Amazing Stories (April, 1926)

Book excerpt: This volume, Amazing Stories, Volume 1, No. 1, was originally published in 1926 by Experimenter Publishing Company, New York, and until now only available in rare print volumes, scans, or as plain text files produced via computer OCR, which results in numerous errors and mistakes and lack formatting. This version, by Sulis International, has been carefully edited, formatted, and typeset. We have left most archaic spellings and words as in the original, only editing for punctuation, typographical errors, and formatting._Amazing Stories_ was founded and published by Hugo Gernsback in 1926, and continued to be published monthly or bi-monthly until 2014 (with some interruptions). This first volume, published in April of 1926, contained reprints of stories, some in serial format across multiple volumes, and included such established authors as Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, and Edgar Allan Poe. The introductions and call-outs in the stories show Gernsback's preference for "scientification," where he explains and comments on each story.Gernsback believed that the goal of science fiction was to both entertain and to teach, a characteristic he called "scientification." Though readers found fantastic stories more interesting, and the magazine began including more such stories, _Amazing Stories_ is responsible for created the genre of science fiction magazines and the first science fiction fan club. Authors such as Isaac Asimov, John W. Campbell, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Roger Zelazny would have their first stories published in _Amazing Stories_.