Early science fiction writers had it tough. Little or no pay and even if you succeeded, everybody thought you were nuts for writing “that junk.” It should not be surprising that many of them were young men trying out a new interest. One of these was Green Peyton Wertenbaker, a sixteen-year-old who submitted his first story to Hugo Gernsback’s Science & Invention, a non-fiction magazine that occasionally published “Scientifiction” stories. Wertenbacker’s first try was called “The Man From the Atom” and it appeared in April 1923. But Hugo had bigger plans for Scientifiction and G Peyton Wertenbaker.
April 1926 saw the reality of Gernsback’s dream of a magazine filled only with science fiction. It was called Amazing Stories and it reprinted Wertenbaker’s tale along with Jules Verne, HG Wells, George Allan England, Austin Hall, and Edgar Allan Poe. The entire first issue was made up of reprints. So was the second, with the exception of “The Man from the Atom (Sequel).” As suggested by its odd title, it was the second part of Wertenbaker’s tale of the man who could control his size. It was also the first new science fiction story to appear in an all-science-fiction magazine. So why isn’t G Peyton Wertenbaker a household name?
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https://www.michaelmay.online/2017/11/guest-post-g-peyton-wertenbaker-science.html
