Astonishing Stories was an American pulp science fiction magazine, published by Popular Publications between 1940 and 1943. It was founded under Popular's "Fictioneers" imprint, which paid lower rates than Popular's other magazines. The magazine's first editor was Frederik Pohl, who also edited a companion publication, Super Science Stories. After nine issues Pohl was replaced by Alden H. Norton, who subsequently rehired Pohl as an assistant. The budget for Astonishing was very low, which made it difficult to acquire good fiction, but through his membership in the Futurians, a group of young science fiction fans and aspiring writers, Pohl was able to find material to fill the early issues. The magazine was successful, and Pohl was able to increase his pay rates slightly within a year. He managed to obtain stories by writers who subsequently became very well known, such as Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein. After Pohl entered the army in early 1943, wartime paper shortages led Popular to cease publication of Astonishing. The final issue was dated April of that year.
The magazine was never regarded as one of the leading titles of the genre, but despite the low budget it published some well-received material. Science fiction critic Peter Nicholls comments that "its stories were surprisingly good considering how little was paid for them", and this view has been echoed by other historians of the field.
Publication history Although science fiction had been published before the 1920s, it did not begin to coalesce into a separately marketed genre until the appearance in 1926 of Amazing Stories, a pulp magazine published by Hugo Gernsback. By the end of the 1930s the field was booming,Malcolm Edwards & Peter Nicholls, "SF Magazines", in Clute & Nicholls, Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, pp. 1066–1068. and several new sf magazines were launched in 1939.Ashley, Time Machines, pp. 237–255. Frederik Pohl, a young science fiction reader, was looking for a job that year. He visited Robert Erisman, who was the editor of two pulps, Marvel Science Stories and Dynamic Science Stories, to ask for a job as an assistant.Milton Wolf & Raymond H. Thompson, "Astonishing Stories", in Tymn & Ashley, Science Fiction, Fantasy and Weird Fiction Magazines, pp. 117–122. Erisman turned him down, but suggested that Pohl contact Rogers Terrill at Popular Publications, a leading pulp publisher. Erisman had heard that Popular was starting a new line of magazines, and thought that they might be interested in adding a science fiction title.Pohl, The Way the Future Was, p. 82. On October 25, 1939, Pohl visited Terrill and persuaded him to give the idea a try, and left Terrill's office having been hired, at the age of nineteen, to edit two new magazines,Ashley, Time Machines, pp. 158–160. on a salary of ten dollars per week.Pohl, The Way the Future Was, p. 98. One was Super Science Stories; the other was at one point intended to be titled Incredible Stories, but ultimately appeared as Astonishing Stories."Astonishing Stories" in Tuck, Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Vol. 3, p. 547.
Popular was uncertain of the sales potential for the two new titles and decided to publish them under its Fictioneers imprint, which was used for lower-paying magazines.Pohl, Early Pohl, pp. 23–24. Astonishings first issue was dated February 1940; it was bimonthly, alternating monthly with Super Science Stories. Pohl's budget for an issue was $405: in Pohl's memoirs he recalls Harry Steeger, one of the company owners, breaking down the budget for him: "Two hundred seventy-five dollars for stories. A hundred dollars for black and white art. Thirty dollars for a cover."Pohl, The Way the Future Was, pp. 87–88. Pohl could only offer half a cent per word for fiction, well below the rates offered by the leading magazines.Ashley, Time Machines, p. 107. At ten cents, the magazine was cheaper than any of the other sf magazines of the day, and it sold well, despite Pohl's limited resources. It was certainly assisted by Popular's wide and effective distribution network, and the publisher soon increased Pohl's budget, to pay bonuses for popular stories. Pohl later commented that he was uncertain whether the additional funds really helped to bring in higher quality submissions, although at the time he assured Steeger it would improve the magazine.Pohl, The Way the Future Was, p. 89. Some of the additional money went to long-time writer Ray Cummings, who was sufficiently well known that the young Pohl felt unable to reject his stories, even though he disliked his work. Cummings came to see Pohl in person to submit his work, and refused to sell for less than one cent a word; since the first visit came on a day when Pohl had some extra money available, Pohl was never able to bring himself to tell Cummings that he could not really afford to pay that rate. Pohl comments in his memoirs that "for months he would turn up regularly as clockwork and sell me a new story; I hated them all, and bought them all."Pohl, The Way the Future Was, p. 90.
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec 1940 1/1 1/2 1/3 1/4 2/1 2/21941 2/3 2/4 3/1 3/21942 3/3 3/4 4/1 4/219434/3 4/4 Issues of Astonishing Stories, showing volume/issue number. The colorsidentify the editors for each issue: Frederik Pohl until September 1941,and Alden H. Norton for the remaining issues.Pohl stretched his budget by reducing the space he needed to fill with fiction. For example, a long letter column took up several pages but required no payment; similarly, running advertisements for Popular's other magazines did not use up the fiction budget. Some authors sent inaccurate word counts with the stories they submitted, and Popular saved money by paying them on the basis of whichever word count was less—the author's or one done by Popular's staff. The result was a saving of forty to fifty dollars per issue. More money was saved by reusing snipped elements of black and white illustrations to fill space, as multiple uses of the same artwork did not require additional payments to the artist.Pohl, The Way the Future Was, pp. 88–89.
Towards the end of 1940 Popular doubled Pohl's salary to twenty dollars per week. In June 1941 Pohl went to see Steeger to ask for a further raise; he was planning to resign and work as a free-lance writer if he did not get more pay. Steeger, in Pohl's words, "had complaints of his own", and was not receptive; by the end of the meeting Pohl had lost his job as editor. Pohl later commented "I have never been sure whether I quit or got fired."Pohl, The Way the Future Was, p. 102. Instead of replacing Pohl, Popular assigned editor-in-chief Alden H. Norton to add the magazines to his responsibilities. The arrangement lasted for seven months, after which Norton asked Pohl to return as his assistant. Norton offered Pohl a higher salary as an associate editor than he had received as the editor, and Pohl quickly accepted.Pohl, The Way the Future Was, p. 107.
Pohl was not eligible to be drafted for military service as he was married, but by the end of 1942 his marriage was over and he decided to enlist. As voluntary enlistment was suspended he was unable to immediately join the army, but eventually was inducted on April 1, 1943.Pohl, The Way the Future Was, pp. 109–110. Paper was difficult to obtain because of the war, and Popular decided to close the magazine down; the final issue, dated April 1943, was assembled with the assistance of Ejler Jakobsson.Ashley, Time Machines, pp. 217–218.Pohl, Early Pohl, p. 131.
Contents and reception Because of the low rates of pay, the stories submitted to Astonishing in its first year had generally already been rejected elsewhere. However, Pohl was a member of the Futurians, a group of science fiction fans that included Isaac Asimov, C.M. Kornbluth, Richard Wilson and Donald Wollheim; the Futurians were eager to become professional writers and were glad to submit stories to Pohl. Asimov recalls in his memoirs that on October 27, 1939, two days after Pohl was hired to edit the magazines, Pohl turned up at Asimov's apartment and asked to buy "Half-Breed", a story Pohl had been trying to sell on Asimov's behalf since June of that year. Pohl needed stories quickly for the first issue of Astonishing (though the name had not yet been selected), and as the story had been rejected by Amazing Stories and Astounding Stories, Asimov was willing to sell it for half a cent per word. A couple of weeks later Pohl also acquired "The Callistan Menace" from Asimov.Asimov, In Memory Yet Green, pp. 255–256. The other Futurians were prolific as well; in Pohl's first year as an editor he bought a total of fifteen stories from them for the two magazines.Raymond H. Thompson, "Super Science Stories", in Tymn & Ashley, Science Fiction, Fantasy and Weird Fiction Magazines, pp. 631–635. Damon Knight, another of the Futurians, recalled in his memoirs that Pohl once asked the group for a story to fill out an issue, with $35 available to pay for it. Kornbluth and Wilson wrote a first draft, alternating turns at the typewriter; the result was edited by Harry Dockweiler, another Futurian, and then again by Pohl before it appeared in the April 1940 Astonishing under the title "Stepsons of Mars", with a byline of "Ivar Towers".Knight, Futurians, pp. 31–32. Pohl contributed material himself, using the pseudonyms "James McCreigh" and "Dirk Wylie" (the latter pseudonym was also used by Dockweiler); he used his own stories when he needed to fill an issue, and to supplement his salary of ten dollars a week. Particularly after his marriage to Doris Baumgardt in August 1940, Pohl realized that his salary covered their apartment rent with almost no money left over, and began to augment his income by selling to himself as well as to other magazines. When Pohl lost his job as editor in late 1941, he had bought from himself (and paid for) a couple of stories that he had not actually written, and hence had to write them very quickly and turn them in.Pohl, Early Pohl, p. 73.
The first issue of Astonishing Stories was dated February 1940; the lead story was "Chameleon Planet" by John Russell Fearn, and it also included Asimov's "Half-Breed" and fiction by Henry Kuttner and Manly Wade Wellman. Despite the difficulties caused by the low budget, Pohl was able to pay his authors promptly, unlike some of his competitors, and he thus began to receive stories of higher quality. Sf historian Mike Ashley identifies "The Last Drop", by L. Ron Hubbard and L. Sprague de Camp as one of the better stories in Astonishing; historians Milton Wolf and Raymond H. Thompson consider the story to be unimpressive, and point instead to Alfred Bester's "The Pet Nebula" in the February 1941 issue. Kuttner's "Soldiers of Space" and Robert Bloch's "It Happened Tomorrow", both of which appeared in the February 1943 issue, are also praised. Pohl was also able to print the first three of Ross Rocklynne's well-liked "Into the Darkness" series. Other well-known writers who appeared in the pages of Astonishing include Leigh Brackett, Clifford Simak, and E. E. Smith.See the individual issues. For convenience, an online index is available at