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Amazing Stories is an American science fiction magazine that Hugo Gernsback’s Experimenter Publishing launched in April 1926. It was the first magazine to exclusively focus on science fiction. Although science fiction stories were published in several magazines, Gernsback was not the first to publish them. Amazing helped to create and launch a new genre for pulp fiction.

Amazing was published in 2018, with some interruptions. It has been around for 92 years, through half-a dozen owners and many editors, as it struggled financially. Gernsback filed for bankruptcy in 1929 and lost control over the magazine. Ziff-Davis purchased the magazine in 1938 and hired Raymond A. Palmer to be its editor. Although the magazine was regarded as a low-quality magazine by the science fiction community, Palmer made it a success. Amazing was originally published in the late 1940s as fact stories about The Shaver Mystery. This lurid mythos explained disasters and accidents as the work of robots called deros. It saw a dramatic increase in circulation, but was widely ridiculed. Amazing was converted to a digest-size format in 1953, just before the end of the pulp-magazine era. Sol Cohen’s Universal Publishing Company bought it in 1965. They filled it with reprinted stories, but didn’t pay a reprint fees to the authors. This created a conflict with Science Fiction Writers of America. Ted White assumed the editorship in 1969. He eliminated the reprints, and the magazine was again respected. Amazing was nominated three times for the Hugo Award during his tenure in 1970s. In the decades that followed, several other owners tried to create a new version of the magazine. However, publication was stopped after the March 2005 issue. In July 2012, an online version of the magazine was launched. The Fall 2018 issue saw the return of print publication.

Gernsback’s original editorial approach was to combine entertainment and instruction; he believed science fiction could teach readers. His audience quickly favored implausible adventures and Gernsback’s idealism was quickly abandoned. The magazine changed hands in 1929. Despite this, Gernsback made a huge impact on the field. The creation of a magazine that was exclusively focused on science fiction launched an entire genre publishing business. Amazing’s letter columns, which allowed fans to get in touch with one another, helped to create science fiction fandom. This in turn had a significant impact on the field’s development. John W. Campbell and Isaac Asimov were among the first to publish a story in the magazine. Amazing was not an influential magazine in the genre after the 1920s. Gernsback has been criticised for “ghettoizing science fiction”, but this view has been refuted by the argument science fiction needs an independent market to grow in order to reach its full potential.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

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