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''Amazing Stories'' is an American science fiction magazine launched in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback's Experimenter Publishing. It was the first magazine devoted solely to science fiction. Before ''Amazing'', science fiction stories had made regular appearances in other magazines, including some published by Gernsback, but ''Amazing'' helped define and launch a new genre of pulp fiction. ''Amazing'' was published, with some interruptions, for almost eighty years. The title first changed hands in 1929, when Gernsback was forced into bankruptcy and lost control of the magazine. In 1931, Bernarr Macfadden purchased the assets of the Mackinnon-Fly magazine publishers (in Canada), which gave him the pioneering sci-fi pulp ''Amazing Stories'' and several other titles. They were published under the ''Teck'' Publications imprint. ''Amazing'' became unprofitable during the 1930s and in 1938 was purchased by Ziff-Davis, who hired Raymond A. Palmer as editor. Palmer made the magazine successful though it was not regarded as a quality magazine within the science fiction community. In the late 1940s ''Amazing'' began to print stories about the Shaver Mystery, a lurid mythos that explained accidents and disaster as the work of robots named ''deros''. The stories were presented as fact, and led to dramatically increased circulation but also widespread ridicule. Palmer was replaced by Howard Browne in 1949, who briefly entertained plans of taking ''Amazing'' upmarket. These plans came to nothing, though ''Amazing'' did switch to a digest format in 1953, shortly before the end of the pulp-magazine era. A brief period under the editorship of Paul W. Fairman was followed, at the end of 1958, by the leadership of Cele Goldsmith. Despite her lack of experience she was able to bring new life to the magazine, and her years are regarded as one of ''Amazings most creative eras. She was unable to arrest the declining circulation, though, and the magazine was sold to Sol Cohen's Universal Publishing Company in 1965. Under Cohen ''Amazing'' was filled almost entirely with reprinted stories. Cohen did not pay a reprint fee to the authors of these stories, and this brought him into conflict with the newly formed Science Fiction Writers of America. The conflict cost ''Amazing'' two successive editors (Harry Harrison and Barry N. Malzberg) in a short period at the end of the 1960s. Ted White took over as editor after Malzberg, eliminated the reprints and made the magazine a respected name again: ''Amazing'' was nominated for the prestigious Hugo award three times during his tenure. White left at the end of the 1970s. The 1980s saw ''Amazing'' pass into the hands of TSR in 1983 and Wizards of the Coast (who purchased TSR in 1997), who made intermittent attempts over the next twenty years to create a successful modern incarnation of the magazine. A last attempt was made by Paizo Publishing at the end of 2004, but publication was suspended after the March 2005 issue. A new incarnation appeared in July 2012 as an online magazine. Gernsback's initial editorial approach was to blend instruction with entertainment; he believed science fiction could educate readers. His audience rapidly showed a preference for implausible adventures, however, and the movement away from Gernsback's idealism accelerated when the magazine changed hands in 1929. Despite this, Gernsback had an enormous impact on the field: the creation of a specialist magazine for science fiction spawned an entire genre publishing industry. The letter columns in ''Amazing'', where fans could make contact with each other, led to the formation of science fiction fandom, which in turn had a strong influence on the development of the field. Writers whose first story was published in the magazine include Isaac Asimov, Howard Fast, Ursula K. Le Guin, Roger Zelazny, and Thomas M. Disch. Overall, though, ''Amazing'' itself was rarely an influential magazine within the genre. Some critics have commented that by "ghettoizing" science fiction, Gernsback in fact did harm to its literary growth, but this viewpoint has been countered by the argument that science fiction needed an independent market to develop in to reach its potential. ==Origins== By the end of the 19th century, stories centered on scientific inventions, and stories set in the future, were appearing regularly in popular fiction magazines. The market for short stories lent itself to tales of invention in the tradition of Jules Verne.〔Ashley, ''Time Machines'', p. 7.〕 Magazines such as ''Munsey's Magazine'' and ''The Argosy'', launched in 1889 and 1896 respectively, carried a few science fiction stories each year. Some upmarket "slick" magazines such as ''McClure's'', which paid well and were aimed at a more literary audience, also carried scientific stories, but by the early years of the 20th century, science fiction (though it was not yet called that) was appearing more often in the pulp magazines than in the slicks.〔Ashley, ''Time Machines'', pp. 21–25.〕〔Nicholls, Peter, "Pulp Magazines", in Clute & Nicholls, ''Encyclopedia of SF'', p. 979.〕〔Ashley, ''Transformations'', p. 155.〕 In 1908, Hugo Gernsback published the first issue of ''Modern Electrics'', a magazine aimed at the scientific hobbyist. It was an immediate success, and Gernsback began to include articles on imaginative uses of science, such as "Wireless on Saturn" (December 1908).〔Ashley, ''Time Machines'', pp. 28–29.〕 In April 1911, Gernsback began the serialization of his science fiction novel, ''Ralph 124C 41+'', but in 1913 he sold his interest in the magazine to his partner and launched a new magazine, ''Electrical Experimenter'', which soon began to publish scientific fiction. In 1920 Gernsback retitled the magazine ''Science and Invention'', and through the early 1920s he published much scientific fiction in its pages, along with non-fiction scientific articles.〔Ashley, ''Time Machines'', pp. 29–35.〕 Gernsback had started another magazine called ''Practical Electrics'' in 1921. In 1924, he changed its name to ''The Experimenter'',〔Ashley, ''Time Machines'', pp. 48–49.〕 and sent a letter to 25,000 people to gauge interest in the possibility of a magazine devoted to scientific fiction; in his words, "the response was such that the idea was given up for two years."〔Ashley, ''Time Machines'', p. 47.〕 However, in 1926 he decided to go ahead, and ceased publication of ''The Experimenter'' to make room in his publishing schedule for a new magazine. The editor of ''The Experimenter'', T. O'Conor Sloane, became the editor of ''Amazing Stories''. The first issue appeared on 10 March 1926, with a cover date of April 1926.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Amazing Stories」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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