Britain and Europe

When Amazing Stories appeared on the news-stands in America in March 1926 it was by no means a bolt from the blue. Sciencefiction readers were doubtless delighted, but they should not have been surprised. A magazine devoted entirely to science fiction was the next logical step in the progression of science fiction in the magazines, and in the development of specialist genre magazines. Hugo Gernsback, the founder of Amazing Stories, said: ‘the concept of Amazing Stories in 1926 was not a haphazard undertaking. Its groundwork had been well prepared for 15 years!’

Fifteen years takes us back to 1911, but we can go still farther back. As we shall see later, 1911 was the year in which Gernsback began publishing science fiction. It was not called science fiction then. Gernsback would not coin that term until almost twenty years later. His term was ‘scientifiction’, but more popular at the time was ‘scientific romance’. However in this history I shall refer to it throughout as science fiction, or by its most popular abbreviation: sf.

By way of background perhaps we should be clear about what magazines are, and when they first appeared. The word ‘magazine’ is of Arabic origin, and meant a place for stores – the French for shop is still magasin. The French developed that concept of a place holding a variety of articles during their literary renaissance in the seventeenth century and launched their first magasin, Le Journal des savants, in Paris in January 1665. Its purpose was to collect together articles by scientists and learned men of Europe. Le Journal was edited by Denis de Sallo, a magistrate and the founder of modern periodical criticism. It was weekly and lasted for 13 issues before French censorship brought about its suppression. It was revived the following year and prospered. It was taken over by the State in 1702, later switched to a monthly publication and, though it ceased publication in 1792, was revived in 1816 and continues to appear to this day, though on a quarterly schedule.

It was in a French magazine that the first fantastic fiction began to appear.