The April 1926 issue of Amazing Stories was unlike anything else on the newsstand. Between a lurid painted cover by Frank R. Paul was the first magazine devoted entirely to what its 41-year-old publisher Hugo Gernsback called “scientifiction” — a blend of scientific fact, prophetic vision and romantic storytelling. Gernsback defined the term in the debut issue under the headline A NEW SORT OF MAGAZINE: “By ‘scientifiction,’ I mean the Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and Edgar Allan Poe type of story. A charming romance intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic vision.”
Priced at 25 cents (about $4.60 today), that first issue reprinted Jules Verne’s “Off On a Comet,” an H.G. Wells piece, and an Edgar Allan Poe tale. Gernsback, who already published radio magazines, introduced the Verne story with a note acknowledging its outlandish premise — a comet carrying a chunk of Earth and its inhabitants off into space — but praising how the tale clung to scientific probabilities between its extravagances.
Gernsback’s coinage “scientifiction” didn’t stick, but his name did: the Hugo Awards, established in 1955 to honor excellence in science fiction and fantasy, are named after him. More consequentially, he demonstrated that there was a ready market for collected stories that dramatized the effects of scientific discovery and technological change. His magazine gathered a scattered body of speculative writing into a single, active marketplace and cultural hub.
One of Gernsback’s most important innovations was his use of the letters page to build community. He published readers’ letters with their full addresses, allowing direct correspondence and encouraging a participatory culture. That practice, carried over from his radio magazines, helped ignite organized fandom. Clubs like The Scienceers and the Science Fiction League emerged by the end of the 1930s. Gernsback’s model — a magazine sustained by subscribers who also contributed material and feedback — is widely credited as the stimulant for modern science fiction fandom.
The fiction Gernsback favored often prioritized ideas and scientific concepts over deep characterization or literary polish. Stories like G. Peyton Wertenbaker’s “The Man from the Atom” exemplified this approach: a conceit-driven tale in which a man testing a size-changing machine becomes so vast that he watches galaxies like bicycle spokes and then discovers, too late, that relativity has rendered his return impossible — centuries pass for everyone back home while minutes seem to him like a brief experiment. The story’s power lies in the vivid illustration of a scientific idea rather than in psychological subtlety.
That emphasis set an early template: “big, dumb, fascinating” objects or concepts presented for readers to marvel at, with characters primarily present to witness the intellectual spectacle. Over time the genre evolved. Editors and writers leaned more toward character studies that explore how people are changed by scientific wonders. Yet some toleration for “hand waving” — convenient, plausibly presented explanations for impossible-seeming technologies like faster-than-light travel — still exists when it serves the story.
Gernsback’s career was not without controversy. He lost control of the Amazing Stories title in a 1929 bankruptcy and went on to launch other magazines — Science Wonder Stories (later shortened to Wonder Stories and expanded to Thrilling Wonder Stories). Rival publishers soon offered writers better pay and steadier management, and by midcentury the field entered its Golden Age. Magazines such as Astounding Stories of Super-Science (later Analog) and Galaxy also helped shape the era, which featured regular contributions from Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and Theodore Sturgeon.
Amazing’s influence also rippled into institutions and practices that endure: organized conventions like WorldCon trace their roots to the fan culture Gernsback nurtured, and the annual Hugo Awards memorialize his role. The letters page mechanism that knit readers into networks anticipated fan communities that now flourish online.
Amazing Stories itself has gone through many incarnations. After decades in print under various owners, the name now exists primarily online. Since 2013 an Amazing Stories website has published a free short science-fiction story each week, and since 2018 the title has offered print-on-demand collections. In its centennial year, the magazine planned a relaunch as a quarterly digital publication with print-on-demand options for readers who prefer physical copies.
Conventions continue to mark the magazine’s cultural milestone: RavenCon’s schedule included a centennial celebration tied to Amazing’s 100th anniversary. For those who care for the medium, the magazine’s transitions — from pulp to web, from idea-driven tales to more character-focused narratives — map the genre’s own journey. Gernsback’s tag line from early issues — “Extravagant Fiction Today … Cold Fact Tomorrow” — captures a durable impulse: speculative stories imagining tomorrow’s inventions often anticipate real-world possibilities, and a century after Amazing’s debut, that interplay between imagination and technology remains central to science fiction.