page_title: Amazing Stories Quarterly
section_title: Contents
hierarchical_section_title: Amazing Stories Quarterly / Contents
caption_attribution_description: English: Cover, Amazing Stories Quarterly, winter 1930
context_page_description: Amazing Stories Quarterly was a U.S. science fiction pulp magazine that was published between 1928 and 1934. It was launched by Hugo Gernsback as a companion to his Amazing Stories, the first science fiction magazine, which had begun publishing in April 1926. Amazing Stories had been successful enough for Gernsback to try a single issue of an Amazing Stories Annual in 1927, which had sold well, and he decided to follow it up with a quarterly magazine. The first issue of Amazing Stories Quarterly was dated Winter 1928 and carried a reprint of the 1899 version of H.G. Wells' When the Sleeper Wakes. Gernsback's policy of running a novel in each issue was popular with his readership, though the choice of Wells' novel was less so. Over the next five issues, only one more reprint appeared: Gernsback's own novel Ralph 124C 41+, in the Winter 1929 issue. Gernsback went bankrupt in early 1929, and lost control of both Amazing Stories and Amazing Stories Quarterly; his assistant, T. O'Conor Sloane, took over as editor. The magazine began to run into financial difficulties in 1932, and the schedule became irregular; the last issue was dated Fall 1934.
context_section_description: The first issue of Amazing Stories Quarterly contained a reprint of H. G. Wells' novel When the Sleeper Wakes, though for some reason Wells did not provide Gernsback with the revised text published in 1910 under the title The Sleeper Awakes; the text printed was that of the original 1899 edition. The other material in the issue was original, and the following issues included material by Edmond Hamilton, Stanton A. Coblentz, R.F. Starzl, David H. Keller, S.P. Meek, J. Schlossel, and Clare Winger Harris, one of the earliest women writers of sf. Although readers' reactions to the Wells novel were negative, they approved of Gernsback's policy of publishing a novel in each issue. The only other reprint in the early days of the magazine was Gernsback's own novel Ralph 124C 41+, which appeared in the Winter 1929 issue. The novel, set in the year 2660, was little more than a series of predictions about the future tied together by a minor plot. Gernsback included a letter column, and began a competition for the best editorials submitted by readers; the first prize was awarded to Jack Williamson, later to become a successful science fiction writer but at that time just starting his career. Gernsback also started other departments to engage the readers, including book reviews, science quizzes, and science news. The last issue under Gernsback's control was dated Spring 1929; under Sloane's editorship, most of these nonfiction departments ceased.
  According to Milton Wolf and Mike Ashley, historians of science fiction, over the next two years Sloane published some of the best sf of the early years of the field in Amazing Stories Quarterly. Wolf and Ashley cite "Paradox", by Charles Cloukey, an early time-travel story; The Bridge of Light, by A. Hyatt Verrill, a novel about a lost civilization in South America; The Birth of a New Republic, by Miles J. Breuer and Jack Williamson, in which a man of the 24th century reminisces about a revolt by the inhabitants of the Moon against the Earth; "Paradise and Iron", by Breuer; and White Lily, by Eric Temple Bell, under the pseudonym John Taine, about a form of crystal life that endangers the planet. After 1931, according to Wolf and Ashley, the fiction in Amazing Stories Quarterly became less entertaining. Everett Bleiler, the author of a detailed review of the first ten years of science fiction magazines, is less complimentary, describing John W. Campbell, Jr.'s space operas, which appeared from 1930 to 1932, as "turgid", and commenting that only a dozen or so of the stories in the magazine's entire run "might have been considered worth reading if one could put oneself back in the 1930s, accepting the standards of the time". Bleiler mentions three authors, Coblentz, Taine, and Breuer, as having produced notably original material, but adds that their work was "not strong enough for mainstream fiction" and had "too little action and too much sophistication for pulp". Bleiler does however agree with Wolf and Ashley that the magazine's quality declined over time. Brian Stableford, in the Science Fiction Encyclopedia, also highlights Coblentz, Taine and Breuer, along with Williamson and Verrill, among the magazine's contributors; Stableford regards their contributions as being among "the most important early pulp sf novels".
caption: The Winter 1930 issue of Amazing Stories Quarterly. The cover art is by Wesso.[1]
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