Amazing Stories Volume 01 Number 01 (April 1926). Scanned copy of a pulp magazine published by Experimenter Publishing Co. and edited by Hugo Gernsback. Periodical copyright not renewed. Individual contributions' copyrights not renewed. This magazine and its contents are now in the public domain. This is the first issue of the first science fiction magazine in history.

1533 OFF ON A COMET-OR HECTOR SERVADAC. 

*  Amazing Stories, April-May 1926. Ill. Paul. (First published as Hector Servadac, 1877. Translated editions as Hector Servadac by Sampson Low etc., London, 1878, and Scribner and Armstrong, New York, 1878. Also conflated two volume edition To the Sun? and Off on a Comet!, trans, by Edward Roth, New York, 1878; and two volume abridged edition, trans, by I. O. Evans, Arco, London, 1965. The present text probably translated by Ellen E. Frewer.) Novel. An odd mixture of geographical fiction, a puzzle story, a last-man story, and ethnic bile. 

*  Time: the near future. Place: mostly on a fragment of Earth with an eccentric orbit. 

*  Captain Hector Servadac and his orderly are knocked unconscious by a great storm. When they awaken, the world seems very strange. They are inexplicably much stronger than they used to be, and what was formerly mainland Africa around them is now a small island. The alternation of day and night takes place in a matter of a few hours, and the Earth seems to be approaching the sun. The explanation, worked out later, is that the comet Gallia grazed the Earth and picked up a small fragment, which it has carried out into space. 

*  Other personalities turn up: a Russian prince and his steam yacht, Spanish dancers, rude Englishmen on Gibraltar, Servadac's old teacher Professor Rosette, and a Jewish trader, who is portrayed in the most anti-Semitic terms. 

*  The unwilling passengers on the comet survive a difficult winter inside the comet, and when the comet again grazes Earth, transfer back to North Africa, where they started. Rosette had unwillingly supplied the scientific knowledge for their salvation. 

*  But was it all a dream? 

1707. THE NEW ACCELERATOR. Amazing Stories, April 1926. Unsigned ill. (First published in the Strand Magazine, December 1901. Reprinted in Wells, Twelve Stories and a Dream; Wells, The Country of the Blind; Wells, The Works of H. G. Wells,N ol. 10; Wells, The Short Stories of H. G. Wells; Wells, 28 Science Fiction Stories; Wells, Best Science Fiction Stories; Wells, Best Stories; Gunn, The Road to Science Fiction #2; Janifer, Masters ' Choice; Silverberg, The Arbor House Treasury; Derleth, Beyond Space and Time, and elsewhere.) Short story. 

*  Professor Gibberne has discovered a chemical that speeds up metabolism thousands of times. He and the narrator, taking the chemical, wander about in a world of stopped motion. 

1711. THE MAN FROM THE ATOM. Amazing Stories, April 1926. Unsigned ill. (First published in Science and Invention, August 1923.) Short story. 

*  Professor Martyn has devised a little box-like apparatus that permits the wearer to increase or decrease his size. It operates by chopping atoms in half or pulling in new atoms. 

*  Kirby the narrator, a friend of the professor's, putting on the box and a thermal suit, zooms up in size. At first he has to watch out lest he crush the professor, but soon he is beyond Earth, the solar system, and eventually beyond our universe, which is but an atomic particle in a larger universe. 

*  It is all fine, but when he wants to return from the macrocosm, he realizes that he could never find Earth again, and in any case it would have been gone for trillions of years. 

*  He is currently on a somewhat Earth-like planet, with intelligent beings with whom he can converse, though they are not described. 

*  Undeveloped, but interesting for perhaps being the first story to recognize the problem of time in expansion. 

*  A precocious author; the present work was written while he was a high school student. 

*  For a sequel, see #1712, "The Man from the Atom (Sequel)." 

369. THE THING FROM-"OUTSIDE." Amazing Stories, April 1926. Unsigned ill. The author's name is incorrectly given as George Allen England. (First published in Science and Invention, April 1923. Reprinted in Derleth, Strange Ports of Call, and in Colombo, Friendly Aliens.) Short story based in part on Charles Fort's The Book of the Damned and probably suggested by Algernon Blackwood's short story "The Willows." 

*  Place: Labrador. 

*  The vacationers are beset by something that burns frigidly cold circular prints into solid rock, into the ground, an axe, whatever it touches, and kills humans horribly. It has already killed their Indian guides. What is it? Jandron, a geologist, has heard of something like it and is convinced that it is a being far superior to mankind that is after human brains/minds. The thing, whatever it is, kills most of the expedition so that only Jandron and the young woman Vivian survive, she amnesiac. 

*  The creature must have a territory of some sort, for the part of Labrador through which they pass is completely desolate. 

*  Blackwood's story is better. 

541. THE MAN WHO SAVED THE EARTH. Amazing Stories, April 1926. 111. Paul. (First published All-Story, 13 December 1919. Reprinted in Amazing Stories Annual [1927]; in Famous Fantastic Mysteries, February 1940; and in Conklin, Best of Science Fiction.) Short story. 

*  World peril. 

*  Opalescent globes, presumably of pure force, appear in various places around the world and seemingly disintegrate large portions of the Earth around them. 

*  There is no defence against them, and the situation is bad. Indeed, one such globe in the Caribbean removes so much water that the Gulf Stream is diverted, with disastrous results. 

*  Only the eccentric Charles Huyck knows what is really happening. The globes are the instrumentality of the Martians, who are raiding Earth's resources, particularly water, to save their dying, desiccated world. Huyck creates an apparatus that draws force from the sun, disrupting the equipment on Mars. The peril is averted. Hall discourses briefly on the conflict between morality and necessity in such a raid. 

*  Padded and wandering. 

1144. THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAR. Amazing Stories, April 1926. 111. F. S. Hynd. (First published in the American Review, December 1845. First separate publication as Mesmerism. "In ArticuloMortis, "1846.) One of the most anthologized stories in fantastic fiction. It is sometimes reprinted under such variant titles as "M. Valdemar," "The Case of M. Valdemar," etc. Short story. 

*  The narrator, who is a mesmerist, places his dying friend Valdemar into a trance. Valdemar is dead, but, preserved from decay by the magnetic fluid, retains a sort of pseudolife, speaking and making slight movements in response to the mesmerist's passes and gestures. This continues for about seven months. Finally, the narrator decides to awaken Valdemar. And Valdemar dissolves into a mass of decay. 

*  A very effective story, of great historical influence in modern supernatural fiction, particularly in the work of H. P. Lovecraft and his school.