The Launchpad

In 1950 science-fiction magazines were 24 years old. It had been with its April 1926 issue that Amazing Stories, the first all science-fiction magazine, had appeared, although as I noted in the first volume of this history, The Time Machines, science fiction had already existed in magazines for over a century.

It has been claimed by many, including Damon Knight, James Blish, Brian W. Aldiss and Harlan Ellison, that the publication of a specialist sf magazine harmed science fiction, and that had it been allowed to develop as part of mainstream fiction, sf would not have the tarnished reputation that it has today. But as we have seen, while there is some element of truth in that, it was through the sf magazine, most especially at Astounding Science Fiction in the capable hands of John W. Campbell, Jr, that science fiction began to develop and establish itself. There is no doubt that much of the earliest science fiction under Hugo Gernsback was of minimal value. He concentrated initially on gadget-sf, that is, fiction which was to inspire people to experiment and invent. The fiction was there on the one hand to educate people about the potential of science, and on the other hand to stimulate them into experimenting. It was not primarily intended to entertain. However, Gernsback soon discovered that his readers most enjoyed stories of scientific adventure – the kind that had previously appeared in the magazines published by Frank A. Munsey, especially All-Story Weekly and The Argosy, and which are typified by the Martian stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs and the lost-world adventures of Abraham Merritt. It was this type of fiction, in the hands of less able writers, which began to proliferate in the sf pulps, though not so much in the Gernsback magazines. The main perpetrator was Astounding Stories in the days before Campbell took over. During 1930–32, when it was edited by Harry Bates, Astounding focused almost entirely on space adventure stories, stories which the critics equated to cowboy stories in space. Indeed, the plots of most stories could be simplified to the ‘hero-saves-girl-from-monster’ school which has remained as the basis of most puerile sf ever since.