Amazing Stories

Amazing Stories

Amazing Stories is an American science fiction magazine launched in April 1926. It was the first magazine devoted solely to science fiction. Writers whose first story was published in the magazine include John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Howard Fast, Ursula K. Le Guin, Roger Zelazny, and Thomas Disch.

About Amazing Stories in brief

Summary Amazing StoriesAmazing Stories is an American science fiction magazine launched in April 1926. It was the first magazine devoted solely to science fiction. Amazing helped define and launch a new genre of pulp fiction. The letter columns in Amazing led to the formation of science fiction fandom. Writers whose first story was published in the magazine include John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Howard Fast, Ursula K. Le Guin, Roger Zelazny, and Thomas M. Disch. As of 2018, Amazing has been published, with some interruptions, for ninety-two years, going through a half-dozen owners and many editors as it struggled to be profitable. A new incarnation appeared in July 2012 as an online magazine, and print publication resumed with the Fall 2018 issue. The magazine was nominated for the prestigious Hugo Award three times during his tenure in the 1970s. The idea was given up for a new magazine at The Experimenter Oor Tor’Con in 1926, but the editor decided to go ahead with publication of the new magazine. The first issue of Amazing Stories was published on April 26, 1926. The issue was published by Hugo Gernsback’s Experimenter Publishing, which was later bought by Ziff-Davis. Amazing was sold to Sol Cohen’s Universal Publishing Company in 1965, which filled it with reprinted stories but did not pay a reprint fee to the authors, creating a conflict with the newly formed Science Fiction Writers of America. In the late 1940s Amazing presented as fact stories about the Shaver Mystery, a lurid mythos that explained accidents and disaster as the work of robots named deros, which led to dramatically increased circulation but widespread ridicule.

Several other owners attempted to create a modern incarnation of the magazine in the following decades, but publication was suspended after the March 2005 issue. In 2008, Amazing was re-launched as a digest-sized magazine, with a new editor, Ted White, taking over the editorship in the Fall of that year. The new edition of Amazing was released on October 1, 2008, with the first issue published on November 1. The last issue of the digest size magazine was released in December 2008, and the last issue appeared on November 2, 2008. The cover of the October 2008 issue was the cover of The New Yorker, featuring the cover image of the cover story of The Amazing Stories, by Neil Gaiman. The November 2008 issue also featured a cover story by Gaiman, titled “The Amazing Stories: The Final Frontier”. The cover story was the last of the Amazing Stories to be published by the New Yorker before the March 2009 issue, and was the final issue of The Magazine. The October 2008 edition also featured the cover picture of The Next Generation, the first of the Next Generation series. The September 2008 issue featured the first installment of the series, “The Next Generation: The Last Frontier”, which was published the following month. The series is the first to feature a cover image by the author of the novel “Ralph 124C” (Roland 124C)