Scoops (magazine)

Scoops was a weekly British science fiction magazine published by Pearson’s in tabloid format in 1934. It was launched as a boy’s paper, and it was not until several issues had appeared that editor Haydn Dimmock discovered there was an adult audience for science fiction. The magazine was cancelled because of poor sales; the twentieth issue, dated 23 June 1934, was the last.

About Scoops (magazine) in brief

Summary Scoops (magazine)Scoops was a weekly British science fiction magazine published by Pearson’s in tabloid format in 1934. It was launched as a boy’s paper, and it was not until several issues had appeared that editor Haydn Dimmock discovered there was an adult audience for science fiction. The magazine was cancelled because of poor sales; the twentieth issue, dated 23 June 1934, was the last. The failure of the magazine contributed to the belief that Britain could not support ascience fiction magazine. Another attempt was made in 1937, with Tales of Wonder, but it was cancelled after one issue. The stories were initially anonymous, but later research by W. O. G. Lofts has identified most of the authors. Filler material was included with information about inventions and technology, but there was little coverage of scientific topics. A well-known scientist and inventor, A.

M. Low, wrote a novel, Space Space, which was serialized in ten instalments starting with the second issue of Scoops. The science fiction historian Mike Ashley suggests that Low’s novel, which describes three boys who accidentally travel to Mars, must have evoked considerable interest amongst the youth of 1934. Other contributors included George E. Rochester, Stuart Martin, J. H. Stein, and Reginald Thomas, whose The Striding Terror, about a child who grew to fifty feet tall, wasSerialized in the first eight issues. The term’science fiction’ was not used initially;’science stories’ was how Scoops described its contents. The first issue declared that Scoops would publish stories that ‘look ahead with the vision of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, whose stories of wonder and science, declared impossibilities at the time of publication, are now fact’