Amazing Stories

This article is about the magazine. For the television show, see Amazing Stories (TV series)

First issue of Amazing Stories, art by Frank R. Paul

Amazing Stories magazine, sometimes retitled Amazing Science Fiction, was first published in April 1926 in New York City, thereby becoming the first magazine devoted exclusively to publishing stories in the genre presently known as science fiction (SF). It is regarded as the world's first science fiction magazine. After the April 2005 issue, the magazine went on "hiatus" and as of March 2006, the magazine's current publisher announced that it would no longer be published.

Created by Hugo Gernsback, with many of its covers by the legendary Frank R. Paul, it featured a much-imitated logo of the magazine name in ever-shrinking letters. Amazing Stories was filled with stories of "scientific romance". Gernsback coined the portmanteau word "scientifiction" (abbreviated "STF") as a name for the genre which, over the years, became science fiction.

Origins

Ralph in his space flyer overtakes the Martian, Llysanorh.

By the end of the nineteenth century, scientific fiction stories were appearing with some regularity in popular fiction magazines. The market for short stories naturally lent itself to tales of invention, in the tradition of Jules Verne. Magazines such as Munsey's Magazine and The Argosy, launched in 1889 and 1896 respectively, carried at least a few science fiction stories each year. Some of the slick magazines also carried scientific stories, but by the early years of the twentieth century science fiction was appearing more often in the pulp magazines than in the slicks.

In 1908, Hugo Gernsback brought out 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", which appeared in the December 1908 issue. 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.

Gernsback had started another magazine called Practical Electrics in 1921, changing its name to The Experimenter in 1924. It was also in about 1924 that Gernsback 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." However, in 1926 he decided to go ahead, 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, thus became the editor of the new magazine, which was titled Amazing Stories; the first issue appeared on 10 March 1926, with a cover date of April 1926.

Publishing history

The early years

The editorial work was largely done by Sloane, but Gernsback retained final say over the fiction content. Two consultants were hired to help identify fiction to reprint: Conrad A. Brandt, and Wilbur C. Whitehead. Gernsback also hired Frank R. Paul as artist; Paul had worked with Gernsback as early as 1914, and had done many illustrations for the fiction in The Electrical Experimenter, though no covers. The magazine was issued in bedsheet format, the same size as the technical magazines. Amazing was an immediate success, and soon reached a very respectable circulation of 100,000. Gernsback soon realized that there was an enthusiastic readership for "scientifiction" (the term "science fiction" had not yet been coined), and in 1927 he issued an Amazing Stories Annual. This sold out and in January 1928 Gernsback launched a quarterly magazine titled Amazing Stories Quarterly as a regular companion to Amazing; it continued on a fairly regular schedule for 22 issues.

Gernsback was slow to pay his authors and other creditors; he was solvent overall but the extent of his investments limited his liquidity. On 20 February 1929 his printer and paper supplier opened bankruptcy proceedings against him. Experimenter Publishing was declared bankrupt in days, but because the assets left the magazine solvent, Amazing survived with its existing staff. Hugo and his brother, Sidney, were forced out as directors, and 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, soon sold the magazine to B.A. Mackinnon, and in August 1931 Amazing was acquired by Teck Publications, a subsidiary of Bernarr Macfadden's Macfadden Publishing. Macfadden's deep pockets helped insulate Amazing from the financial strain caused by the Great Depression; Amazing Stories Quarterly's schedule began to stutter, but Amazing did not miss an issue in the early thirties. It became unprofitable to run over the next few years, however. Circulation dropped, probably to little more than 25,000 in 1934, and in October 1935 it went to a bimonthly schedule. By 1938, with circulation down to only 15,000, Teck Publications was having financial problems. In January 1938 Ziff-Davis took over the magazine; the April issue was assembled by Sloane but published by Ziff-Davis. B. G. 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 duly hired that February, taking over editorial duties with the June 1938 issue. Ziff-Davis launched Fantastic Adventures, a fantasy companion to Amazing, in May 1939, also under Palmer's editorship. 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.

1940s

June 1947 issue of Amazing Stories, featuring the "Shaver Mystery"

In September 1943 Richard Shaver, an Amazing reader, began to correspond with Palmer, who soon asked him to write stories for the magazine. Shaver responded with a story called "I Remember Lemuria", published in the March 1945 issue, which was presented by Palmer as a mixture of truth and fiction. The story, about prehistoric civilizations, dramatically boosted Amazing's circulation, and Palmer ran a new Shaver story in every issue, culminating in the June 1947 special issue devoted entirely to the Shaver Mystery, as it was called. Amazing soon drew ridicule for these stories. A derisive article by William S. Baring-Gould in Harper's in September 1946 prompted William Ziff to tell Palmer to limit the amount of Shaver-related material in the magazine; Palmer complied, but his interest (and possibly belief) in this sort of material was now significant, and he soon began to plan to leave Ziff-Davis. In 1947 he formed Clark Publications, launching Fate the following year, and in 1949 he resigned from Ziff-Davis to edit this and other magazines.

Howard Browne, who had been on a leave of absence to write fiction, took over as editor, and began by throwing away 300,000 words of inventory that Palmer had acquired before he left. Browne had ambitions of moving Amazing upmarket, and his argument was strengthened by Street & Smith, one of the longest established and most respected publishers, who shut down all of their pulp magazines in the summer of 1949. The pulps were dying, largely as a result of the success of the pocketbook, and Street & Smith decided to concentrate on their slick magazines. Some pulps struggled on for a few more years, but Browne was able to persuade Ziff and Davis that the future was in the slicks, and they raised his fiction budget from one cent to a ceiling of five cents a word. Browne managed to get promises of new stories from many name authors, including Isaac Asimov and Theodore Sturgeon, and produced a dummy issue in April 1950. The plan of launching the new incarnation of Amazing in April 1951 (the 25th anniversary of the first issue) was cut short by the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950; budgets were being cut in the wake of the economic impact of the war, and Ziff-Davis never revived the idea.

1950s

Browne's interest in Amazing declined when the project to turn it into a slick magazine was derailed, and although he stayed involved with Fantastic Adventures, Amazing's stable-mate at Ziff-Davis, he left the editing work on Amazing to William Hamling and Lila Shaffer. In December 1950, when Ziff-Davis moved their offices from Chicago to New York, Hamling stayed behind in Chicago and Browne became more involved with the magazine once again. In 1952, Browne persuaded Ziff-Davis to try a high-quality digest fantasy magazine. The result was Fantastic, which appeared in the summer of that year, focusing on fantasy rather than science fiction, and which was so successful that it persuaded Ziff-Davis to switch Amazing from pulp format to digest in early 1953 (while also switching to a bimonthly schedule). Circulation fell, however, perhaps because the existing readership were not interested in Browne's approach to the magazine. This led to budget cuts, which limited the story quality in both Amazing and Fantastic. Fantastic began to print science fiction as well as fantasy, and circulation increased as a result, but Browne, who was not a science fiction aficionado, once again lost interest in the magazines.

In 1956 Browne left Ziff-Davis. The new editor was Paul W. Fairman, who took over with the September 1956 issue. Early in Fairman's tenure, Bernard Davis decided to try issuing a companion series of novels, titled Amazing Stories Science Fiction Novels. Readers' letters in Amazing had indicated a desire for novels, which Amazing did not have room to run. The novel series did not last: only one, Henry Slesar's 20 Million Miles to Earth, appeared. However, in response to readers' interest in longer fiction, Ziff-Davis expanded Amazing by 16 pages, starting with the March 1958 issue, and the magazine began to run complete novels.

Fairman left to edit Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine at the end of 1958, and his place was taken by Cele Goldsmith. Goldsmith had been hired in 1955 as a secretary, and became assistant editor to help cope with the additional work created when Ziff-Davis launched two short-lived magazines in 1956, Dream World and Pen Pals. When Fairman left a consultant, Norman Lobsenz, was hired to work with Goldsmith, as Ziff-Davis weren't sure she was capable of taking on the editorial duties, but she performed well, and Lobsenz's involvement soon became minimal.

1960s

Goldsmith was an innovative editor who is well regarded by science fiction historians, but circulation lagged during her tenure. By 1964 Fantastic's circulation was down to 27,000, with Amazing doing little better. The following March both magazines were sold to Ultimate Publishing Company, run by Sol Cohen and Arthur Bernhard.Goldsmith was given the choice of going with the magazines or staying with Ziff-Davis; she stayed, and Cohen hired Joseph Wrzos to edit the magazines, starting with the August and September 1965 issues of Amazing and Fantastic, respectively. Wrzos used the name "Joseph Ross" on the mastheads to avoid mis-spellings. Both magazines immediately moved to a bi-monthly schedule.

Cohen had acquired reprint rights to the magazines' back issues, although Wrzos did get Cohen to agree to print one new story every issue. Cohen was also producing reprint magazines such as Great Science Fiction and Science Fiction Classics, but no payment was made to authors for any of these reprints. This brought Cohen into conflict with the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA), a professional writers' organization formed in 1965. Soon SFWA called for a boycott of Ultimate's magazines until Cohen agreed to make payments. Cohen agreed to pay a flat fee for all stories, and then in August 1967 agreed to a graduated rate, depending on the length of the story. Harry Harrison had acted as an intermediary in Cohen's negotiations with SFWA, and when Wrzos left in 1967, Cohen asked Harrison to take over. SF Impulse, which Harrison had been editing, had folded in February 1967, so Harrison was available. He secured Cohen's agreement that the policy of printing almost nothing but reprinted stories would be phased out by the end of the year, and took over as editor with the September 1967 issue.

By February 1968 Harrison decided to leave, as Cohen was showing no signs of abandoning the reprints. He resigned, and suggested to Cohen that Barry Malzberg might be interested in taking over. Malzberg took over in April 1968. Cohen knew Malzberg from his work at the Scott Meredith Literary Agency, and thought that he might be more amenable than Harrison to continuing the reprint policy. In the event Malzberg immediately came into conflict with Cohen over the issue, and then threatened to resign in October 1968 over a disagreement about artwork Malzberg had commissioned for a cover. Cohen contacted Robert Silverberg, the then-current president of SFWA, and told him (falsely) that Malzberg had actually resigned. Silverberg recommended Ted White as a replacement. Cohen secured White's agreement and then fired Malzberg; White assumed control with the May 1969 issue.

1970s to 2000s

When White took over as editor, Amazing's circulation was about 31,000, with only about 4% subscribers. This was a very low ebb for subscriptions; Analog, by comparison, sold about 35% of its circulation through subscriptions. Cohen's wife filled the subscriptions at home, and Cohen had never tried to increase the subscriber base as this would have increased the burden on his wife. White worked hard to increase the circulation despite this, though with limited success. One of his first changes was to reduce the typeface to increase the amount of fiction in the magazine; to pay for this he increased the price of both Fantastic and Amazing to 60 cents, but this had a strong negative effect on circulation, which fell about 10% from 1969 to 1970.

White's ability to attract new writers suffered because of the ongoing SFWA boycott, which had been in place for five years when he began his editorship. The low rates—one cent per word, as compared to three or five cents per word at the leading competitive magazines—also discouraged contributors. In 1972, White changed the title to Amazing Science Fiction, distancing the magazine slightly from some of the pulp connotations of "Amazing Stories". White worked at a low wage, with much unpaid assistance from friends for reading the slushpile, but the circulation continued to fall. From near 40,000 when White joined the magazine, the circulation fell to about 23,000 in October 1975. White was unwilling to continue with the very limited financial backing that Cohen provided, and he resigned in 1975. Cohen was able to convince White to remain for an additional year, although in the event White stayed until late 1978.

Fantastic merged with Amazing in 1980. Amazing's earlier companion, Fantastic Adventures, had ceased publication in 1954 and been merged with Fantastic at that time.

During its final decade it was published erratically, and eventually Wizards of the Coast cancelled a version published by Pierce Watters.

In 2004 it was relaunched by Paizo Publishing, but after the April 2005 issue, the magazine went on "hiatus". In March 2006, Paizo announced that it would no longer publish Amazing.

Contents and reception

Gernsback's Amazing

Gernsback's editorial in the first issue asserted that "Not only do these amazing tales make tremendously interesting reading—they are also always instructive". He had always believed that "scientifiction", as he called these stories, had educational power, but he now understood that the fiction had to entertain as well as instruct.

The first issue of Amazing contained only reprints, beginning with a serialization of Off on a Comet, by Jules Verne. In keeping with Gernsback's new approach, this was one of Verne's least scientifically plausible novels. Also included were H. G. Wells's "The New Accelerator", and Edgar Allan Poe's "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar"; Gernsback put the names of all three authors on the cover. He also reprinted three more recent stories. Two came from his own magazine, Science and Invention; these were "The Man from the Atom" by G. Peyton Wertenbacker and "The Thing from—'Outside'" by George Allan England. The third was Austin Hall's "The Man Who Saved the Earth", which had appeared in All-Story Weekly.

In the June 1926 issue Gernsback announced a competition to write a short story around a cover drawn by Paul, with a first prize of $250. The competition drew over 360 entries, seven of which were eventually printed in Amazing. The winner was Cyril G. Wates, who sold three more stories to Gernsback in the late 1920s. Two other entrants were more successful: one was Clare Winger Harris, whose story, "The Fate of the Poseidonia", took third place in the competition, and was published in the June 1927 issue as by "Mrs. F.C. Harris". The other notable entrant was A. Hyatt Verrill, with "The Voice from the Inner World", which appeared in July 1927.

A letter column, titled "Discussions", soon appeared, and became a regular feature with the January 1927 issue. Many science fiction readers were isolated in small communities, knowing nobody else who liked the same fiction. Gernsback's habit of publishing the full address of all his correspondents meant that the letter column quickly became a venue for fans to connect with other fans. Science fiction fandom traces its beginnings to the letter column in Amazing and its competitors.

For the first year, Amazing contained primarily reprinted material. It was proving difficult to attract good quality new material, and Gernsback's slowness at paying his authors did not help. Writers such as H.P. Lovecraft, H.G. Wells, and Murray Leinster all avoided Amazing because payment was slow. Many other writers would have been aware of the problem, which would have reduced submissions. New writers did appear, but the quality of their stories was often weak.

Gernsback also discovered that the audience he had attracted was less interested in scientific invention stories than in the more fantastical adventures. A. Merritt's The Moon Pool, which began serialization in May 1927, was an early success; there was little or no scientific basis to the story, but it was very popular with Amazing's readers. The covers, all of which were painted by Paul, were garish and juvenile, leading some readers to complain. Raymond Palmer, later to become an editor of the magazine, wrote that a friend of his was forced to stop buying Amazing "by reason of his parents' dislike of the cover illustrations". Gernsback experimented with a more sober cover for the September 1928 issue, but it sold poorly, and so the lurid covers continued. The combination of poor quality fiction with garish artwork has led some critics to comment that Gernsback created a "ghetto" for science fiction.

Among the regular writers for Amazing by the end of the 1920s were several who were influential and popular at the time, such as David H. Keller and Stanton Coblentz, and some who would continue to be successful for much longer, most notably Edward E. Smith and Jack Williamson. Smith's The Skylark of Space, which had been written between 1915 and 1920, was a seminal space opera which found no ready market when Argosy stopped printing science fiction. When Smith saw a copy of the April 1927 issue of Amazing, he submitted it to Sloane, and it appeared in the August–October 1928 issues. It was such a success that Sloane requested a sequel before the second installment had been published. It was also in the August 1928 issue that "Armageddon – 2419 AD", by Philip Francis Nowlan, appeared; this was the first appearance of Buck Rogers in print.

Sloane, Palmer, Browne and Fairman

Sloane took over full control of the content of Amazing when Gernsback left in 1929. He was infamous for his slow response to manuscripts, and when Astounding Stories was launched in January 1930, some of Sloane's writers quickly defected to a faster and better-paying market. Little of quality appeared in Amazing during Sloane's tenure, though Howard Fast's first story appeared in the October 1932 issue, and "The Lost Machine", an early story by John Wyndham, appeared in April 1932, under Wyndham's real name of John Beynon Harris.

Raymond Palmer, who took over in 1938, was less interested in the educational possibilities of science fiction than Sloane had been. He wanted the magazine to provide escapist entertainment. His instructions to one pulp writer, Don Wilcox, "Gimme Bang-Bang", sum up his approach. Palmer disposed of almost all Sloane's accumulated inventory, instead acquiring stories from local Chicago writers he knew through his connections with science fiction fandom. He also added features such as a "Correspondence Corner" and a "Collectors' Corner" to appeal to fans, and introduced a "Meet the Authors" feature, though on at least one occasion the featured author was a pseudonym, and the biographical details were invented. An illustrated back cover was tried, and soon became standard.

In the 1940s, several writers established themselves as a stable of reliable contributors to Amazing. These included David Wright O'Brien and William P. McGivern, both of whom wrote an immense amount for Ziff-Davis, much of it under house names such as Alexander Blade. Palmer also encouraged long-time science fiction writers to return, publishing pulp authors such as Ed Earl Repp and Eando Binder. This policy did not always meet with approval from Amazing's readers, who, despite a clear preference for action and adventure stories, could not stomach the work of some of the early pulp writers such as Harry Bates.

The first "Shaver Mystery" story, "I Remember Lemuria", by Richard S. Shaver, appeared in the March 1945 issue. Shaver claimed that all the world's accidents and disasters were caused by an ancient race of "detrimental robots" living in underground cities. This explanation for the world's ills, coming towards the end of World War II, struck a chord with Amazing's readership. Palmer received over 2,500 letters, instead of the usual 40 or 50, and proceeded to print a Shaver story in every issue. The June 1947 issue was given over entirely to the Shaver Mystery. From March 1948 the Shaver Mystery was dropped as a regular feature of the magazine, at Ziff's insistence. Palmer left the following year, and Browne, his successor, "was determined to make sure that the lunatics were no longer in charge of the asylum", in the words of science fiction historian Mike Ashley.

Browne had acquired some good-quality material in the process of planning the launch of a new slick version of Amazing, and when the plan was abandoned this material appeared in the continuing pulp version. This included "Operation RSVP" by H. Beam Piper, and Satisfaction Guaranteed, by Isaac Asimov. Despite the cancellation of the planned change to a slick format, news had reached the writing community of Amazing's new approach, and Browne began to receive much better material than Palmer had been able to publish. The existing stable of Amazing writers, such as Rog Phillips and Chester S. Geier, were replaced by writers such as Fritz Leiber, Fredric Brown, and Clifford Simak. Browne also discovered several writers who went on to success in the field, publishing first stories by Walter M. Miller, Mack Reynolds, John Jakes, Milton Lesser and Charles Beaumont, all within the space of nine months in late 1950 and early 1951. Browne was disappointed by the cancellation of the planned slick version, however, and to some extent reverted to Palmer's policy of publishing sensational fiction. In 1952, for example, he serialized the anonymous Master of the Universe, which purported to be a history of the future from 1975 to 2575.

With the change to digest size in 1953, Browne once again attempted to use higher-quality fiction. The first digest issue, dated April–May 1953, included stories by Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, Richard Matheson, Theodore Sturgeon, and Murray Leinster. Further well-regarded stories appeared over the course of 1953, including Arthur C. Clarke's "Encounter in the Dawn", and Henry Kuttner's "Or Else". Subsequent budget cuts meant that Browne was unable to sustain this level. As in the 1940s, Amazing gained a stable of writers who appeared frequently there, though this time the quality of the writers was rather higher—it included Harlan Ellison, Robert Silverberg, and Randall Garrett—and the regular writers were not appearing only in Ziff-Davis magazines. This remained the situation after Browne's departure in 1956 and through Paul Fairman's tenure.

Cele Goldsmith

Cele Goldsmith became editor in 1959, and her tenure began with the opportunity to showcase two very well-established writers: E.E. Smith, whose The Galaxy Primes began serialization in March 1959, and Isaac Asimov. Asimov's first published story, "Marooned Off Vesta", had appeared in the March 1939 issue of Amazing, and Goldsmith reprinted it in March 1959 along with a sequel and Asimov's comments on the story. She soon began to publish some of the better new writers in both Fantastic and Amazing. Cordwainer Smith's "Golden the Ship Was—Oh! Oh! Oh!" appeared in April; and by the middle of the following year she had managed to attract stories from Robert Sheckley, Alan E. Nourse, Fritz Leiber, Gordon R. Dickson, Robert Bloch, and James Blish. The changes she wrought were enough to bring Robert Heinlein back as a subscriber; Heinlein read a copy of the June 1961 issue which, he said, "caused me to think I had been missing something".

In September 1960 Amazing began to carry Sam Moskowitz's series of author profiles, which had begun in Fantastic, the sister magazine. The following month the cover and logo were redesigned. In April 1961, the thirty-fifth anniversary of the first issue, Goldsmith ran several reprints, including stories by Ray Bradbury and Edgar Rice Burroughs; the cover, a wraparound by Frank Paul, was his last for a science fiction magazine. Goldsmith had little previous experience with science fiction, and bought what she liked, rather than trying to conform to a notion of what science fiction should be. The result was the debut of more significant writers in her magazines than anywhere else at that time. She published the first stories by Ursula K. Le Guin, Roger Zelazny, Piers Anthony and Thomas M. Disch, among many others. Award-winning stories published during Goldsmith's editorship include Zelazny's He Who Shapes, a story about the use of dream therapy to cure phobias, which won a Nebula Award in 1965. Goldsmith often wrote long, helpful letters to her authors: Zelazny commented in a letter to her that "Most of anything I have learned was stimulated by those first sales, and then I learned, and possibly even learned more, from some of the later rejections". Disch and Le Guin have also acknowledged the influence Goldsmith had on their early careers. The cover art for Amazing had been largely supplied by Ed Valigursky during the late fifties, but during the early sixties a much wider variety of artists appeared, including Alex Schomburg, Leo Summers and Ed Emshwiller.

Goldsmith's open-minded approach meant that Amazing and Fantastic published some writers who did not fit into the other magazines. Philip K. Dick, whose magazine sales had dropped, began to appear in Amazing, and Goldsmith also regularly published David R. Bunch's stories of Moderan, a world whose inhabitants were part human and part metal. Bunch, whose stories were "bewildering, exotic word pictures" according to Mike Ashley, had been unable to sell regularly elsewhere.

The reprint era and Ted White

When Sol Cohen bought both Amazing and Fantastic in early 1965, he decided to maximize profit by filling the magazines almost entirely with reprints. Cohen had acquired second serial rights from Ziff-Davis to all stories that had been printed in both magazines, and also in the companion magazines such as Fantastic Adventures. Joseph Wrzos, the new editor, persuaded Cohen that at least one new story should appear in each issue; there was sufficient inventory left over from Goldsmith's tenure for this to achievable without needing to acquire new material. Readers initially approved of the policy, since it made available some well-loved stories from earlier decades that had not been reprinted elsewhere. Both of Wrzos's successors as editor, Harry Harrison and Barry Malzberg, were unable to persuade Cohen to use more new fiction.

Publication details

Gernsback attempted to create a premium product. Pulp magazines were about 180 x 250 mm, with ragged (uncut) edges; 'Amazing Stories' was larger, 200 x 280 mm, the so-called bedsheet format, with neatly trimmed edges and a slightly higher cover price.

Similarly named publications

In its early actual pulp years, there were companion titles including Amazing Stories Quarterly and Fantastic Adventures Quarterly. At the time, "returns" were complete copies of the magazines, so they were stripped of their original covers and three consecutive issues would be bound together under one new cover and offered for sale again.

The title Amazing has also been used for unconnected publications including the British science fiction magazine Amazing Science Stories (1951).

Editors

• Hugo Gernsback (April 1926-April 1929)
• Arthur Lynch (May 1929-October 1929)
• T. O'Conor Sloane (November 1929-May 1939)
• Raymond A. Palmer (June 1939-December 1939)
• Bernard G. Davis (January 1940-May 1946)
• Raymond A. Palmer (June 1946-December 1949)
• Howard Browne (January 1950-August 1956)
• Paul W. Fairman (September 1956-December 1958)
• Cele Goldsmith Lalli (January 1959-June 1965)
• Joseph Wrzos (August 1965-October 1967)
• Harry Harrison (December 1967-September 1968)
• Barry N. Malzberg (November 1968-January 1969)
• Ted White (March 1969-February 1979)
• Elinor Mavor (May 1979-August 1981 under the pseudonym Omar Gohagen, November 1981-September 1982 under her own name)
• George H. Scithers (November 1982-July 1986)
• Patrick Lucien Price (September 1986-March1991)
• Kim Mohan (May 1991-1995 and 1998-2000)
• David Gross (May 2004-October 2004)
• Jeff Berkwits (October 2004-March 2005)

B.G. Davis held the title of Editor at all Ziff-Davis magazines but had little daily involvement at Amazing. After Browne's departure, Norman Lobsenz was Editorial Director (writing editorials but not buying stories) until the magazine was sold to Sol Cohen (Ultimate Publishing Company). During Cohen's first years, the magazine was edited entirely by Joseph Wrzos, who signed himself "Joseph Ross." Cohen concentrated on acquiring artwork (both old and new) and on layouts and production. Elinor Mavor used the title Editorial & Art Director for a while before dropping "Omar Gohagen" completely. Pierce Watters was "Executive Editor" and superior to Mohan during Mohan's second term.

Media crossovers

Director Steven Spielberg licensed the title for use on an American television show called Amazing Stories that ran from 1985 to 1987. Spielberg named it after the magazine, which his father had read since he was a child.

Between 1998 and 2000, Amazing Stories published the first (and, to date, only) officially licensed magazine short stories based upon the Star Trek franchise. In 2002, these stories were reissued by Pocket Books in the collection Star Trek: The Amazing Stories.

Amazing Stories also published several Babylon 5 stories written by J. Michael Straczynski.

A short story by science fiction author Isaac Asimov, "Birth of a Notion", tells how a time-travelling physicist briefly visits Hugo Gernsback and plants the idea for the title Amazing Stories.

July, 1926 issue

Amazing Stories, Volume 1, Number 4, gives a feeling of the original magazine. The cover features a Frank R. Paul illustration of giant house fly, many times the size of a man. It is attacking a naval vessel, which is firing artillery at it. The lower-right corner boldly proclaims "Stories by H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, Garrett P. Serviss". At the bottom of the cover is the legend "Experimenter Publishing Company, New York, publishers of Radio News — Science & Invention — Radio Review — Amazing Stories — Radio Internacional" [sic].

There were 96 pages, but the page numbering continued from the previous issue. The only non-fiction is a 1-page editorial in which Gernsback expands on the magazine's motto: Extravagant Fiction Today . . . Cold Fact Tomorrow.

The contents page lists:

• G. McLeod Windsor, Station X (part 1 of 3 parts)
• H. G. Wells, The Man Who Could Work Miracles
• Jacque Morgan, The Scientific Adventures of Mr. Fosdick: The Feline Light and Power Company Is Organised (a humorous piece about trying to generate usable static electricity from cats)
• Garrett P. Serviss, The Moon Metal
• Curt Siodmak, The Eggs From Lake Tanganyika
• Hugo Gernsback, The Magnetic Storm
• Edgar Allan Poe, The Sphinx
• Jules Verne, A Trip To The Centre of The Earth (last part of serial)
• Clement Fezandié, Doctor Hackensaw's Secrets: The Secret of the Invisible Girl

Each story has a full page illustration. There are a very few small advertisements (magic tricks, trusses, etc.) and classified advertisements (For sale: Rharostine "B" Eliminator, $15).

Other Notable Issues

The August 1928 issue of Amazing Stories has become a sought-after collectors item. It is important in the history of the space opera subgenre because it includes Armageddon 2419 A.D. - the first appearance of Buck Rogers - and E.E. Smith's The Skylark of Space, considered one of the first space opera novels. Though Armageddon 2419 A.D. was not a space opera, the comic strip based on it certainly was.

The July 1940 issue of Amazing featured an illustration by Frank R. Paul on the back cover. It showed a model of an Earthling, as imagined by Martians, that included a small image of Earth as a cloudless blue planet. Forrest J Ackerman cites this as one of the earliest corrections to the popular pre-spaceflight image of Earth as a green world.

References

• Ackerman, Forrest J (1997). Forrest J Ackerman's World of Science Fiction. Los Angeles: RR Donnelley & Sons Company. ISBN 1-57544-069-5.
• Ashley, Mike (2000). The Time Machines:The Story of the Science-Fiction Pulp Magazines from the beginning to 1950. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. ISBN 0-85323-865-0.
• Ashley, Mike (2005). Transformations:The Story of the Science-Fiction Magazines from 1950 to 1970. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. ISBN 0-85323-779-4.
• Ashley, Mike (2007). Gateways to Forever:The Story of the Science-Fiction Magazines from 1970 to 1980. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. ISBN 978-1-84631-003-4.
• Clute, John (1993). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. New York: St. Martin's Press, Inc. ISBN 0-312-09618-6. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Sam Moskowitz (1966). Seekers of Tomorrow. World Publishing. ISBN 0-88355-129-2.
• Joseph Sanders (1986). E.E. "Doc" Smith. Starmont House. ISBN 0-916732-73-8.

External links

• Checklist of issues (1926-2005).
• Frank R Paul Gallery - Amazing covers, especially 1926-1929
• Archive of Amazing Stories covers
• Index of Amazing Magazine issues and contents
• Cover art with artist's name and contents (1926-1967)

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