Book Description
This is the first of three volumes that chart the history of the science fiction magazine from the earliest days to the present. This first volume looks at the exuberant years of the pulp magazines. It traces the growth and development of the science fiction magazines from when Hugo Gernsback launched the very first, Amazing Stories, in 1926 through to the birth of the atomic age and the death of the pulps in the early 1950s. These were the days of the youth of science fiction, when it was brash, raw and exciting: the days of the first great space operas by Edward Elmer Smith and Edmond Hamilton, through the cosmic thought variants by Murray Leinster, Jack Williamson and others to the early 1940s when John W. Campbell at Astounding did his best to nurture the infant genre into adulthood. Under him such major names as Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, A. E. van Vogt and Theodore Sturgeon emerged who, along with other such new talents as Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Clarke, helped create modern science fiction. For over forty years magazines were at the heart of science fiction and this book considers how the magazines, and their publishers, editors and authors influenced the growth and perception of this fascinating genre.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"This book focuses on three English civil wars: the civil war of King Stephen's reign; the War of the Roses; and the civil war of the seventeenth century. The civil wars are considered within a wider European context, and characteristics of civil war are discussed alongside developments in European warfare." "The nine contributors to the book deal with the general theme of the interacton of war and society rather than the details of individual campaigns and battles. The book is concerned with the nature of war and the way it was conducted in the medieval and early modern periods, as well as the way it has been recorded and interpreted by contemporaries and later commentators."--BOOK JACKET.

FROM THE CRITICS

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