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Astonishing Stories
''Astonishing Stories'' was an American pulp magazine, pulp science fiction magazine, published by Popular Publications between 1940 and 1943. It was founded under Popular's "Fictioneers" imprint, which paid lower rates than Popular's other magazines. The magazine's first editor was Frederik Pohl, who also edited a companion publication, ''Super Science Stories''. After nine issues Pohl was replaced by Alden H. Norton, who subsequently rehired Pohl as an assistant. The budget for ''Astonishing'' was very low, which made it difficult to acquire good fiction, but through his membership in the Futurians, a group of young science fiction fandom, science fiction fans and aspiring writers, Pohl was able to find material to fill the early issues. The magazine was successful, and Pohl was able to increase his pay rates slightly within a year. He managed to obtain stories by writers who subsequently became very well known, such as Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein. After Pohl entered th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Half-Breed (short Story)
"Half-Breed" is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. It was first published in the February 1940 issue of ''Astonishing Stories'' and reprinted in the 1972 collection ''The Early Asimov''. It was the fifteenth story written by Asimov, and the fourth to be published. At 9000 words, it was his longest published story to date. "Half-Breed" was written in June 1939, and submitted to (and subsequently rejected by) ''Amazing Stories'' and ''Astounding Science Fiction'' before being accepted by Frederik Pohl in October for his new magazine ''Astonishing Stories''. Asimov wrote a sequel to the story, titled "Half-Breeds on Venus". Plot summary Jefferson Scanlon, a struggling scientist, is trying, and failing, to develop a cheap and reliable method of generating atomic power. While he is taking a walk to think over his work, he rescues a nineteen-year-old orphan "Tweenie", the off-spring of human and Martian parents, from a gang of teenagers. The Tweenie, Ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pulp Magazine
Pulp magazines (also referred to as "the pulps") were inexpensive fiction magazines that were published from 1896 to the late 1950s. The term "pulp" derives from the cheap wood pulp paper on which the magazines were printed. In contrast, magazines printed on higher-quality paper were called "glossies" or "slicks". The typical pulp magazine had 128 pages; it was wide by high, and thick, with ragged, untrimmed edges. The pulps gave rise to the term pulp fiction in reference to run-of-the-mill, low-quality literature. Pulps were the successors to the penny dreadfuls, dime novels, and short-fiction magazines of the 19th century. Although many respected writers wrote for pulps, the magazines were best known for their lurid, exploitative, and sensational subject matter, even though this was but a small part of what existed in the pulps. Successors of pulps include paperback books, digest magazines, and men's adventure magazines. Modern superhero comic books are sometimes considere ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harry Steeger
Henry Steeger III (May 26, 1903, New York City – December 25, 1990) was an American magazine editor and publisher. He co-founded Popular Publications in 1930, one of the major publishers of pulp magazines, with former classmate Harold S. Goldsmith. Steeger handled editorial matters while Goldsmith took care of the business side. Both were veterans of the pulp magazine business. Steeger had edited war pulps at Dell Publishing while Goldsmith had served as an editor at A. A. Wyn's Magazine Publishers. Steeger's new firm launched four titles which debuted on the newsstands with cover dates of October 1930. '' Battle Aces'' was the only title to survive and more titles were produced with the ensuing months. With '' Horror Stories'' and ''Terror Tales'', Steeger started the "shudder pulp" (or "weird menace") genre. Although short lived, this genre was responsible for some of the most striking cover art of the Pulp Era. The over-the-top stories of torture and titillation however, led ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mike Ashley (writer)
Michael Raymond Donald Ashley (born 1948) is a British bibliographer, author and editor of science fiction, mystery, and fantasy. He edits the long-running ''Mammoth Book'' series of short story anthologies, each arranged around a particular theme in mystery, fantasy, or science fiction. He has a special interest in fiction magazines and has written a multi-volume ''History of the Science Fiction Magazine'' and a study of British fiction magazines, ''The Age of the Storytellers''. He won the Edgar Award for ''The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Modern Crime Fiction''. In addition to the books listed below he edited and prepared for publication the novel ''The Enchantresses'' (1997) by Vera Chapman. He has contributed to many reference works including ''The Encyclopedia of Fantasy'' (as Contributing Editor) and ''The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction'' (as Contributing Editor of the third edition). He wrote the books to accompany the British Library's exhibitions, ''Taking Liberties'' in 2 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Manly Wade Wellman
Manly Wade Wellman (May 21, 1903 – April 5, 1986) was an American writer. While his science fiction and fantasy stories appeared in such pulps as ''Astounding Stories'', ''Startling Stories'', ''Unknown'' and ''Strange Stories'', Wellman is best remembered as one of the most popular contributors to the legendary ''Weird Tales'', and for his fantasy and horror stories set in the Appalachian Mountains, which draw on the native folklore of that region. Karl Edward Wagner referred to him as "the dean of fantasy writers." Wellman also wrote in a wide variety of other genres, including historical fiction, detective fiction, western fiction, juvenile fiction, and non-fiction. Wellman was a long-time resident of North Carolina. He received many awards, including the World Fantasy Award and Edgar Allan Poe Award. In 2013, the North Carolina Speculative Fiction Foundation inaugurated an award named after him to honor other North Carolina authors of science fiction and fantasy. Three ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry Kuttner
Henry Kuttner (April 7, 1915 – February 3, 1958) was an American author of science fiction, fantasy and horror. Early life Henry Kuttner was born in Los Angeles, California in 1915. Kuttner (1829–1903) and Amelia Bush (c. 1834–1911), the parents of his father, the bookseller Henry Kuttner (1863–1920), had come from Leszno in Prussia and lived in San Francisco since 1859; the parents of his mother, Annie Levy (1875–1954), were from Great Britain. Henry Kuttner's great-grandfather was the scholar Josua Heschel Kuttner. Kuttner grew up in relative poverty following the death of his father. As a young man he worked in his spare time for the literary agency of his uncle, Laurence D'Orsay (in fact his first cousin by marriage), in Los Angeles before selling his first story, "The Graveyard Rats", to ''Weird Tales'' in early 1936. It was while working for the d'Orsay agency that Kuttner picked Leigh Brackett's early manuscripts off the slush pile; it was under his tutelage th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Russell Fearn
John Russell Fearn (1908–1960) was a British writer, one of the first to appear in American pulp magazine, pulp science fiction magazines. A prolific author, he published his novels also as Vargo Statten and with various pseudonyms including Thornton Ayre, Polton Cross, Geoffrey Armstrong, John Cotton, Dennis Clive, Ephriam Winiki, Astron Del Martia. Career Fearn was a prolific writer who wrote Westerns and crime fiction as well as science fiction. His writing appeared under numerous pseudonyms. He wrote series such as ''Adam Quirke'', ''Clayton Drew'', ''Golden Amazon'', and ''Herbert''. At times these drew on the pulp traditions of Edgar Rice Burroughs. His work received praise for its vividness, but criticism, being deemed "unpolished", with Arthur C. Clarke commenting in 1939 that "we must admire the magnificent, if undisciplined, fertility of his mind". Personal life Child of a cotton salesman and a secretary, Fearn worked initially for his father's firm, followed by wo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Damon Knight
Damon Francis Knight (September 19, 1922 – April 15, 2002) was an American science fiction author, editor, and critic. He is the author of "To Serve Man", a 1950 short story adapted for ''The Twilight Zone''.Stanyard, ''Dimensions Behind the Twilight Zone'', p. 51. He was married to fellow writer Kate Wilhelm. Biography Knight was born in Baker City, Oregon in 1922, and grew up in Hood River, Oregon. He entered science-fiction fandom at the age of eleven and published two issues of a fanzine titled ''Snide''. Knight's first professional sale was a cartoon drawing to a science-fiction magazine, ''Amazing Stories''.Knight, "Knight Piece," Brian W. Aldiss & Harry Harrison, ''Hell's Cartographers'', Orbit Books, 1976, p. 105. His first story, "The Itching Hour", appeared in the Summer 1940 number of ''Futuria Fantasia'', edited and published by Ray Bradbury. "Resilience" followed in the February 1941 number of ''Stirring Science Stories'', edited by Donald A. Wollh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Callistan Menace
"The Callistan Menace" is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. It first appeared in the April 1940 issue of ''Astonishing Stories'' and was reprinted in the 1972 collection ''The Early Asimov''. It was the second science fiction story written by Asimov, and the oldest story of his still in existence. Writing and publication Asimov came up with the idea for the story, which he called "Stowaway", after his first meeting with John W. Campbell on June 21, 1938. His first story, "Cosmic Corkscrew", was rejected by Campbell on 23 June. In his autobiography, ''I, Asimov: A Memoir'', the author recalled that Campbell sent him a rejection letter that was so kind and it prompted him to write another story called "Stowaway" ("The Callistan Menace"). He finished the first draft on 28 June, and the final draft on July 10. He submitted "Stowaway" to Campbell in person during another visit on the 18th. Suspecting that Campbell would reject it, Asimov spent the sub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Donald Wollheim
Donald Allen Wollheim (October 1, 1914 – November 2, 1990) was an American science fiction editor, publisher, writer, and fan. As an author, he published under his own name as well as under pseudonyms, including David Grinnell, Martin Pearson, and Darrell G. Raynor. A founding member of the Futurians, he was a leading influence on science fiction development and fandom in the 20th-century United States. Ursula K. Le Guin called Wollheim "the tough, reliable editor of Ace Books, in the Late Pulpalignean Era, 1966 and '67", which is when he published her first two novels in Ace Double editions. Science fiction fan ''The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction'' (first edition, 1979) calls Wollheim "one of the first and most vociferous SF fans." He published numerous fanzines and co-edited the early ''Fanciful Tales of Time and Space''. His importance to early fandom is chronicled in the 1974 book ''The Immortal Storm'' by Sam Moskowitz and in the 1977 book ''The Futurians'' b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Wilson (author)
Richard Wilson (23 September 1920 – 29 March 1987) was an American science fiction science fiction writer, writer and science fiction fandom, fan. He was a member of the Futurians, and was married for a time to Leslie Perri, who had also been a Futurian. His books included the novels ''The Girls from Planet 5'' (1955); ''30-Day Wonder'' (1960); and ''And Then the Town Took Off'' (1960); and the collections ''Those Idiots from Earth'' (1957) and ''Time Out for Tomorrow'' (1962). His short stories included "The Eight Billion" (nominated for a Nebula Award as Nebula Award for Best Short Story, Best Short Story in 1965); "Mother to the World" (nominated for the Hugo Award, Hugo for Hugo Award for Best Novelette, Best Novelette in 1969 and winner of the Nebula Award for Best Novelette, Nebula in 1968); and "The Story Writer" (nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novella in 1979). Wilson also worked in the public relations field as director of the Syracuse University News Bureau ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ejler Jakobsson
Ejler Jakobsson (December 6, 1911 – October 5, 1984) was a Finnish-born science fiction editor. Jakobsson moved to the United States in 1926 and began a career as an author in the 1930s. He married Edith Kane (1915–1997) in 1935. He worked on ''Astonishing Stories'' and ''Super Science Stories'' briefly before they shut down production due to paper shortages. When ''Super Science Stories'' was revived in 1949, Jakobson was named editor until it ended publication two years later. He was an editor for Graphic Books in the 1950s. Jakobsson returned to editing in 1969, when he took over ''Galaxy'' and '' If'', succeeding Frederik Pohl. He worked to make the magazines more contemporary with the help of Judy-Lynn del Rey and Lester del Rey. He left the magazines in 1974 and was succeeded by Jim Baen. He died in Pleasantville, New York Pleasantville is a village in the town of Mount Pleasant, in Westchester County, New York, United States. It is located 30 miles north of Man ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
