Amazing Stories
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.
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.
In 1924, he changed its name to The Experimenter,[7] 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.
[11] Gernsback saw there was an enthusiastic readership for "scientifiction" (the term "science fiction" had not yet been coined), and in 1927 started a Discussions section[12] and issued Amazing Stories Annual.
[17][18] 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.
[31] 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.
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.
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, Dream World and Pen Pals, in 1956.
[38] Goldsmith is well regarded by science fiction historians for her innovation, and the impact she had on the early careers of writers such as Ursula K. Le Guin and Roger Zelazny,[38] but circulation lagged during her tenure.
She was not confident that a woman would be accepted as the editor of a science fiction magazine, so she initially used the pseudonym "Omar Gohagen" for both Amazing and Fantastic, dropping it late in 1980.
[66] In the June 1926 issue Gernsback launched a competition to write a short story to suit a cover drawn by illustrator Frank R. Paul, with a first prize of $250.
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".
[73] 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.
Palmer disposed of almost all of Sloane's accumulated inventory, instead acquiring stories from local Chicago writers he knew through his connections with science fiction fandom.
[88] 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.
Shaver claimed that all the world's accidents and disasters were caused by an ancient race of deros (short for "detrimental robots") who lived in underground cities.
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.
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.
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 nine months in late 1950 and early 1951.
The first digest issue, dated April–May 1953, included stories by Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, Richard Matheson, Theodore Sturgeon, and Murray Leinster.
The result was the debut of more significant writers in her magazines than anywhere else at that time: she published the first stories of Ursula K. Le Guin, Roger Zelazny, Piers Anthony and Thomas M. Disch, among many others.
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 be done without acquiring new material.
One writer influenced by this was James Tiptree, Jr., who later wrote that "after first plowing into the first pulpy pages of the 1971 Amazing in which Lathe came out, my toe-nails began to curl under and my spine hair stood up".
[50] Over time Mavor was to some extent able to reverse the negative perceptions of Amazing among established authors, but she was initially forced to work primarily with newer writers.
In a notice published in her first issue, she asked readers for help in assembling news, reviews and fan information, and soon added columns that covered these areas.
[50] After the merger with Fantastic, Mavor continued to draw well-known writers to the magazine, including Orson Scott Card, George R. R. Martin, and Roger Zelazny.
[102] Brian Stableford, by contrast, comments that both Scithers and Price made efforts to publish good material, and that the packaging, from 1991 onwards, was perhaps the best presented of any science fiction magazine.
In the words of science fiction writer and critic Damon Knight, the magazine was "a snag in the stream of history, from which a V-shape spread out in dozens and then in hundreds of altered lives".
