Multiplication

David Hartwell has amusingly noted that ‘the golden age of science fiction is twelve’. He was really alluding to the fact that most fans discover science fiction at the age of 12 and that thrill of discovery remains locked in the memory, always to evoke a golden glow. No matter how good later sf may be, those early stories retain that magical memory. But Hartwell was right in a different way. By 1938, magazine science fiction was 12 years old and was about to enter its teens. It was about to mature. However, like many teenagers, it was also about to rebel. Science fiction by 1938 had all of those tensions of puberty, and it would take a world war and the release of atomic energy to push sf finally into adulthood.

The following year, 1939, was a boom year for science fiction in the United States. In that year alone nine new magazines appeared, nearly twice as many as already existed. Of that nine, six were companion titles to current magazines, which emphasized the satisfaction those publishers were having with their sf titles. Although science fiction would never prove as popular as the detective or the western pulps, it was rapidly becoming the third string to publishers’ bows. But some publishers were unsure whether science fiction belonged in the pulps or in the comic books, and at times the fiction became indistinguishable.

We have already seen that in 1938 the first signs of this boom came with the appearance of Marvel Science Stories amongst the pulps and Action Comics, featuring Superman, amongst the comic books. The hero pulps may already have sensed their day had passed. Although the leading hero pulps, The Shadow and Doc Savage, still had plenty of life and would be around for another decade or more, others striving to enter the field were less successful. May 1938, for instance, had seen the sole appearance of Captain Hazzard from publisher A.A. Wyn (later the publisher of Ace Books). The magazine was seeking to copy Doc Savage, although its hero had telepathic powers. The magazine could not make an impact, and although a few more superhero pulps would appear, their future was increasingly in the comic-book field.