The Lure of Scientifiction
by Hugo Gernsback, F.R.S.
June 1926 (1.3) p. 195.
Scientifiction is not a new thing on this planet. While Edgar Allan Poe probably was one of the first to conceive the idea of a scientific story, there are suspicions that there were other scientifiction authors before him. Perhaps they were not such outstanding figures in literature, and perhaps they did not write what we understand today as scientifiction at all. Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), a great genius, while he was not really an author of scientifiction, nevertheless had enough prophetic vision to create a number of machines in his own mind that were only to materialize centuries later. He described a number of machines, seemingly fantastic in those days, which would have done credit to a Jules Verne.¹
There may have been other scientific prophets, if not scientifiction writers, before his time, but the past centuries are so beclouded, and there are so few manuscripts of such literature in existence today, that we cannot really be sure who was the real inventor of scientifiction.
In the 11th century there also lived a Franciscan monk, the amazing as well as famous Roger Bacon (1214–1294). He had a most astounding and prolific imagination, with which he foresaw many of our present-day wonders. But as an author of scientifiction, he had to be extremely careful, because in those days it was not “healthy” to predict new and startling inventions. It was necessary to disguise the manuscript—to use cypher—as a matter of fact, so that it has taken many great modern minds to unravel the astonishing scientific prophecies of Roger Bacon.²
The scientifiction writer of today is somewhat more fortunate—but not so very much more. It is true that we do not behead him or throw him into a dungeon when he dares to blaze forth with, what seems to us, an impossible tale, but in our inner minds we are just as intolerant today, as were the contemporaries of Roger Bacon. We have not learned much in the interval. Even such a comparatively tame invention as the submarine, which was predicted by Jules Verne, was greeted with derisive laughter, and he was denounced in many quarters. Still, only 40 years after the prediction of the modern submarine by Verne, it has become a reality.
There are few things written by our scientifiction writers, frankly impossible today, that may not become a reality tomorrow. Frequently the author himself does not realize that his very fantastic yarn may come true in the future, and often he, himself, does not take his prediction seriously.
But the seriously-minded scientifiction reader absorbs the knowledge contained in such stories with avidity, with the result that such stories prove an incentive in starting someone to work on a device or invention suggested by some author of scientifiction.
One of our great surprises since we started publishing Amazing Stories is the tremendous amount of mail we receive from—shall we call them “Scientifiction Fans”?-who seem to be pretty well orientated in this sort of literature. From the suggestions for reprints that are coming in, these “fans” seem to have a hobby all their own of hunting up scientifiction stories, not only in English, but in many other languages. There is not a day, now, that passes, but we get from 12 to 50 suggestions as to stories of which, frankly, we have no record, although we have a list of some 600 or 700 scientifiction stories. Some of these fans are constantly visiting the bookstores with the express purpose of buying new or old scientifiction tales, and they even go to the trouble of advertising for some volumes that have long ago gone out of print.
Scientifiction, in other words, furnishes a tremendous amount of scientific education and fires reader’s imagination more perhaps than anything else of which we know.
New Scientifiction Stories
p. 231
If you are interested in scientifiction stories, you will find several excellent ones in Amazing Stories’ sister magazines, Radio News and Science and Invention.
Radio News for June contains “S.O.S. (Searching Out Sadie)” by Marius Logan, a very excellent radio story that will hold your attention from first to last.
In Science and Invention, the serial, “Tarrano the Conqueror,” by Ray Cummings, has been running for several months. The author of this story also wrote “The Girl in the Golden Atom,” “Around the Universe,” and “The Man on the Meteor.” “Tarrano the Conqueror” is one of the weirdest and most amazing stories it has ever been our good fortune to read.
Copies of Radio News and Science and Invention may be secured at all newsstands, and back numbers can be obtained from the publishers. Address: Experimenter Publishing Co., 53 Park Place, New York City.
To Our Readers
p. 285
Since the second issue of Amazing Stories appeared, we have been literally overwhelmed with the most flattering and enthusiastic letters from our readers that it has been our good fortune to see in the 20 years of our experience as publishers. There are so many letters that it is physically impossible to answer all of them, and we again wish to thank all of our good friends who have taken the trouble to write us.
In going through these letters we have been pleasantly surprised that so many of our readers think that the magazine should come out oftener than once a month. Some have even gone as far as to demand that Amazing Stories become a weekly, while most of them want to see it a bimonthly; that is, appearing every fortnight.
We have given this a good deal of consideration, and while there were several hundred such letters, we would like to put the matter to a popular vote—which we are doing herewith. We ask you to be kind enough to fill out the blank at the bottom of this page, paste it on a postcard, or enclose it in an envelope, and mail to us. If you do not wish to mutilate the magazine page, it will be all right to use a postcard, copying the voting coupon.
You may rest assured that we shall accede to the wishes of the majority. If by a decisive vote it is found that we should publish the magazine twice a month, this request will be complied with in due time. Of course no reader obligates himself in any way by filling in and returning the coupon.
Publishers of Amazing Stories
53 Park Place, New York City.
☒ Gentlemen: I like the magazine as it is now—a monthly.
☐ I would like to see Amazing Stories come out twice a month (at 25¢ for each copy).