Amazing Stories is an American science fiction magazine launched in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback's Experimenter Publishing. It was the first magazine devoted solely to science fiction. Science fiction stories had made regular appearances in other magazines, including some published by Gernsback, but Amazing helped define and launch a new genre of pulp fiction.
Amazing has been published, with some interruptions, for 98 years, going through a half-dozen owners and many editors as it struggled to be profitable. Gernsback was forced into bankruptcy and lost control of the magazine in 1929. In 1938 it was purchased by Ziff-Davis, which hired Raymond A. Palmer as editor. Palmer made the magazine successful though it was not regarded as a quality magazine within the science fiction community. In the late 1940s Amazing presented as fact stories about the Shaver Mystery, a lurid mythos that explained accidents and disaster as the work of robots named deros, which led to dramatically increased circulation but widespread ridicule. Amazing switched to a digest size format in 1953, shortly before the end of the pulp-magazine era. It was sold to Sol Cohen's Universal Publishing Company in 1965, which filled it with reprinted stories but did not pay a reprint fee to the authors, creating a conflict with the newly formed Science Fiction Writers of America. Ted White took over as editor in 1969, eliminated the reprints and made the magazine respected again: Amazing was nominated for the prestigious Hugo Award three times during his tenure in the 1970s. Several other owners attempted to create a modern incarnation of the magazine in the following decades, but publication was suspended after the March 2005 issue. A new incarnation appeared in July 2012 as an online magazine. Print publication resumed with the Fall 2018 issue.
Gernsback's initial editorial approach was to blend instruction with entertainment; he believed science fiction could educate readers. His audience rapidly showed a preference for implausible adventures, and the movement away from Gernsback's idealism accelerated when the magazine changed hands in 1929. Despite this, Gernsback had an enormous impact on the field: the creation of a specialist magazine for science fiction spawned an entire genre publishing industry. The letter columns in Amazing, where fans could make contact with each other, led to the formation of science fiction fandom, which in turn had a strong influence on the development of the field. Writers whose first story was published in the magazine include John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Howard Fast, Ursula K. Le Guin, Roger Zelazny, and Thomas M. Disch. Overall, though, Amazing itself was rarely an influential magazine within the genre after the 1920s.
Origins
By the end of the 19th century, stories centered on scientific inventions, and stories set in the future, were appearing regularly in popular fiction magazines. The market for short stories lent itself to tales of invention in the tradition of Jules Verne.Ashley, The Time Machines, p. 7. Magazines such as Munsey's Magazine and The Argosy, launched in 1889 and 1896 respectively, carried a few science fiction stories each year. Some upmarket "slick" magazines such as McClure's, which paid well and were aimed at a more literary audience, also carried scientific stories, but by the early years of the 20th century, science fiction (though it was not yet called that) was appearing more often in the pulp magazines than in the slicks.Ashley, The Time Machines, pp. 21–25.Nicholls, Peter, "Pulp Magazines", in Clute & Nicholls, Encyclopedia of SF, p. 979.Ashley, Transformations, p. 155.
In 1908, Hugo Gernsback published the first issue of Modern Electrics, a magazine aimed at the scientific hobbyist. It was an immediate success, and Gernsback began to include articles on imaginative uses of science, such as "Wireless on Saturn" (December 1908).Ashley, The Time Machines, pp. 28–29. In April 1911, Gernsback began the serialization of his science fiction novel, Ralph 124C 41+, but in 1913 he sold his interest in the magazine to his partner and launched a new magazine, Electrical Experimenter, which soon began to publish scientific fiction. In 1920, Gernsback retitled the magazine Science and Invention, and through the early 1920s he published much scientific fiction in its pages, along with non-fiction scientific articles.Ashley, The Time Machines, pp. 29–35.
Gernsback had started another magazine called Practical Electrics in 1921. In 1924, he changed its name to The Experimenter,Ashley, The Time Machines, pp. 48–49. and sent a letter to 25,000 people to gauge interest in the possibility of a magazine devoted to scientific fiction; in his words, "the response was such that the idea was given up for two years".Ashley, The Time Machines, p. 47. In 1926, he decided to proceed and ceased publication of The Experimenter to make room in his publishing schedule for a new magazine. The editor of The Experimenter, T. O'Conor Sloane, became the editor of Amazing Stories. The first issue appeared on 10 March 1926, with a cover date of April."Hugo Gernsback and His Writers, by Richard Bleiler, in Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (Wildside Press LLC, 2011)Another observer suggests the first issue hit the newsstands on 5 March 1926, "2002: The Year the Science Fiction Died", by Gary Westfahl ("a dedicated researcher had carefully studied patterns of American magazine distribution in the 1920s to conclude that copies of Amazing Stories were first available on newsstands on Friday, March 5, 1926"), with some support for the theory seen in the statement in the magazine itself that "Amazing Stories is published on the 5th of each preceding month", though not necessarily reaching the newsstands on that day.Amazing Stories, Vol. 2, No. 1
Publishing history 1920s Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec1926 1/1 1/2 1/3 1/4 1/5 1/6 1/7 1/8 1/919271/10 1/11 1/12 2/1 2/2 2/3 2/4 2/5 2/6 2/7 2/8 2/919282/10 2/11 2/12 3/1 3/2 3/3 3/4 3/5 3/6 3/7 3/8 3/919293/10 3/11 3/12 4/1 4/2 4/3 4/4 4/5 4/6 4/7 4/8 4/919304/10 4/11 4/12 5/1 5/2 5/3 5/4 5/5 5/6 5/7 5/8 5/919315/10 5/11 5/12 6/1 6/2 6/3 6/4 6/5 6/6 6/7 6/8 6/919326/10 6/11 6/12 7/1 7/2 7/3 7/4 7/5 7/6 7/7 7/8 7/919337/10 7/11 7/12 8/1 8/2 8/3 8/4 8/5 8/6 8/7 8/819348/9 8/10 8/11 8/12 9/1 9/2 9/3 9/4 9/5 9/6 9/7 9/819359/9 9/10 9/11 10/1 10/2 10/3 10/4 10/5 10/6 10/71936 10/8 10/9 10/10 10/11 10/12 10/131937 11/1 11/2 11/3 11/4 11/5 11/61938 12/1 12/2 12/3 12/4 12/5 12/6 12/7193913/1 13/2 13/3 13/4 13/5 13/6 13/7 13/8 13/9 13/10 13/11 13/12Issues of Amazing to 1939, identifying volume and issue numbers, and indicating editors:
Initially the magazine focused on reprints; both classics such as Wells, Verne and Poe, and stories from other Gernsback magazines. The first original story was "The Man From the Atom (Sequel)" by G. Peyton Wertenbaker in the second issue, May 1926.. In the August issue, new stories (still a minority) were noted with an asterisk in the table of contents. The editorial work was largely done by Sloane, but Gernsback retained final say over the fiction content. Two consultants Conrad A. Brandt and Wilbur C. Whitehead were hired to help find fiction to reprint. Frank R. Paul, who had worked with Gernsback as early as 1914, became the cover artist; Paul had produced many illustrations for the fiction in The Electrical Experimenter. Amazing was issued in the large bedsheet format, the same size as the technical magazines. It was an immediate success and by the following March reached a circulation of 150,000.
Gernsback saw that there was an enthusiastic readership for "scientifiction" (the term "science fiction" had not yet been coined), and in 1927 started a Discussions section and issued Amazing Stories Annual. The annual sold out, and in January 1928, Gernsback launched a quarterly magazine Amazing Stories Quarterly, as a regular companion to Amazing. It continued on a fairly regular schedule for 22 issues.Ashley, The Time Machines, pp. 51–54.Ashley, The Time Machines, p. 238.
Gernsback was slow to pay his authors and creditors; the extent of his investments limited his liquidity. On 20 February 1929 his printer and paper supplier opened bankruptcy proceedings against him. "Experimenter Publishing Co., Inc., 230 Fifth Avenue – Liabilities approximately $500,000, assets not stated. Principal creditors listed are Art Color Printing Co., Dunellen, N.J., $152,908; Bulkley Dunton Co., $154,406 ..."The bankruptcy is described in detail in Tom Perry, "An Amazing Story: Experiment in Bankruptcy" in Amazing Science Fiction vol. 51, no. 3 (May 1978), p. 161. It has been suggested that Bernarr Macfadden, another magazine publisher, maneuvered to force the bankruptcy because Gernsback would not sell his titles to Macfadden, but this is unproven.del Rey, World of Science Fiction, p. 47.Brian Stableford, "Amazing Stories", in Clute & Nicholls, Encyclopedia of SF, pp. 25–26. Experimenter Publishing did not file any defence and was declared bankrupt by default on 6 March; Amazing survived with its existing staff, but Hugo and his brother, Sidney, were forced out as directors. Arthur H. Lynch took over as editor-in-chief, though Sloane continued to have effective control of the magazine's contents. The receivers, Irving Trust, sold the magazine to Bergan A. Mackinnon on 3 April.Ashley, The Time Machines, pp. 63–64.
1930s
In August 1931, Amazing was acquired by Teck Publications, a subsidiary of Bernarr Macfadden's Macfadden Publications.Ashley, The Time Machines, p. 76. "Teck Publishing Corp. J Schultz. 522 5th Av. $10,000" Joseph Schultz was the attorney for Macfadden Publications, Inc. Macfadden's deep pockets helped insulate Amazing from the financial strain caused by the Great Depression.Ashley, The Time Machines, p. 77. The schedule of Amazing Stories Quarterly began to slip, but Amazing did not miss an issue in the early 1930s. However, it became unprofitable to publish over the next few years. Circulation dropped to little more than 25,000 in 1934, and in October 1935 it switched to bimonthly (publishing every other month).Ashley, The Time Machines, pp. 112–116.Ashley, The Time Machines, p. 85.
By 1938, with Amazing's circulation down to only 15,000, Teck Publications was having financial problems. In January, Ziff-Davis took over the magazine and shortly thereafter moved production to Chicago; "Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, New York and Chicago, has purchased Radio News Magazine and Amazing Stories". the April issue was assembled by Sloane but published by Ziff-Davis. Bernard Davis, who ran Ziff-Davis's editorial department, attempted to hire Roger Sherman Hoar as editor; Hoar turned down the job but suggested Raymond A. Palmer, an active local science fiction fan. Palmer was hired that February, taking over editorial duties with the June issue. Ziff-Davis launched Fantastic Adventures, a fantasy companion to Amazing, in May 1939, also under Palmer's editorship.Ashley, The Time Machines, pp. 143–144. Palmer quickly managed to improve Amazing's circulation, and in November 1938, the magazine went monthly again, though this did not last throughout Palmer's tenure: between 1944 and 1946 the magazine was bimonthly and then quarterly for a while before returning to a longer-lasting monthly schedule.Ashley, The Time Machines, p. 119.
1940s