History of US science fiction and fantasy magazines to 1950

The article was written with enough humour to make it clear to his readers that it was simply an imaginative exercise, but in 1911 Modern Electrics began serializing Ralph 124C 41+, a novel set in the year 2660.

He ceased publication of Practical Electrics (recently retitled The Experimenter) but retained the editor, T. O'Conor Sloane, to edit the new magazine, though Gernsback had final say over the fiction content.

The first issue of Amazing consisted entirely of reprinted material, including Jules Verne's novel Off on a Comet, and stories by H. G. Wells and Edgar Allan Poe, but new fiction quickly appeared, with Clare Winger Harris and A. Hyatt Verrill each finding success in one of Gernsback's early reader competitions.

[29] It was difficult for Gernsback to find high-quality new material that was both entertaining and met his declared goal of providing scientific information, and the early issues of Amazing contained a high proportion of reprints.

[32] Lasser printed work by some popular authors, including Fletcher Pratt, Stanton Coblentz, and David H. Keller,[33] and two of the winners of the contests Gernsback frequently ran subsequently became well known in the field: Raymond Palmer, later the editor of Amazing Stories, and John Wyndham, best known for his 1951 novel The Day of the Triffids.

Miracle ceased publication after only two issues when Dold fell ill, though sales were poor in any case, and Hersey was unable to revive Ghost Stories' fortunes; it was cancelled at the start of 1932.

Like its competitor, Strange Tales frequently published science fiction as well as fantasy; as with Astounding it paid better rates than the competition, and as a result attracted some good writers, including Jack Williamson, whose "Wolves of Darkness", about an invasion by beings from another dimension, is one of its better-remembered stories.

[54] Lasser corresponded with his authors to help improve both their level of scientific literacy, and the quality of their writing; Asimov has described Wonder Stories as a "forcing ground", where young writers learned their trade.

[55] Lasser was willing to print material that lay outside the usual pulp conventions, such as Eric Temple Bell's The Time Stream and Festus Pragnell's The Green Man of Graypec.

[64] In December 1933 Tremaine wrote an editorial calling for "thought variant" stories that contained original ideas and did not simply reproduce adventure themes in a science-fiction context.

[69] Weird Tales had survived a bank failure in 1930 that froze most of the magazine's cash,[70] and was continuing to publish well-received material[71]—mostly fantasy and horror, but still including some science fiction.

Standard's first issue, dated August 1936, contained stories by several well-known writers, including Ray Cummings, Eando Binder, and Stanley G. Weinbaum, but overall the fiction was unsophisticated compared to what could be found in Astounding.

[80] Campbell's approach differentiated Astounding from rivals; Algis Budrys recalled that "it didn't look like an SF magazine" because covers did not show men with ray guns and women with large breasts.

He was unable to make Amazing into a real rival to Astounding, and Ashley speculates that Bernard G. Davis, who ran the editorial offices of Ziff-Davis, may have instructed Palmer to focus on entertainment rather than on serious science fiction.

[87][88] Startling included a lead novel and a "Hall of Fame" reprint section in every issue; the latter was possible because the publisher, Standard Magazines, owned the back catalog of Wonder Stories.

As a result, he occasionally printed material by some of the Astounding regulars, including "Genus Homo", a collaboration between L. Sprague de Camp and P. Schuyler Miller, and "Lost Legion", by Robert A.

Like Pohl, Wollheim knew several budding writers who were willing to donate stories, and managed to acquire some good fiction, including "Thirteen O'Clock" and "The City in the Sofa", by Kornbluth, which Ashley describes as "enjoyable tongue-in-cheek fantasies".

Frequent contributors included L. Ron Hubbard, Theodore Sturgeon, and L. Sprague de Camp, who, in collaboration with Fletcher Pratt, contributed three stories about a world where magic operates by logical rules.

[98] Leigh Brackett was a regular contributor of planetary romances—melodramatic tales of action and adventure on alien planets and in interplanetary space—and her work had a strong influence on other writers, including Marion Zimmer Bradley.

Much of the material in both magazines came from a group of Chicago-based writers who published under both their own names and various house pseudonyms; among the most prolific were William P. McGivern, David Wright O'Brien, Don Wilcox, and Chester S.

[124][125] The fiction was rarely noteworthy; Ashley describes the wartime Fantastic Adventures as "concentrat[ing] more on quantity than quality, on brash sensationalism than subtlety",[125] though he also comments that it was the most attractive science-fiction or fantasy magazine on newsstands at the time, with covers by J. Allen St. John, Harold McCauley, and Robert Gibson Smith.

[125] Similarly, the fiction in Amazing was of uneven quality, though occasionally Palmer obtained good material, including stories by Ray Bradbury, Eric Frank Russell, and John Wyndham.

Both Astonishing and Super Science Stories ceased publication in 1943 when Frederik Pohl, the editor of both titles, enlisted in the army; the publisher was having difficulty obtaining enough paper and decided to close the magazines down.

[139] Campbell continued to find new writers: William Tenn, H. Beam Piper, Arthur C. Clarke and John Christopher all made their first sales to Astounding in the late 1940s, and he published many stories now regarded as classics, including "Vintage Season" by C.L.

[141] Sam Merwin, who had taken over from Oscar Friend at Standard Magazines towards the end of the war,[122] abandoned the juvenile approach that had characterized both Startling and Thrilling; he asked Bergey to make his covers more realistic, and started to publish more hard science fiction, including work by Murray Leinster, George O. Smith, and Hubbard.

He bought Jack Vance's first sale, "The World Thinker", which appeared in 1945, and published a good deal of material by Ray Bradbury, including several of his Martian Chronicle stories.

Some of the highest-profile names from Campbell's stable of Astounding writers sold to Merwin, including van Vogt, Heinlein, and Sturgeon, whose "The Sky Was Full of Ships" appeared in 1947 and was much praised by readers.

Writers such as John D. MacDonald, Margaret St. Clair, William Tenn, Arthur C. Clarke, James Blish, and Damon Knight all sold to Merwin, and the net effect was a dramatic improvement in the quality of both magazines, to the point where Ashley suggests that by the late 1940s, Thrilling Wonder, in particular, was a serious challenger to Astounding for the leadership of the field.

Several well-known writers, including Blish, Brown, and Knight, published good material in Planet, but the overall improvement was largely due to the contributions of Bradbury and Leigh Brackett, both of whom set many of their stories on a version of Mars that owed much to the Barsoom of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

[157] Reprints of old classics such as George Allan England's The Flying Legion and Garrett P. Serviss's The Second Deluge constituted most of Fantastic Novels' contents, with some more recent material such as Earth's Last Citadel, by Kuttner and Moore, which had only previously appeared as a serial in Argosy in 1943.