The April 1926 issue of Amazing Stories was published by Gernsback’s Experimenter Company, and its masthead states “Extravagant Fiction Today—Cold Fact Tomorrow!” and includes a sketch of Jules Verne’s tomb. The magazine contains but six stories of what Gernsback termed “scientifiction,” none of them original to the publication. Two were by authors who were long dead: Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,” was first published in the American Review in December 1845, and Jules Verne’s “Off on a Comet” first appeared in 1877 as Hector Servadac. The remaining four were relatively recent reprints: the aforementioned George Allan England’s “The Thing from—Outside” was published in Science and Invention in April 1923, and G. Peyton Wertenbaker’s “The Man from the Atom” appeared in the August 1923 issue of that magazine. Austin Hall’s “The Man Who Saved the Earth” was a little older, having appeared first in the 13 December 1919 All-Story, and H. G. Wells’s “The New Accelerator” was older still, being first published in the Strand Magazine of December 1901.
The April issue of Amazing Stories was sufficiently successful that the magazine was continued, and the May issue likewise contained six stories. For the reader who had never previously encountered fantastic fiction, three of the authors were familiar names, for they had appeared in the March issue: H. G. Wells (“The Crystal Egg”), Jules Verne (the first episode of “A Trip to the Center of the Earth” and the second part of “Off on a Comet”), and Edgar Allan Poe (“Mesmeric Revelation”). Charles C. Winn’s “The Infinite Vision” was new to the magazine—and was apparently his only published story—but it was not a new publication, having first appeared in Science and Invention in May 1924. The sixth story, however, G. Peyton Wertenbaker’s “The Man from the Atom (Sequel),” is original to Amazing Stories and could thus arguably be considered the first science fiction story written as such.
In acquiring original fiction by Wertenbaker, Gernsback demonstrated that he had recognized and was attempting to deal with two major problems. First, he could not continue filling the pages of the magazine with reprints, not if he hoped to see Amazing Stories continue, find a readership, and make a profit. An expanded readership—one interested in the as yet unidentified and largely unexplored literary genre of science fiction—would want new stories, not the stories that had been published 50 or more years earlier.
Next, the contemporary writers of the kind of story Gernsback desired—among them such writers as Edgar Rice Burroughs, William Wallace Cook, Ray Cummings, George Allan England, Murray Leinster, Talbot Mundy, and Victor Rousseau—were initially not willing to deal with him, for these writers could (and did) make more selling to other pulp magazines. It was thus essential for Gernsback to encourage and develop new writers who would be willing to work for less than established professionals, at least until they could develop sufficiently to publish elsewhere. This nevertheless proved difficult for Gernsback: the first six months of Amazing Stories contained thirty-eight stories, only five of which were originals, and another original story did not appear in the magazine until the issue of August 1926: M. H. Hasta’s “The Talking Brain.” So far as can be determined, this was Hasta’s only publication, and Hasta thus can hardly be said to have been one of Gernsback’s stable.
Gernsback was, however, resourceful, and though he did not realize it, he had tapped into a youthful reading audience that was less concerned about polished prose and artistic verisimilitude than it was about imaginative extrapolations and the presentation of the new and novel. For these readers, well rounded and deeply described characterizations did not matter so much as the reactions of these characters to the unexpected and unanticipated, particularly if these were rationalized by a quasi-scientific or technical vocabulary. Gernsback’s initial editorial conceit—that stories of “scientifiction” could contain a pedagogical component and inspire inventors—was rapidly ignored, though it was never renounced.
Though he is today completely forgotten, one of Gernsback’s first significant discoveries—which is to say, a writer capable of writing more than story—was a Nebraskan physician, Miles John Breuer. Starting with “The Man with the Strange Head” in the January 1927 Amazing Stories, Breuer had some 28 stories in the magazine under his own name. Equally importantly, he was willing to share his knowledge and debate scientific points through numerous letters in Amazing Stories’ letters columns, and he was willing to collaborate with new and novice writers. He collaborated with Clare Winger Harris, the first woman writer to appear in Amazing Stories, and with the young Jack Williamson. Both of these should also be considered Gernsback’s discoveries: the career of the former did not last long, though she published some 8 stories in such magazines as Amazing Stories, Amazing Stories Quarterly, and Science Wonder Quarterly. Jack Williamson, however, began his career with “The Metal Man,” published in the December 1928 Amazing Stories, and he continued to publish steadily until his death, at age 98, in 2006.
No point is served by listing all of the remaining writers who first appeared in Amazing Stories as discoveries by Gernsback. None of them is a household name, unless the household is devoted to the early history of pulp magazine science fiction. Such frequent contributors to Amazing Stories as J. Harvey Haggard, Joseph W. Skidmore, Harvey Kostkos, P. Schuyler Miller, Aladra Setama (a pseudonym for Judson Reeves), Leslie F. Stone, and Edwin K. Sloat no longer attract readers, and rightly so: they were popular in their day, but their day was a long time ago. What they wrote, while not completely without interest, generally cannot be read with anything approaching enjoyment.
Nevertheless, two of the several dozen writers first to appear in Amazing Stories do merit further discussion, simply because they were among the first to write a certain kind of story. First, there was Dr. David H. Keller. A psychiatrist by training and profession, Keller used the majority of his stories to offer social commentary and to examine the results of developments and progress on the lives of individuals and society. His writings reveal extreme conservative and racial biases, however, and his fiction opposed, among other issues, feminism and racial equality. He began his association with Gernsback in February 1928, with “The Revolt of the Pedestrians,” a depiction of society some centuries after automobiles have become ubiquitous: legs have atrophied and the few surviving Pedestrians have no legal protection. As Keller’s title indicates, the Pedestrians revolt, their revolution consisting of the destruction of the electricity necessary to power the Automobilists’ cars, which leads to the wholesale deaths of the Automobilists. Gernsback did not object to Keller’s reservations about the future and was apparently unconcerned about (or did not notice) Keller’s biases. Some 48 stories by Keller appeared in science fiction magazines prior to 1937, after which he continued writing for such magazines as Weird Tales.
The second writer was E. E. Smith, Ph.D. A food chemist by training, Smith had in 1919 started a collaboration with Mrs. Lee Hawkins Garby, the wife of his college roommate. This collaboration, “The Skylark of Space,” was submitted to and rejected by a number of magazines before it was serialized in Amazing Stories from August—October 1928. The story begins with genius chemist Richard Seaton, who discovers a new power source when he electrifies copper and platinum. This leads him to construct a spaceship—the Skylark—without realizing that nefarious forces are working in opposition. Seaton’s mental equal, Marc DuQuesne, has been reporting on Seaton’s doings to Brookings of the Steel Trust, and DuQuesne also constructs a spaceship; it is occupied by Brookings’s secretary Margaret Spenser, who knows too much, when DuQuesne kidnaps Seaton’s girlfriend Dorothy Vaneman. When the controls on DuQuesne’s spaceship get jammed, the ship gets sent into space, across the universe, where it is captured by a dark star. Seaton and his friend Reynolds Crane are in close pursuit, however, for they have been tracking DuQuesne. The adventures continue at a breakneck speed but conclude with the Skylark’s triumphant return to Earth—and DuQuesne’s escape, to return in further episodes.
As is immediately ev
ident from the above description, Smith and Garby thought big. Whatever the flaws of their story — and a modern reader will find many—Smith and Garby successfully conveyed the joy that comes from discovering something new, going someplace unfamiliar, and doing something exciting. Writing alone, Smith would provide several sequels to “The Skylark of Valeron,” all proving very popular with Amazing Stories’ readers, then in 1934 start a different series, the Lensman series, with the publication of “Triplanetary.” In 1941 the fan Wilson Tucker would call the fast-moving stories of Smith and his imitators “Space Opera,” an occasionally pejorative but generally affectionate term that played off popular slang (westerns were “horse operas”) and popular culture (sponsored serialized radio shows were “soap operas”) to describe a science fiction work of spectacle, action, simple emotions, dominant plot, and larger than life characters. Without Smith and Garby, Space Opera would certainly have come into existence, but it is Gernsback who recognized what Smith and Garby had to offer.
In early 1929, for reasons that are still debated, Gernsback declared bankruptcy and lost control of the Experimenter Publishing Company. He promptly established another publishing company, the Stellar Publishing Corp, and published Air Wonder Stories and Science Wonder Stories in mid-1929; the first lasted but 11 issues, the second, 12. (After Science Wonder Stories was renamed Wonder Stories, it lasted 66 issues.) In addition, there was a Wonder Stories Quarterly, established in the Summer of 1930, which lasted some 11 issues. Many of the writers who first appeared in Gernsback’s Amazing Stories continued to appear there, for the magazine’s new editor, the elderly T. O’Conor Sloane, continued Gernsback’s editorial vision, but these writers also began to appear in Gernsback’s new magazines. One could thus continue to find stories by M. John Brueur, Clare Winger Harris, J. Harvey Haggard, P. Schuyler Miller, David H. Keller, and Jack Williamson, as well as such new names as Nat Schachner, Morrison Colladay, Henrik Dahl Juve, Ed Earl Repp, Edsel Newton, Clifford Simak, and Leslie F. Stone. All became names recognized by science fiction readers, as did Clark Ashton Smith, who was probably familiar to many for his work in Weird Tales.
Of all the new names who began to appear in the new magazines, the most significant was unquestionably a young man with a degree in physics from Duke University, John W. Campbell, Jr. Campbell began his writing career with “When the Atoms Failed,” published in the January 1930 Amazing Stories. The story of a scientific genius whose brilliant inventions allow him to repel a Martian invasion singlehandedly, “When the Atoms Failed” was sufficiently popular that Campbell wrote a sequel, “The Metal Horde” (Amazing Stories, April 1930), which utilizes many of the same characters, this time engaging them in repelling an invasion of mechanical brains from Sirius. Campbell was to follow these stories with additional series, most popular of which were the five stories that featured Richard Arcot, William Morey, and Wade, whose adventures started with “Piracy Preferred” in the June 1930 Amazing Stories.
John W. Campbell rapidly became one of the two most popular writers of Space Opera in Gernsback’s science fiction magazines, the other of course being E. E. Smith, Ph.D. Campbell excelled at presenting the odder aspects of contemporary science and technology, and although his stories could (and did) flag when the characters stopped to reflect upon what had occurred or to explain the ways in which technology could be adapted to stop the seemingly unstoppable and defeat the seemingly invulnerable, his readers could forgive him.
In 1937, the publishers of Astounding Stories— Amazing Stories’ chief rival—offered the young John W. Campbell the editorship of the magazine, succeeding first editor F. Orlin Tremaine. Campbell accepted, effectively ending his career as a science fiction writer but starting a long career as an influential editor. Nevertheless, even before he became editor, Campbell had roundly rejected Gernsback’s editorial tenets, stating in a 1937 speech at the World Science Fiction Conference that “science-fiction is not an educational force—it never has been, and I don’t think that it ever can be one. But it can consist of good stories, with really human characters, and not inhuman combinations of Albert Einstein and Saint Augustine.” Thus, from his earliest days as editor, Campbell stressed believable characterizations, scientific accuracy, literary merit, and logical extrapolations, and he was not averse to returning stories to be rewritten according to his dicta. Astounding Stories had thrived under Tremaine’s editorship, and under Campbell’s control it rapidly became the premier market for science fiction writers: but very few of Gernsback’s writers were ever able to crack this market. Furthermore, in April 1938, young Raymond A. Palmer became editor of Amazing Stories, and he immediately revamped and remade the magazine, rejecting almost all of the authors accepted by T. O’Conor Sloane.
With the advent of Campbell as editor of Astounding Stories, American magazine science fiction had entered what is commonly called its Golden Age. The majority of Gernsback’s writers, no longer having a market in Amazing Stories and unable to make the transition to Astounding Stories, were rapidly forgotten. Gernsback continued to associate with the fields he had helped establish, and later in life he received numerous honors for his work in radio broadcasting. He remained interested in science fiction magazines and in 1953 launched Science Fiction Plus; it had little to offer and lasted but seven issues. He remained a presence at science fiction conventions, and in 1953 science fiction fans honored him when they began awarding the Hugo award for creative endeavours. Gernsback was in 1960 awarded an honorary Hugo as “The Father of Magazine Science Fiction.” He died in 1967.
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Richard Bleiler is the Humanities Librarian at the University of Connecticut.
D. H. LAWRENCE
(1885–1930)
Born a coal miner’s son in Nottinghamshire, D. H. Lawrence was an unconventional writer, which contributed to a life of constant struggles: with publishers and authorities (who accused him of obscenity); with finances; with friends and relationships; and with his always-precarious health. To some degree, he welcomed that struggle. Lawrence was always moving from place to place, wandering across Europe, Asia, Australia, and the United States and then back again as he became estranged from different places. He befriended people everywhere, and those friendships devolved into quarrels and betrayals. The woman he married (who was married to someone else and had three small children when they met) he described as “the one possible woman for me, for I must have opposition—something to fight.” While he is mostly remembered for his novels, particularly Sons and Lovers and Lady Chatterley’s Lover, he was a prolific poet and essayist as well. This series of poems on science fictional themes was completed shortly before his death from tuberculosis, and published posthumously.
ROBOT POEMS, by D. H. Lawrence
First published in More Pansies, 1932
FUTURE STATES
Once men touch one another, then the modern industrial form of machine civilisation will melt away
and universalism and cosmopolitanism will cease;
the great movement of centralising into oneness will stop
and there will be a vivid recoil into separateness;
many vivid small states, like a keleidoscope, all colours
and all the differences given expression.
FUTURE WAR
After our industrial civilisation has broken, and the civilisation of touch has begun
war will cease, there will be no more wars.
The heart of man, in so far as it is budding, is budding warless
and budding towards infinite variety, variegation
and where there is infinite variety, there is no interest in war.
Oneness makes war, and the obsession of oneness.
THE TRIUMPH OF THE MACHINE
They talk of the triumph of the machine,
but the machine will never triumph.
Out of the thousands and thousands of centuries of man
the unrolling of ferns, white tongues of the acanthus lapping at the sun,
Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction Page 35