First Issues: Amazing Stories, April 1926

Amazing Stories, April 1926 is the first in a series of posts that look at the first issues of famous Science Fiction magazines. Where else could we start but with the first all-Science Fiction magazine? (I thought about Weird Tales, but it wasn’t quite right.) Hugo Gernsback worked his way up to this inaugural issue by publishing single stories in his Science magazine, Science and Invention. He initially wanted to call the magazine Scientifiction, after his word for SF, but Amazing Stories won the fan voting by a long shot! At twenty-five cents, this was an expensive Pulp but no one else had such a title. (Hugo wasn’t the first editor to use Science Fiction. Argosy and All-Story had been publishing off-trail material for over ten years. But those stories appeared along Westerns, mysteries and romance tales.)

All the stories in this issue (and many to follow) were reprints. The reason for this was three-fold. One, not many writers were writing Science Fiction. Those that were, wrote for Argosy and its generous pay scale. Two, reprints are cheap. And if there is anything we know about Hugo Gernsback, it was that he was cheap. And three, Hugo felt that the classics he used would help train a new school of SF writers, which I think it did. He published such writers as David H. Keller, Jack Williamson, Francis Philip Nowlan, Clare Winger Harris, Francis Flagg and many others for the first time.

All the artwork in this post was done by Frank R. Paul. His distinctive style, great with machines but less so with people, became part of the first Science Fiction look and feel. Paul’s artwork was as important as Gernsback’s choices of stories.

“Editorial: A New Sort of Magazine” by Hugo Gernsback promises a magazine like no other. He places Verne, Wells and Poe at the forefront of the genre. Hugo points out we live in an age of marvel so much so we don’t really notice great scientific changes anymore. His magazine is a vehicle to educate as much as entertain. He boasts of exclusive arrangement with the copyright holders of Verne as well as other European greats.

“Off on a Comet — or Hector Servadac” Part One by Jules Verne (reprinted from 1877) is a surprising but logical choice for Gernsback. Other novels, such as Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, are too familiar and don’t involve space. The next issue Hugo would use Journey to the Center of the Earth as well. This novel begins with a comet, Gallia, colliding with the Earth and taking thirty-six people with it. There are French, English, Spanish and Russians. The stranded must first work out what is going on as gravity changes and water is boiling so easily. With the help of astronomer, Palmyrin Rosette, they figure out their situation. Eventually the comet swings back around and the travelers need to find a way to get off the comet and back on earth. They do this by creating balloon. Of course, it’s a balloon. This is Jules Verne, after all. This first segment ends before the introduction of Rosette.

Hugo’s choice is correct. This novel features many of the elements he wanted for future issues, including space travel. The characters do plenty of experimenting to figure out what has happened to them. This would appeal to the editor of a Science magazine. The characters play with freezing the sea and ice-skating. This was the inspiration for Frank R. Paul’s cover illustration.

“The New Accelerator” by H. G. Wells (reprinted from Strand Magazine, December 1901) begins with Professor Gibberne inventing an elixir that speeds up a person’s processes so they move so fast that the rest of the world stands still.  Wells fails to address issues with friction and breathing. The idea has become commonplace through the comic books, The Flash in particular. Barry Allen invents a friction-proof suit to deal with the burning of clothes.

“The Man From the Atom” by G. Peyton Wertenbaker (reprinted from Science and Invention, August 1923) has a man named Kirby using an experimental device to expand himself. He grows larger than the planet, solar system then galaxy. When he returns to normal size, he finds time has been affected and everyone he knows is gone. Wertenbaker wasn’t the first to use the shrinking/expanding idea. Ray Cummings had famously used it in “The Girl in the Golden Atom” (All-Story Weekly, March 15, 1919) but Wertenbaker refines the Science of the concept. Cummings used it mostly for Edgar Rice Burroughs style adventure. For more on all of Wertenbaker’s stories, go here.

“The Thing From –Outside” by George Allen England (reprinted by Science and Invention, April 1923) is an unusual pick, being both a strange Northern and a Horror tale. Gernsback wasn’t against Horror as long as it had a Science Fiction basis. He would publish such Weird Tales icons as H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and even some of Edmond Hamilton’s material has a Horror edge. This tale has an invisible monster picking off men in the backwoods. For more on this story and other Wendigo type monsters that inspired it, go here.

“The Man Who Saved the Earth” by Austin Hall (reprinted from All-Story Weekly, December 13, 1919) was written by one half of a famous team. Homer Eon Flint and Austin Hall wrote “The Blind Spot” (Argosy All-Story Weekly, May 14-June 18, 1921). An influential novel, it saw Hall writing regularly for Munsey. This story involves glowing globes that appear all around the Earth, harvesting the resources such as water. An eccentric scientist, Charles Huyck, is the only one to figure out that the devices are from Mars. The Martians are harvesting the planet. Huyck to rescue! He creates a machine powered by the Sun that disrupts the Martian globes. The Earth is saved and the price is high: listening to Huyck pontificate on Morality and Necessity. Not Hall’s best, but it does offer alien invasion, a theme that Amazing Stories (and everybody after them) will use plenty.

“The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” by Edgar Allan Poe (reprinted from The American Review, December 1845) is the oldest story in the issue. It may be odd for some to associate Poe with Science Fiction. He was that Gothic Fall of Usher guy, right? Hugo writes in his editorial: “Edgar allan Poe may well be called the father of ‘scientificition’. It was he who really originated the romance, cleverly weaving into and around the story, a scientific thread.” Europeans certainly enjoyed Poe’s brand of psychological Horror, but they also saw him as an early SF writer with stories like “A Descent Into the Maelstrom”, “The Balloon Hoax”,  “Hans Phaall” and the unfinished novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838).  This story has a man kept from death by hypnotism. Ick! Look what happens when the spell is broken! Though the plot sounds like a Horror tale, Poe couches the whole thing in scientific language. It is Gothic but no less Science Fiction.

Conclusion

So there you have it. The first Science Fiction Pulp, one serial and five stories from the greats of the past and not-so past. Gernsback establishes many of his favorite themes: space travel, inventions, time travel, size expansion, occult invaders, alien enemies and lastly, the weirdly unique idea. The issues to follow will build on this, adding other standard tropes such as dinosaurs, robots and underwater environments. The young SF fan reading this first issue would have been filled with wonder and bright hopes for Pulp Science Fiction.

Next time…Hugo Gernsback’s sub-editor takes charge.