2. Wright began using this exact language for framing and advertising the magazine on the first page of the February 1928 issue, and McIlwraith continued to use it in advertising copy into the 1940s. For further discussion of the editorial visions and story types associated with Weird Tales, see Michael Ashley’s The History of the Science Fiction Magazine, Vol. 1: 1926–1935. For an overview of the surprisingly close relations between science fiction and weird fiction in the first part of the twentieth century, see chapter 1 of David Hartwell’s Age of Wonders and Roger Luckhurst’s Science Fiction.

  3. For further discussion of the thought-variant tale, especially as it anticipates the science fictional themes and techniques advocated by midcentury editor John W. Campbell, see Westfahl’s The Mechanics of Wonder.

  4. For in-depth discussion of the home in the domestic Gothic, see Donna Heiland’s Gothic and Gender; Kate Ferguson Ellis’s The Contested Castle; and Elizabeth A. Fay’s A Feminist Introduction to Romanticism. Additionally, Nancy Armstrong’s Desire and Domestic Fiction provides an excellent overview of the close relations between the female Gothic and domestic fiction. For an assessment of domestic reform in women’s utopian SF, see chapter 1 of Jane Donawerth’s Frankenstein’s Daughters and for an overview of domestic science fiction as a distinct mode of SF unto itself, see Lisa Yaszek’s “A Parabola of Her Own: Domestic Science Fiction.”

  5. For a detailed discussion of how women SF writers use male narrators, see chapter 1 of Robin Roberts’s A New Species and chapter 3 of Jane Donawerth’s Frankenstein’s Daughters.

  6. In 1886 Smith constructed “the nation’s first building dedicated to women’s scientific studies and experimentation,” and in 1905 the college received funds from Andrew Carnegie to create a second such building (Hamlin 63–64). Harris therefore studied science in what were likely the best scientific facilities available for women in the country at the time.

  7. Harris won 100 dollars for third prize, which worked out to “1.21 cents a word,” quite a large payment from any early genre magazine editor (Ashley and Lowndes 130).

  8. For further discussion of Stone’s fiction as it engages the scientific and social debates of its time, see Batya Weinbaum’s “Twentieth-Century American Women’s Progress and the Lack Thereof in Leslie F. Stone’s ‘Out of the Void.’”

  9. For further discussion of Hansen’s gender masquerade as stemming from her desire to follow new literary conventions, see Jane Donawerth’s Frankenstein’s Daughters. For further discussion of Hansen as an author who wished to keep her various professional identities distinct from one another, see Eric Leif Davin’s Partners in Wonder.

  10. It is also worth noting that Hansen was not entirely alone in her experiments with new representations of the alien other. Both Stanley G. Weinbaum’s 1934 short story “A Martian Odyssey” and Leslie F. Stone’s “Out of the Void” (reprinted in this anthology) depict aliens as potentially friendly and potentially wiser, in at least some respects, than their human counterparts.

  11. For further reading on comic SF, see Andrew Butler’s entry on comedy in The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy.

  12. For details regarding the ban on Futurians at the 1939 WorldCon, see Andrew Liptak’s “The Futurians and the 1939 World Science Fiction Convention.”

  13. See Justine Larbalestier’s Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction for a full discussion of these debates among authors, editors, and fans.

  2. POETS

  1. For further discussion of nineteenth-century fantastic poetry, see Patrick D. Murphy’s essay “The Fantastic Experience in Poetry: Or, the Monsters Are There, Where Are the Critics?”, as well as the introduction to his edited collection, The Poetic Fantastic.

  2. The one professional magazine that did not feature speculative verse was Astounding under John W. Campbell’s editorship. Since he did buy poems for the fantasy magazine Unknown, it seems this decision was driven by Campbell’s desire to create a new kind of “no-nonsense” SF publication (Green xv). Indeed, after World War II many other genre magazine editors decided to emulate the feel of Astounding and eliminated poetry from their pages as well (Green xv).

  3. The poet who appeared most frequently in the Amazing franchise in its opening decades was amateur astronomer Leland S. Copeland, who created Sky & Telescope magazine’s “Deep-Sky Wonders” column. Green ties for second place with SF author Bob Olsen.

  4. The kind of light but thoughtful SF verse that Green wrote for the Amazing franchise in the opening decades of the twentieth century is very much with us today, appearing especially frequently in Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine. For a short but incisive explanation of why seemingly old-fashioned light verse continues to appeal to SF readers, see Isaac Asimov’s “Editorial: Poetry.”

  5. For further discussion of modern feminist SF poetry, see Diedre Bryne’s “What Is Not Owned,” as well as Patrick D. Murphy’s foreword to The Poetic Fantastic (and his essay in that volume, “The Left Hand of Fabulation: The Poetry of Ursula K. Le Guin”).

  6. The Milford Writers Workshop originally took place in Milford, Pennsylvania, where Kidd and Blish were living at the time. After the couple divorced, Blish moved to England and took the workshop with him.

  7. For further information about Drake’s life and work, including facsimiles of her most famous poems, see Terence E. Hanley’s biography on the Teller of Weird Tales blog.

  8. When Eyde began to receive awards for her pioneering work in lesbian journalism, she was quick to note how the production of SF fanzines shaped the creation of her own publication and to credit her friend Forrest J Ackerman for his contributions. For further discussion, see the ZineWiki entry “Eydthe Eyde” and Andy Mangels’s “Why Is the Passing of Forrest J Ackerman of GLBT Importance?”

  9. At that time, Eyde also returned to her musical roots, performing in local gay clubs and, in 1960, releasing an original single called “Cruisin’ Down the Boulevard” (the flip side featured a lesbian version of “Frankie and Johnnie”).

  3. JOURNALISTS

  1. While Wells was one of the first writers to argue that scientific information should be presented in an entertaining way, he was not alone in this belief. Many turn-of-the-century reporters had literary aspirations and so experimented with news writing that combined fact and story. For further discussion, see Karen Roggenkamp’s Narrating the News and Derek John Dreidger’s “Writing and Circulating Modern America.”

  2. Women who went to science demonstrations in the Enlightenment often wrote about their experiences for one another. By the end of the nineteenth century, that audience had expanded to include children and men, and the popularity of female science writers rivaled that of male scientists themselves. For further discussion, see Barbara T. Gates and Anne B. Shteir’s introduction to Natural Eloquence.

  3. For an excellent discussion of women reporters at the turn of the century, see Jean Marie Lutes’s Front Page Girls.

  4. The three most prolific male science writers for Amazing and Fantastic Adventures were A. Morris (with eighty-four articles published between 1942 and 1951); Pete Bogg (with seventy-three articles published between 1944 and 1947); and Carter T. Wainwright (with forty-eight articles published between 1942 and 1948). All numbers included here are based on our count of entries in the Locus Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Weird Fiction Magazine Index.

  5. Evidence suggesting that the Laura Moore Wright who published the 1946 science essay “Sunlight” in Amazing Stories was indeed the Canadian Laura Moore Wright who wrote Victory Verses (1942), The Song of Roland (1960), and Campaigns of Napoleon (1963) is tentative at best. The University of Calgary’s Canadian Literary and Art Archives includes a 1944 letter from one Laura Moore Wright to the Western Producer editor Violet McNaughton regarding the editor’s possible interest in two of her poems (“Wright, Laura Moore”). Given the temporal proximity of this inquiry to the publication of “Sunlight,” it is entirely possible that the two Laura Moore Wrights were one and the same. However, Canadian census records have two Laura M. Wrights on their midcentury registered voter lists, and U.S. Census data list dozens of Laura Moores and Laura M. Wrights whose birth dates suggest that any one of them could be the Laura Moore Wright under consideration here.

  6. In the final few years of her column, Hansen expanded her argument to suggest that Indigenous Americans were also the last remnants of a great civilization based on the lost city of Atlantis. Significantly, her argument turned from debate over scientific theory to exploration of scientific mystery around the same time that editor Ray Palmer began publishing the wildly successful Shaver Mystery, a series of stories based on letters from Pennsylvania factory worker Richard Shaver, who claimed to have discovered an ancient, evil, and technologically advanced civilization in caverns under the Earth.

  4. EDITORS

  1. As Dillane explains, even those rare midcentury Victorian women who worked at literary periodicals—such as Marian Evans, better known to literary history as George Eliot—adopted the persona of the facilitator. For further discussion, see Dillane’s “‘The Character of Editress.’”

  2. Women editors continued to adopt the role of the facilitator even as women’s magazines diversified their content and attitudes toward sex and gender roles at the turn of the century. For further discussion, see Beth Palmer’s “Ella Hepworth Dixon and Editorship.”

  3. See chapters 11 and 14 of Mike Ashley and Robert A. W. Lowndes’s The Gernsback Days for a detailed discussion of the early days at Amazing Stories and excerpts from the letters Bourne wrote to authors during her time at the magazine.

  4. For a discussion of Tarrant, see Frederik Pohl’s “Astounding: The Campbell Years, Riding High.”

  5. For further discussion of Gernsback’s, Sloane’s, and Bates’s relationship to readers, see Gary Westfahl’s The Mechanics of Wonder. For further discussion of Wright’s arguments about weird fiction, see Robert Weinberg’s The “Weird Tales” Story and Michael Ashley’s The History of the Science Fiction Magazine, Vol. 1: 1926–1935.

  6. For further discussion of Gnaedinger’s commitment to printing SF stories by women, see chapters 6 and 11 of Eric Leif Davin’s Partners in Wonder.

  7. Indeed, as a number of authors from this period recall, it was precisely McIlwraith’s willingness to strike out in new directions that enabled Weird Tales to continue publishing until the mid-1950s, despite low pay for authors and an increasingly erratic publishing schedule. For further discussion, see Graeme Flanagan’s Robert Bloch and Darrell Schweitzer’s “What about Dorothy McIlwraith?”

  8. For further discussion of Gernsback’s, Sloane’s, and Bates’s pronouncements about SF, see Gary Westfahl’s The Mechanics of Wonder. For further discussion of Wright’s arguments about weird fiction, see Robert Weinberg’s The “Weird Tales” Story and Michael Ashley’s The History of the Science Fiction Magazine, Vol. 1: 1926–1935.

  9. Elsewhere, Lorraine did indeed make bold pronouncements about the meaning and value of SF. See in particular her 1954 essay “Not an Escape but a Challenge,” published in Miscellaneous Man.

  10. See chapter 4 of Mike Ashley, The Time Machines.

  11. For discussion of Gnaedinger’s commitment to printing SF stories by women, see chapters 6 and 11 of Eric Leif Davin’s Partners in Wonder.

  12. See Robert Weinberg’s history of Weird Tales in the first chapter of The “Weird Tales” Story.

  13. See Robert Weinberg’s discussion of the cover art of Weird Tales in chapter 6 of The “Weird Tales” Story (1977).

  5. ARTISTS

  1. See chapter 4 of Justine Larbalestier’s The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction for a discussion of gender and art in the letters pages of SF magazines.

  2. For an excellent discussion of how SF art from this period influenced later feminist SF authors, see chapter 2 of Robin Roberts’s A New Species. See also Rowena Morrill’s homage to Brundage in the foreword to Stephen D. Korshak and J. David Spurlock’s The Alluring Art of Margaret Brundage, Queen of Pulp Pin-Up Art.

  3. For a detailed discussion of women in the fashion industry during this period, see Valerie Steele’s Women of Fashion and Isabelle Anscombe’s A Woman’s Touch.

  4. For a discussion of gender in the marketing of early magazines, see the introduction to Robert Weinberg’s Biographical Dictionary of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists. For a discussion of the early days of the Black Cat, see the first chapter of Mike Ashley’s The Time Machines.

  5. See Cally Blackman’s 100 Years of Fashion Illustration for a discussion of art in the early fashion magazines for women.

  6. For a more detailed discussion of “yellow peril” and “black peril” stories, see H. Bruce Franklin’s War Stars and Patrick B. Sharp’s Savage Perils.

  7. At least one male illustrator from the early SF community, Frank R. Paul, contested the assumption that women were better than men at figural representation. As he explained in a 1934 interview, he was often accused of mangling the human figure, but “the story usually mentions that the scientist is a humpback, or has a strongly developed forehead, so I draw them that way…. What do readers want, a gigolo?” (qtd. in Schwartz 72). For Paul, then, the issue was not that he could not draw scientists (or, presumably, other people including women), but that the stories he illustrated dictated that he take liberties with the conventional human form.

  8. Quick’s “Strange Orchids” is reprinted in chapter 1, “Authors,” of this anthology.

  9. The female Gothic also shows the transformation of the female protagonist from victim to heroine, a trajectory that is followed in Quick’s story when the main character, Louise Howard, goes undercover for the authorities to unmask the story’s predatory villain.

  10. For an excellent discussion of how SF art from this period influenced later feminist SF authors, see chapter 2 of Robin Roberts’s A New Species.

  11. See the entry on Morrill in Jane Frank’s Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists of the Twentieth Century.

  12. See Morrill’s homage to Brundage in the foreword to Stephen D. Korshak and J. David Spurlock’s The Alluring Art of Margaret Brundage. Also see editor Paula Guran’s article, “Our Queen, Our Mother, Our Margaret,” from the Summer 2010 issue of Weird Tales.

  13. See the entry on Bell in Jane Frank’s Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists of the Twentieth Century.

  14. See Cally Blackman’s 100 Years of Fashion Illustration for a discussion of art in the early fashion magazines for women.

  CONCLUSION: CHALLENGING THE NARRATIVE

  1. While it might seem strange to compare Red Sonja and Barbie, it is also appropriate, in that the iconic toy eventually did make her way into the SFWA debacle. SFWA Bulletin 201 features “Taxes and the Short Story Writer” by Tom Knowles, “Those Who Can, Teach” by Gregory A. Wilson, and an article titled “Reinventing the Wheelhouse” by C. J. Henderson, who has written seventy novels, hundreds of short stories, and thousands of nonfiction pieces in his forty-year career. He discusses the ways in which he reinvented himself during those decades to take advantage of changes in publishing, technology, and the market—certainly a necessary mindset for a writer. Toward the end of his piece, Henderson takes what seems, in hindsight, a tack that he has not thoroughly thought out. Using the history of the Barbie doll as an analogy, he writes that though she was first marketed as a fashion queen, she changed with the times and became a teacher, nurse, superhero, doctor, and astronaut. He then claims that Barbie’s success (characterizing her as a person rather than a toy) lies in the fact that she

  never abandoned her core values. Yes, Barbie has always been long-legged and tiny-waisted, perfectly proportioned in every way with dazzling blue eyes, terrific hair and, oh right, quite the pair of sweater-fillers as well. But that is not who she is inside.

  The reason for Barbie’s unbelievable staying power, when every contemporary and wanna-be has fallen by the wayside[,] is, she’s a nice girl. Let the Bratz girls dress like tramps and whores. Barbie never had any of that. Sure, there was a quick buck to be made going that route, but it wasn’t for her. Barbie got her college degree, but she never acted as if it was something owed to her, or that Ken ever tried to deny her.

  She has always been a role model for young girls, and has remained popular with millions of them throughout their entire lives, because she maintained her quiet dignity the way a woman should. (42)

  What conclusions might we draw from this analogy? That dolls are people and have core values? That good-looking women always ponder the option of becoming prostitutes? That when women demand education they lose their all-important “quiet dignity”? That the image of women in the 1950s is still strongly manifest in the lives of millions of women today? That giving Barbie to little girls who will never grow up to look like this, but who may consequently starve themselves or undergo surgery to more closely resemble the doll, is a good thing?

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Aldiss, Brian. Science Fiction Art: The Fantasies of SF. New York: Bounty, 1975.

  Anscombe, Isabelle. A Woman’s Touch: Women in Design from 1860 to the Present Day. New York: Penguin, 1985.

  Armstrong, Nancy. Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

  Ashley, Michael. The History of the Science Fiction Magazine, Vol. 1: 1926–1935 [1974]. Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1976.

  Ashley, Mike. Gateways to Forever: The Story of the Science-Fiction Magazines from 1970 to 1980. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007.

  ———. The Time Machines: The Story of the Pulp Science Fiction Magazines from the Beginning to 1950. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2001.

  Ashley, Mike, and Robert A. W. Lowndes. The Gernsback Days: A Study of the Evolution of Modern Science Fiction from 1911 to 1936. Holicong, PA: Wildside Press, 2004.

  Asimov, Isaac, ed. Before the Golden Age: A Science Fiction Anthology of the 1930s. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1974.