standard Magazines, and retired from the sf field, to continue with his far more profitable Sexology publication.
Since by then Amazing Stories was less than a shadow of its former self, Astounding Stories was left supreme in the field. Tremaine’s policy of new ideas by big names had succeeded. A thought must be spared for Gernsback’s excuse of distribution problems. This has always been a major problem for magazines, especially science fiction, and one must realise that Street & Smith, as the bigger publisher of the two, had far better distributors and thus more ability to bring Astounding to the eyes of likely customers.
March 1936 and the United States had seen ten years of science fiction magazines. 115 issues of Amazing Stories, 78 Wonder Stories and 64 Astoundings, and yet as they say, the last shall be first.
And what of Britain all this time? There is no denying that American publishers were always more willing to take a chance than British firms. True that if an American publisher had a British branch they would bring out a British edition, exactly the same as the American. Street & Smith, who had offices at Covent Garden in London had brought out such an edition of The Thrill Book, identical in every detail to the U.S. version.
Obviously what Britain wanted was an indigenous publisher ready to gamble on an all sf magazine. The hybrids were plentiful. Ever since Strand and Pearson’s, many British magazines had carried science fiction in their pages, such as Grand Magazine, Red Magazine, and Royal. The only complete science fiction series that had appeared were the British reprints of Frank Reade ‘dime novels’ put out by the Aldine Publishing Company of Crown Court off Chancery Lane in London. Described as the “Invention, Travel and Adventure” Library this series of paperbound pocket books ran for several years, one per week, in the mid-1890’s. There was also Aldine’s The Cheerful Library, and O’er Land And Sea Library. They all pandered to juvenile audiences, but were still fun to read.
The import of American pulp adventure magazines seemed to convince British publishers that there was already more than enough to go round and any attempts at a British science fiction magazine would be superfluous. It is not as if there was any shortage of British authors. Gernsback’s readers saw plenty of their fiction; George C. Wallis, John Beynon (Wyndham) Harris, Festus Pragnell, J. M. Walsh, Benson Herbert, W. P. Cockcroft et al.
Various fan groups had formed in Britain, one of the earliest at Hayes had issued the prototype British fanzine, Fantasia. At this same time Walter Gillings (born 1912) who was destined to change the shape of British science fiction was forming his Ilford Science Literary Circle. Efforts to convince British publishers that a British sf magazine was essential were fruitless. The negative response was hard to bear at a time when detective magazines were quite regular, and Fleetway House had brought out a twopenny weekly called The Thriller, which featured mystery stories by people like Edgar Wallace, Sax Rohmer, Anthony Skene and Sydney Horler.
So it came as a great surprise when Pearsons brought out their 2d weekly Scoops. It was more of a newspaper than a magazine, with thirty-two small-type covered large-size pages. Its first issue was dated February 10th, and was anonymously edited by Scout editor Haydn Dimmock. All its contributors were anonymous too, and all the reader had to go on were such titles as “Master of the Moon”, “The Striding Terror”, “The Rebel Robots”, “Rocket of Doom”, “The Mystery of the Blue Mist”, “Voice From the Void” and “The Soundless Hour”. Three of these were serials.
With its second issue it slanted even further towards a young audience, and a further serial began. This was the only story in the early issues to carry an author credit, Professor A. M. Low. The novel “Space” was eventually brought out in hardback as “Adrift in the Stratosphere”. [This was the first science fiction book apart from Verne that I was to read. I can still remember the thrill when I read it in the 50’s as the three intrepid lads who had accidently launched themselves into space tried to avoid menaces from Mars and found themselves in a strange corridor of flame. As it was this book that launched me as far as science fiction was concerned, I cannot be harsh towards it. In the same way I feel it must certainly have instilled considerable interest in the youth of 1934 as they waited for each successive episode.]
It also appealed to many adults, but not to the die-hard fans who had been initiated on American pulp science fiction. When in later issues Scoops attempts to grow up, it fell in between the two markets and after twenty issues it died, last issue June 23rd 1934. By that time it was crediting authors, and here one would find John Russell Fearn, Maurice Hugi, W. P. Cockcroft, a serial by George E. Rochester, plus a reprint of Conan Doyle’s “The Poison Belt”.
The failure of Scoops was to give British publishers the impression that a native sf magazine could not support itself. And not only British publishers. Nottingham fan James Dudley appeared in the March 1936 Wonder with a letter proclaiming that:
“for the man or men with courage and the capital to start with, this little land of ours would be a ‘verdant pasture’ for science fiction, and prove a gold-mine to him or them.”
To which editor Hornig replied:
“You do not seem to be acquainted with the fact that a British science-fiction magazine was published for twenty weekly issues, after which it ‘went under’. This proved to us and other British publishers that your country is not yet prepared to support a professional science-fiction magazine enough to make it pay for itself.”[16]
And so the case rested. British science fiction had virtually died before it began, and despite a strange publication called Breezy Science Stories that had its only appearance some time in 1934, British fans had to resort to searching back through general magazines, although their best bet now was Odham’s Passing Show, which had already reprinted some Edgar Rice Burroughs’ novels, and in July 1935 began to serialize John Beynon Harris’ “The Secret People”, his novel of a lost race under the Sahara desert.
* * * *
Ten years from the birth of the sf magazine: the Gernsback era, which gave way in 1934 to the Tremaine period, that itself gave way in 1938 to, the Campbell era.
Revel for a while in the glory of something special, something new. In the days between 1926 and 1936 science fiction was a very personal subject. Fans, although growing in number, were far apart. They had no one with which to share their new found joy until Gernsback’s letter columns allowed them the chance to locate others. As you read these stories remember the fans of yesteryear, and see if you too can escape into that dream world of tomorrow which is now but a phantom hope of the past After 1936 science fiction would never be the same again.
Mike Ashley
February 1974
[1] From a Guest Editorial by Hugo Gernsback in Amazing Stories for April 1961, published by Ziff-Davis Pub. Co.,
Chicago. (Page 7).
[2] From the “For Your Information” column by Willy Ley in Galaxy for February 1963, published by Galaxy
Publishing Corporation, New York. (Page 91).
[3] From “Pulpwood Editor” by Harold B. Hersey, published by F. A. Stokes Co., New York (1937). From Chapter 10,
“Take Your Choice”. (Page 188).
[4] From Hugo Gernsback’s editorial “Editorially Speaking” in the September 1926 Amazing Stories, published by
Experimenter Publishing Co., New York.
[5] From Hugo Gernsback’s editorial in the April 1926 Amazing Stories. Transcribed from the reprint published in
Amazing Stories for April 1966, published by Ultimate Publishing Co., New York. (Pages 188/9).
[6] From the obituary to Wilbur C. Whithead in Amazing Stories for September 1931, published by the Teck Pub.
Corp., New York. (Page 484). Probably written by Hugo Gernsback.
[7] From Hugo Gernsback’s editorial in the June 1926 Amazing Stories. Transcribed from the quotation in the
chapter “Hugo Gernsback” in Explorers Of The Infinite by Sam Moskowitz (World Pub. Co. Ohio, 1963). (Page
236).
[8] From an Accouncement in Science Wonder Stories for May 1930, published by Stellar Pub. Corp. New York. (Page
1099).
[10] Same as above.
[11] From an editorial comment by T. O’Conor Sloane in the letter column “Discussions” of the May 1935 Amazing
Stories. (Page 140).
[12] From Hugo Gernsback’s editorial “Science Fiction Week” in the May 1930 Science Wonder Stories. (Page 1061).
[13] From an announcement, “New Policy Still ‘New’” in the December 1935 Wonder Stories published by
Continental Publications Inc. (Page 748). Probably written by Charles Hornig.
[14] From a letter by Robert A. W. Lowndes published in the “... Or So You Say” column in the January 1973 Amazing
Stories. (Page 121).
[15] From a special announcement by Gernsback in the March-April 1936 Wonder Stories. (Page 923).
[16] From a letter by James Dudley and comment by Charles Hornig in “The Reader Speaks” column of the March-
April 1936 Wonder Stories. (Pages 1017/8).