Astonishing Stories was an American pulp science fiction magazine, published by Popular Publications between 1940 and 1943. It was founded under Popular’s “Fictioneers” imprint, which paid lower rates than Popular’s other magazines. The magazine was never regarded as one of the leading titles of the genre, but despite the low budget it published some well-received material.
About Astonishing Stories in brief
Astonishing Stories was an American pulp science fiction magazine, published by Popular Publications between 1940 and 1943. It was founded under Popular’s “Fictioneers” imprint, which paid lower rates than Popular’s other magazines. The magazine was never regarded as one of the leading titles of the genre, but despite the low budget it published some well-received material. After Pohl entered the army in early 1943, wartime paper shortages led Popular to cease publication of Astonishing. The final issue was dated April of that year, and the magazine was later sold to a rival publisher for $100,000. The first editor was Frederik Pohl, who also edited a companion publication, Super Science Stories. After nine issues Pohl was replaced by Alden H. Norton, who subsequently rehired Pohl as an assistant. The budget for Astonishing was very low, which made it difficult to acquire good fiction, but through his membership in the Futurians, a group of young science fiction fans and aspiring writers, he was able to find material to fill the early issues. He managed to obtain stories by writers who subsequently became very well known, such as Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein. Some of the additional money went to long-time writer Ray Cummings, who was sufficiently well known that the young Pohl felt unable to reject his work even though he disliked his work. Pohl later commented that he was uncertain whether the additional funds really helped to bring in higher quality submissions, although at the time he assured Steeger it would improve the magazine.
For example, a long letter took up several pages but no advertisements for Popular’s magazines did not use up the budget for advertisements, but no other magazines sent up adverts for fiction. Some writers refused to sell their work for less than one per cent a word; the first visit came on a day when Pohl had some extra money available, and he was never able to tell himself that he could not afford to bring himself to pay that rate. Some stories were surprisingly good considering how little was paid for them, and this view has been echoed by other historians of the field. At ten cents a word for a story, Astonishing’s magazine was cheaper than any of the other sf magazines of the day, and it sold well, despite Pohl’s limited resources. At one point it was at one point intended to be titled Incredible Stories, but ultimately appeared as Astonishing Stories. At the age of nineteen, Pohl left Terrill’s office having been hired to edit two new magazines, on a salary of ten dollars per week. One was Super Science stories; the other was at once intended tobe titled Incredible stories, but was ultimately called Astonishing stories. Popular was uncertain of the sales potential for the two new titles and decided to publish them under its Fictioneers imprint, used for lower-paying magazines. It was certainly assisted by Popular’s wide and effective distribution network, and the publisher soon increased Pohl’s budget, to pay bonuses for popular stories.
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This page is based on the article Astonishing Stories published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 01, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
