Super Science Stories
Super Science Stories was an American pulp science fiction magazine published by Popular Publications from 1940 to 1943, and again from 1949 to 1951. Popular launched it under their Fictioneers imprint, which they used for magazines, paying writers less than one cent per word. Frederik Pohl was hired in late 1939, at 19 years old, to edit the magazine; he also edited Astonishing Stories, a companion science fiction publication. Pohl left in mid-1941 and Super Science Stories was given to Alden H. Norton to edit; a few months later Norton rehired Pohl as an assistant. Popular gave Pohl a very low budget, so most manuscripts submitted to Super Science Stories had already been rejected by the higher-paying magazines. This made it difficult to acquire good fiction, but Pohl was able to acquire stories for the early issues from the Futurians, a group of young science fiction fans and aspiring writers.
Not to be confused with Super-Science Fiction.
Super Science Stories was an initial success, and within a year Popular increased Pohl's budget slightly, allowing him to pay a bonus rate on occasion. Pohl wrote many stories himself, to fill the magazine and to augment his salary. He managed to obtain stories by writers who subsequently became very well known, such as Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein. After Pohl entered the army in early 1943, wartime paper shortages led Popular to cease publication of Super Science Stories. The final issue of the first run was dated May of that year. In 1949 the title was revived with Ejler Jakobsson as editor; this version, which included many reprinted stories, lasted almost three years, with the last issue dated August 1951. A Canadian reprint edition of the first run included material from both Super Science Stories and Astonishing Stories; it was unusual in that it published some original fiction rather than just reprints. There were also Canadian and British reprint editions of the second incarnation of the magazine.
The magazine was never regarded as one of the leading titles of the genre, but has received qualified praise from science fiction critics and historians. Science fiction historian Raymond Thompson describes it as "one of the most interesting magazines to appear during the 1940s", despite the variable quality of the stories.[1] Critics Brian Stableford and Peter Nicholls comment that the magazine "had a greater importance to the history of sf than the quality of its stories would suggest; it was an important training ground".[2]
Contents and reception[edit]
Because of the low rates of pay, for the most part, the stories submitted to Super Science Stories in its first year had already been rejected elsewhere. Pohl was a member of the Futurians, a group of science fiction fans that included Isaac Asimov, C.M. Kornbluth, Richard Wilson and Donald Wollheim; they were eager to become professional writers and were keen to submit stories to Pohl.[5] The Futurians were prolific; in Pohl's first year as an editor he bought a total of fifteen stories from them for the two magazines.[1] Pohl contributed material himself, usually in collaboration with one or more of the Futurians.[5] Particularly after his marriage to Doris Baumgardt in August 1940, Pohl realized that his salary covered their apartment rent with almost no money left over. He began to augment his income by selling his work to himself as well as to other magazines.[8] The first story Pohl ever published that was not a collaboration was "The Dweller in the Ice", which appeared in the January 1941 Super Science Stories.[29] All the stories Pohl bought from himself were published under pseudonyms; he used pseudonyms for everything he wrote until the 1950s.[30]
The first issue, dated March 1940, contained "Emergency Refueling", James Blish's first published story, two stories by John Russell Fearn (one under the pseudonym "Thornton Ayre"), fiction by Frank Belknap Long, Ross Rocklynne, Raymond Gallun, Harl Vincent and Dean O'Brien; and a poem by Kornbluth, "The Song of the Rocket", under the pseudonym "Gabriel Barclay".[31][32] Blish's most notable contribution to the magazine was "Sunken Universe", which appeared in the May 1942 issue under the pseudonym "Arthur Merlyn".[1] This later formed part of "Surface Tension", one of Blish's most popular stories.[1][32] Other writers whose first story appeared in Super Science Stories include Ray Bradbury, Chad Oliver, and Wilson Tucker.[7][33] Bradbury's first sale, "Pendulum", was bought by Norton, and appeared in the November 1941 issue;[7] Tucker's writing career began with "Interstellar Way Station" in May 1941,[31][33] and Oliver's "The Land of Lost Content" appeared in the November 1950 Super Science Stories.[1] Asimov appeared four times in Super Science Stories, starting with "Robbie", his first Robot story, under the title "Strange Playfellow".[34]
Although most stories submitted to Super Science Stories were rejects from the better-paying magazines such as Astounding Science Fiction, Pohl recalled in his memoirs that John W. Campbell, the editor of Astounding, would occasionally pass on a good story by a prolific author because he felt readers did not want to see the same authors in every issue. As a result, Pohl was able to print L. Sprague de Camp's Genus Homo, in the March 1941 Super Science Stories, and Robert Heinlein's "Let There Be Light" and "Lost Legacy" in the May 1940 and November 1941 issues: these were stories which, in Pohl's opinion, "would have looked good anywhere".[35] Pohl also suggested that Campbell rejected some of Heinlein's stories because they contained mild references to sex. A couple of readers did complain, with one disgusted letter writer commenting "If you are going to continue to print such pseudosophisticated, pre-prep-school tripe as "Let There Be Light", you should change the name of the mag to Naughty Future Funnies".[35][notes 7]
The second run of Super Science Stories included some fiction that had first appeared in the Canadian reprint edition, which outlasted the US original. It printed eleven stories that had been acquired but not printed by the time Popular shut Super Science Stories and Astonishing down in early 1943. These included "The Black Sun Rises" by Henry Kuttner, "And Then – the Silence", by Ray Bradbury and "The Bounding Crown" by James Blish.[25][notes 8] From mid-1950 a reprint feature was established. This led to some reader complaints, with one correspondent pointing out that it was particularly galling to discover that Blish's "Sunken Universe", reprinted in the November 1950 issue, was a better story than the original material in the magazine.[1] The magazine also reprinted stories from Famous Fantastic Mysteries, which Popular had acquired from Munsey Publishing in 1941.[36]
Some of the original stories were well-received: for example, Ray Bradbury's "The Impossible", which appeared in the November 1949 issue, and was later included in Bradbury's book The Martian Chronicles, is described by sf historian Raymond Thompson as a "haunting ... comment on man's attempts to realize his conflicting hopes and dreams". Thompson also comments positively on Poul Anderson's early story "Terminal Quest", in Super Science Stories's final issue, dated August 1951; and on Arthur C. Clarke's "Exile of the Eons" in the March 1950 issue.[1] John D. MacDonald also contributed good material.[28]
The book reviews in Super Science Stories were of a higher standard than elsewhere in the field. Historian Paul Carter regards Astonishing and Super Science Stories as the place where "book reviewing for the first time began to merit the term 'literary criticism'", adding "it was in those magazines that the custom began of paying attention to science fiction on the stage and screen also".[5][37] The artwork was initially amateurish, and although it improved over the years, even the better artists such as Virgil Finlay and Lawrence Stevens continued to produce clichéd depictions of half-dressed women threatened by robots or aliens.[1] H. R. van Dongen, later a prolific cover artist for Astounding, made his first science fiction art sale to Super Science Stories for the cover of the September 1950 issue.[38]
Sf historian Mike Ashley regards Super Science Stories as marginally better than its companion magazine, Astonishing, adding "both are a testament to what a good editor can do with a poor budget".[7] According to sf critics Brian Stableford and Peter Nicholls, the magazine "had a greater importance to the history of sf than the quality of its stories would suggest; it was an important training ground".[2]