Tag: Pulps

  • Astral Jewellery and the Mind-Exploding Climax

    Astral Jewellery and the Mind-Exploding Climax

    At the end of his ground-breaking book One Hundred Years of Science Fiction Ilustration, 1840 – 1940 (1974), Anthony Frewin included an appendix on the adverts that appeared in the pages of Amazing Stories, Astounding and Science Wonder in the 1920s and 30s. Unsurprisingly in an America slowly emerging from the Depression, self-help and education…

  • Science Wonder Stories – June 1929

    Science Wonder Stories – June 1929

    The first science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories, is forever linked to Hugo Gernsback. In reality he was only in charge for three years. By April 1929 the Experimenter Publishing Company was bankrupt and Gernsback sold all his titles, including Amazing. Yet two months later he bounced back with three new magazines – Science Wonder Stories,…

  • Life on Uranus – Frank R. Paul, Fantastic Adventures April 1940

    Life on Uranus – Frank R. Paul, Fantastic Adventures April 1940

    I came back from Eastercon 2015 with several pulp magazines, including a couple of copies of Fantastic Adventures carrying Frank R. Paul’s ‘Life on..’ series. This was a wildly optimistic attempt to extrapolate alien life on the planets of our solar system, based on the knowledge of the day. I thought I’d share my particular…

  • Weird Tales

    I’ve had a treat this last couple of weeks, working my way through the latest issues of the resurrected magazine Weird Tales. The first issue of the original predated the first science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories, by three years, launching in 1923. It then went on to become the mainstay of that singularly American genre, Weird…