Super Science Stories
Super Science Stories was an American pulp science fiction magazine published by Popular Publications from 1940 to 1943, and again from 1949 to 1951. Frederik Pohl was hired in late 1939, at 19 years old, to edit the magazine; he also edited Astonishing Stories, a companion science fiction publication. The last issue was dated March 1940, and it was bimonthly, with Astonishing stories appearing in the alternate months.
About Super Science Stories in brief
Super Science Stories was an American pulp science fiction magazine published by Popular Publications from 1940 to 1943, and again from 1949 to 1951. Frederik Pohl was hired in late 1939, at 19 years old, to edit the magazine; he also edited Astonishing Stories, a companion science fiction publication. Popular gave Pohl a very low budget, so most manuscripts submitted to Super Science Stories had already been rejected by the higher-paying magazines. The magazine was never regarded as one of the leading titles of the genre, but has received qualified praise from science fiction critics and historians. Critics Brian Stableford and Peter Nicholls comment that the magazine “had a greater importance to the history of sf than the quality of its stories would suggest; it was an important training ground”. After Pohl entered the army in early 1943, wartime paper shortages led Popular to cease publication of Super Science stories. In 1949 the title was revived with Ejler Jakobsson as editor; this version, which included many reprinted stories, lasted almost three years, with the last issue dated August 1951. There were also Canadian and British reprint editions of the second incarnation of the magazine. A Canadian reprint edition of the first run included some original fiction rather than just reprints. The last issue was dated March 1940, and it was bimonthly, with Astonishing stories appearing in the alternate months. Popular was uncertain of the sales potential for the two new titles and decided to publish them under its Fictioneers imprint, which was used for lower- paying magazines.
For Super Science, Popular gave a cover price of seventy-five dollars for a cover. For Astonishing, it was 16 pages longer, so it could only offer half a cent per word for fiction, well below the rates offered by the magazines. Pohl wrote many stories himself, to fill the magazine and to augment his salary. He managed to obtain stories by writers who subsequently became very well known, such as Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein. Popular had a strong distribution network, which helped circulation, and had a major pulp publisher, which had a big distribution network and a good distribution network. Popular published Super Science Novels Magazine in March 1941, reflecting this policy, but after only three issues it was changed back to Super science Stories. Popular also published a magazine called Super Science. Novels was retitled Super Science novels in June 1941, but it was later changed again to Super. Science. Stories was published in October 1941, and in January 1942, Super. Stories. The final issue of the last run was dated May of that year. It was published under the fictioneers imprint of Popular Publications, which they used for magazines, paying writers less than one cent perword. It had a circulation of 70,000 copies. It has been described as “one of the most interesting magazines to appear during the 1940s. Despite the variable quality of the stories, despite the variablequality of the magazines, the magazine has been praised by science fiction historians.
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This page is based on the article Super Science Stories published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 01, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
