Cosmic Stories and Stirring Science Stories

Cosmic Stories and Stirring Science Stories were two American pulp science fiction magazines that published a total of seven issues in 1941 and 1942. Both magazines were edited by Donald A. Wollheim and launched by the same publisher, appearing in alternate months. Isaac Asimov contributed a story, but later insisted on payment after hearing that F. Orlin Tremaine, the editor of the competing science fiction magazine Comet, was irate at the idea of a magazine that might’siphon readership’

About Cosmic Stories and Stirring Science Stories in brief

Cosmic Stories and Stirring Science Stories were two American pulp science fiction magazines that published a total of seven issues in 1941 and 1942. Both magazines were edited by Donald A. Wollheim and launched by the same publisher, appearing in alternate months. Isaac Asimov contributed a story, but later insisted on payment after hearing that F. Orlin Tremaine, the editor of the competing science fiction magazine Comet, was irate at the idea of a magazine that might “siphon readership from magazines that paid”, and thought that authors who contributed should be blacklisted. Other well-known writers who appeared in the two magazines included Damon Knight and David H. Keller. The quality of the artwork was variable, and included Elliot Dold’s last artwork in the science fiction field, for the cover of the July 1941 issue of Cosmic Stories. The magazines ceased publication in late 1941, but Wollheimer was able to find a publisher for one further issue of Stirring science Stories in March 1942 before war restrictions forced it to close again. Some months later, Manhattan Fiction Publications and a fourth issue of stirring appeared, dated March 1942, but there were no more issues of either title. An announcement in the January 1941 Writer Digest listed the payment rate as half a cent per word, but it would have been on a par with many other magazines of the era.

The two titles until July 1941 were alternated months until Cosmic Stories, after which the magazines were cancelled. The first to appear was the February 1941 issue of Stirringsciencestories.com, and the second was the March 1942 issue of Stirringsciencestories.com. The titles were published by Albing Publications, which was owned by a father and son, the son in his twenties and the father in his fifties. They were the first pulp magazines to be published in the U.S. before the 1920s, when Amazing Stories, a pulp magazine published by Hugo Gernsback, appeared. By the end of the 1930s the field was booming, and between 1939 and 1941 a flood of new sf magazines appeared. In late 1940, an active science fiction fan and aspiring editor and writer noticed a new magazine titled Stirring Detective and Western Stories on the newsstands. He wrote to the publishers to see if they were interested in adding a science fiction title to their list, and he was invited to their office. They said, ‘We don’t have any capital, but if you can put the magazine together for nothing, we can go up to fifteen bucks for art, and we can do it. If the magazine succeeds, then we’ll be able to pay you a regular salary after the third issue’

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