Amazing Stories was the first magazine devoted solely to Science Fiction. It was founded in 1926 by Hugo Gernsback (in whose honor the Hugo Awards are named) and published continuously until 1995. A revival attempt in 1998 was unsuccessful, as was a second in 2004, and the final issue was published in 2005.
Technically speaking, Amazing was not originally a Pulp Magazine, being published in a larger format on slick paper — but it "went pulp" for a few years from 1933 on.
During the 1980s, the title was licensed for a Genre Anthology TV series by Steven Spielberg: Amazing Stories. Unfortunately the magazine didn't capitalize on the TV show's publicity.
Scans of the original magazine's run can be found in the the Internet Archive
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Works that debuted in Amazing Stories include:
- Armageddon 2419 AD, the first Buck Rogers story by Philip Francis Nowlan
- "I Remember Lemuria!" by Richard Sharpe Shaver
- The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin
- "Marooned Off Vesta", the first published story by Isaac Asimov
- Skylark Series by E. E. "Doc" Smith
- The Star Kings by Edmond Hamilton
- "When the Atoms Failed", the first published story by John W. Campbell
Amazing Stories contains examples of:
- Feghoot:
- The magazine had a regular contribution called "Through Time and Space with Benedict Breadfruit" by Grandall Barretton (a pseudonym for Randall Garrett) which were all Feghoots that used the names of other well known science fiction writers.
- A later Briarton story had somebody ask Feghoot if Breadfruit could be trusted. "Absolutely," replied Feghoot. "He was conceived in our Garrett."
- Handsome Heroic Caveman: Manly Wade Wellman wrote a series of adventure tales about a brave young Cro-Magnon named Hok the Mighty. He's a bit of an Anti-Hero, as there's a fair bit of Deliberate Values Dissonance going on, although his handsomeness is beyond question. Most of his family are also described as good-looking (though Hok is implied to be the handsomest of the bunch), in contrast to the brutish Frazetta Man Neanderthals they are pitted against.
- Lunarians: The shor story "Flight of the Vampires", has the Earth attacked by vampiric pterodactyl-like creatures from the Moon.
- Recursive Reality: One of the oldest Science Fiction examples is He Who Shrank by Henry Hasse. The protagonist is injected with a serum that causes him to shrink smaller than an atom, where he discovers that every atom is a solar system, with a nucleus for a sun and electrons that orbit like planets. He shrinks through several universes until he lands on our world, and tells his story to a writer who unsuccessfully tries to sell the story to a newspaper as nonfiction.
- Strolling on Jupiter: In They Fly So High by Ross Rocklynne (Amazing Stories June 1952), two men Abandon Ship over Jupiter and are caught in its gravity well. Their pressure-suits with Artificial Gravity protect them as they're falling into the gas giant, until they land on a surface of a strange liquid made solid by surface tension. It's also stated there's a Domed City somewhere near the Great Red Spot.
- Tele-Frag: Charles Cloukey published a story call "Anachronism" where Mr. Wentworth is killed by an iron ball being teleported into his brain.
- World Shapes: A 1990s story is set in a world that's spherical, but with more than 360 degrees of rotation. In other words, if you sail 360 degrees eastward you end up somewhere that has the same time zone as your origin, but which isn't the same place.
