The Mumpsimus

If you've ever wanted to encounter one of the primary origins of science fiction as we know it (for better or worse), now is your chance: the wonderful Pulp Magazines Project has put the first six issues (April-December 1926) of Amazing Stories online. If you don't know why Amazing Stories  is important to the history of science fiction, Wikipedia has a fairly good entry on it and The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction  also offers an overview . (And if you want to delve deeply into it, check out Mike Ashley and Robert A.W. Lowndes's Gernsback Days , Ashley's Time Machines ,  and Gary Westfahl's The Mechanics of Wonder  and Hugo Gernsback and the Century of Science Fiction . )

I stopped by the University library yesterday to take a look at the latest issue of American Literature because it includes not only some interesting essays about Samuel R. Delany, a fellow I've written about a bit myself, but also a fabulous essay by Aaron Bady , "Tarzan's White Flights: Terrorism and Fantasy Before and After the Airplane". In this essay, there is what may be my favorite statement-required-by-a-rights-holder evah (as they say). It accompanies a drawing by Robert Baden-Powell, author of Scouting for Boys , that appeared in the Daily Mail  in 1938 and is titled "Policeman Aeroplanes": Reproduced by kind permission of the Scout Association Trustees. The Scout Association does not endorse Mr. Bady's article or the use of air power against civilians. So relieved to have that cleared up! The cover for this issue of American Literature , by the way, reprints the famous August 1928 cover of Amazing Stories .  If Duke University Pres...

Through a bit of luck, I was able to get a copy of the November 1926 issue of Amazing Stories (vol. 1, no. 8) for an affordable price (because it's not in very good condition). I've wanted to see a complete issue of one of the early, Hugo Gernsback -edited Amazings for ages -- yes, aside from the material they reprinted from Wells and Verne and Poe, most of the fiction they published was atrociously bad and even occasionally illiterate, but Amazing as an idea and institution was an important step in differentiating science fiction from other types of writing. The editorial by Gernsback in this issue has separated from the binding, so here, for your amusement, is a scan of it (click on the image for a full-size view):