Hugo Gernsback and the Pulps

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The term pulps was used to describe a particular kind of story printed on cheap pulp paper and published for a small market of loyal readers. The types of stories produced ranged from westerns to crime fi ction, romance to science fi ction. Popular from the early twenties to around the middle of the twentieth century, pulps were part of a growing magazine industry (also including dime novels and comics) that targeted a large labour market that had more money to spend on leisure activities and cheap consumables.

Largely dismissed by scholars as being aimed more at a juvenile audience particularly since the most popular adventure stories were of the boy'sown variety more recently, the pulps have been perceived as an integral part of the genre's history. The pulps ‘appealed to an increasingly socially diverse readership: the emphasis was on eventful narrative, strong characters, a binary ethical code of good and evil, and (especially in SF Pulps) exotic and wonderful locales' (Roberts 2005: 174).

A leading fi gure in the creation and development of science fi ction pulps was editor Hugo Gernsback. His infl uence on the genre cannot be underestimated, and as such he is a fi gure that has attracted much attention from academics and enthusiasts. For some, he was the father of modern science fi ction; for others, he was someone who stunted the genre's growth in the early part of the century. Either way, his impact can still be seen in the genre today not least in the establishing of its name. The term science fi ction comes from Gernsback's fi rst attempt in 1924 at producing a magazine devoted to what he called ‘Scientifi ction'. Stories from the likes of Jules Verne and H. G.

Wells were up until this point termed scientifi c romances, and Gernsback wanted to publish magazines based on such fi ction that would teach and entertain. His fi rst publications were more practically minded: Science and Invention and Modern Electrics were two of his early attempts. These examples contained very technical stories, with large chunks of manual-like instruction for building new and wonderful pieces of electrical gadgets and machinery.

Alongside these more factual narratives Gernsback included fi ction of his own and republished more famous stories from authors such as Wells, Verne, and Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous magazine, Amazing Stories (fi rst published in 1924), contained a mix of both the technical stories and the more fantastical. This combination seemingly added to the popularity of the genre, as Tim DeForest (2004: 64) notes: ‘the illusion of scientifi c reality helped create the suspension of disbelief necessary to make the stories dramatically viable. In a world where impossible things like telephones and radio were becoming everyday items, steam-powered men and time machines didn't seem too unreasonable'.

Gernsback was a very competitive man, not least because he was in a very competitive industry. Millions of pulps were sold on newsstands and book stalls, and his magazines were just a few of the publications attracting readers. One could say that a defi ning trope of the science fi ction genre is its enthusiasts' desire to continually defi ne and redefi ne what is considered science fi ction: whether it is Wells, Gernsback or even Star Wars (1977). Fascinatingly, as Gary Westfahl has uncovered, Gernsback was not only interested in defi ning the genre through the written word, but also through the use of a visual symbol something that could be printed on the front of his magazines that would advertise: ‘this is science fi ction'.

For Westfahl, this drive to fi nd a symbol could be ‘interpreted primarily as an expression of his desire for profi t' (especially in a highly competitive market), but it also throws up some interesting questions around how we defi ne concepts, and how very often our defi nitions are entirely verbal. Gernsback's search for a symbol for Amazing Stories may not have produced a lasting image for the genre, but pictorial representations did provide a ‘potentially valid alternative approach to the problem of defi nition and might be usefully examined both for information about the attitudes towards science fi ction of the people who created and used them and as possible infl uences on the attitudes of those people who regularly saw them' (Westfahl 2007: 45). The cover images used by Gernsback are perhaps the most remembered elements of the pulp phenomenon. Indeed, the comic strip clearly took inspiration from the visual designs of the pulp covers, offering the readers science fi ction stories less scientific and more focussed on heroes and personalities.

From the thirties onwards, comic book heroes such as Buck Rogers and Superman became important transition fi gures for science fi ction's jump from the page to the screen. Competing defi nitions aside, Gernsback was interested in publishing stories that taught his readers and also entertained them, so that they ‘would be instructed through science fi ction' (Ashley 2000: 50). As the pulp industry grew and Gernsback increased his sales through diversifi cation, more and more people were reading and, indeed, writing. His magazines, as well as publishing established authors, offered the opportunity to aspiring science fi ction writers to get their stories in print.

One of Gernsback's most famous discoveries was E. E. "Doc" Smith. Whatever the focus and quality of the stories published in the pulps, it was clear that Gernsback had a dramatic impact on the perception of the genre.The greatest impact he had was to draw publishers, editors, writers and readers to science fi ction: ‘other publishers began defending the scientifi c value of their stories, writers started to include more scientifi c explanations in their stories, and readers wrote letters praising and analysing stories of this type' (Westfahl 1998: 27).

A community grew up and around his and other publications, a community stimulated by the possibilities represented by the technologies described in the stories and fascinated with the idea that limitless invention and innovation could eventually take humans to other worlds. Still popular in the 1950s, Gernsback's brand of science fi ction literature offered readers realistic visions of time travel, alien life and space exploration (Ashley 2005: 58). Of course, by that time what they were imaging from the pulp page was being literally shown to them on the big screen in the guise of UFOs, hideous alien blobs and charismatic all-American astronauts.