JULES VERNE'S TOMBSTONE AT AMIENS PORTRAYING HIS IMMORTALITY
Vol. 1 No. 3 June, 1926
EDITORIAL & GENERAL OFFICES: 53 Park Place, New York CityPublished by Experimenter Publishing Company, Inc.
H. Gernsback, Pres.; S. Gernsback, Treas.; R. W. DeMott, Sec'yPublishers of SCIENCE & INVENTION, RADIO NEWS, AMAZING STORIES, RADIO REVIEW, RADIO INTERNATIONAL.
Illustrates an episode in this month's story, "A Trip to the Center of the Earth", by Jules Verne. Here we see our intrepid explorers almost perish at the agency of one of the great sea monsters roaming the great Inner Sea.
COPYRIGHT ACKNOWLEDGMENT
"A Trip to the Center of the Earth", by Jules Verne, copyright 1911 by Vincent Parke & Co. (Parke, Austin & Libsom Co.)
In Our Next Issue:
"STATION X," by G. McLeod Winsor. A wonderful radio serial describing in vivid language a titanic struggle between Lunarians and Martians, waged by the development of future means of warfare. A tale of hair-raising terror and suspense.
"THE EGGS FROM LAKE TANGANYIKA," by Curt Siodmak. A new German story which we consider the best scientifiction short story for 1926. It is the cleverest and, without doubt, the most amazing thing that we have seen in years.
"THE MOON METAL," by Professor Garret P. Serviss, One of the greatest scientifiction stories ever written, with a most astonishing and intriguing plot that will hold your interest to the end.
"DR. OX'S EXPERIMENT," by Jules Verne, little-known but amazing scientifiction story, wherein a sleepy town suddenly bursts forth in an amazing fashion.
"THE MAGNETIC STORM," by Hugo Gernsback. The inner secret of how the Great World War was really won by Tesla currents — if you can believe this unusual story.
"THE SCIENTIFIC ADVENTURES OF MR. FOSDICK," by Jacque Morgan, wherein "The Feline Light & Power Company" is organized, and in which you will again meet the great inventor in a most mirth-provoking story.
"THE SPHINX," by Edgar Allan Poe. A little known story by the great writer, which again shows how our senses are sometimes fooled by the simplest of things.
Another powerful story by H. G. Wells, which is little known in this country. A story which you will read and re-read many times.
"DR. HACKENSAW'S SECRETS," by Clement Fezandié. The secret of "The Invisible Girl." This new Hackensaw story is as astonishing as its predecessors. and shows you what happened when the hunters tried to locate the invisible girl. An excellent short story.
HOW TO SUBSCRIBE FOR "AMAZING STORIES." Send your name, address and remittance to Experimenter Publishing Co., 53 Park Place, New York City. Checks and money orders should be made payable to Experimenter Publishing Co., Inc. Mention the name of the magazine you are ordering inasmuch as we also publish RADIO NEWS, SCIENCE & INVENTION, RADIO REVIEW and RADIO INTERNACIONAL. Subscriptions may be made in combination with the other publications just mentioned at special reduced club rates. Send postal for club rate card. Subscriptions start with the current issue unless otherwise ordered. ON EXPIRATION of your subscription we enclose a renewal blank in our last number to you, and notify you by mail. Then, unless we receive your order and remittance for a renewal, delivery of the magazine is stopped. CHANGE OF ADDRESS: Notify us as far in advance as possible, giving your old address as well as the new one to which future magazines are to go. It takes several weeks to make an address change in our records.
AMAZING STORIES is published on the 10th of each month. There are 12 numbers per year. Subscription price is $2.50 a year in U. S. and possessions. Canada and foreign countries $3.00 a year. U. S. coin as well as U. S. stamps accepted (no foreign coin or stamps). Single copies, 25 cents each.
All communications and contributions to this journal should be addressed to Editor AMAZING STORIES, 53 Park Place, New York, N. Y. Unaccepted contributions cannot be returned unless full postage has been included. ALL accepted contributions are paid for on publication.
AMAZING STORIES. Monthly. Application for second class matter at the Post Office at New York, N.Y. pending. Title Registered U. S. Patent Office. Copyright 1925, by E. P. Co. Inc., New York. The text and illustrations of this magazine are copyrighted and must not be reproduced without giving full credit to the publication. AMAZING STORIES is for sale at all newstands in the United States and Canada. European Agents, S. J. Wise Et Cle, 40 Place Verte, Antwerp, Belgium. Printed in the U.S.A.
New England Advertising Representative T. F. Magrane, Park Square Bldg., Boston, Mass.
Western Advertising Representatives Finucan & McClure, 720 Cass., Chicago, Ill.
Pacific Coast Advertising Representatives A. J. Norris Hill Co., Hearst Bldg., San Francisco, Cal.
Kansas City Advertising Representatives Davies & Dillon, 15 W. 10th St., Kansas City, Mo.
Detroit Advertising Representative, Ray Basil, Donovan Bldg., Detroit, Michigan.
VOLUME 1
JUNE, 1926 No. 3.
THE
MAGAZINE
OF
SCIENTIFICTION
HUGO GERNSBACK, F.R.S., Editor
DR. T. O'CONOR SLOANE, M.A., Ph.D.; Associate Editor
Editorial and General Offices---53 Park Place. New York. N.Y.
CIENTIFICTION 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 eleventh 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 scientfiction 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 forty 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 some one 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 a dozen to fifty 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 book stores 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 the readers imagination, more perhaps than anything else of which we know.
————
↑Da Vinci—the Edison of the Middle Ages—is credited with having first imagined the printing press, the breech-loading gun, the mitrailleuse gun, the steam engine, the chain drive, a man-propelled airplane, the parachute and many others—an amazing array of "scientifiction"—because he admittedly only imagined these inventions.
↑In his famous Opus Majus he accurately prophesied the telescope. He gave excellent descriptions of the camera obscura, and of the burning glass—even the invention of gun powder is accredited to him. He forecast an age of industry and invention, with all prominence given to experiment. As a reward for his immortal work, he was incarcerated for a number of years.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
CIENTIFICTION 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]
