Editing Hugo Gernsback (section)

==Science fiction==
[[File:Amazing stories 192802.jpg|thumb|Gernsback's second novel, ''Baron Münchausen's Scientific Adventures'', was serialized in ''Amazing'' in 1928, with the opening installment taking the February cover.]]
[[File:Science fiction plus 195303 v1 n1.jpg|thumb|Gernsback's short story "The Cosmatomic Flyer", under the byline "Greno Gashbuck," was cover-featured in the debut issue of Gernsback's ''[[Science-Fiction Plus]]'' in 1953.]]

Gernsback provided a forum for the modern genre of science fiction in 1926 by founding the first magazine dedicated to it, ''[[Amazing Stories]]''. The inaugural April issue comprised a one-page editorial and reissues of six stories, three less than ten years old and three by [[Edgar Allan Poe|Poe]], [[Jules Verne|Verne]], and [[H. G. Wells|Wells]].<ref name=isfdb/>{{efn|The first eight monthly issues included installments of at least one Verne story and for more than two years every one featured a Wells story.<ref name=isfdb/>}} He said he became interested in the concept after reading a translation of the work of [[Percival Lowell]] as a child. His idea of a perfect science fiction story was "75 percent literature interwoven with 25 percent science".<ref name=gunn>{{cite book | last= Gunn| first= James| year=2002 | title=The Road to Science Fiction: From Wells to Heinlein | publisher=Scarecrow Press | isbn=978-0810844391 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Gr0Ziaz2V5kC&q=%2275+percent+literature+interwoven+with+25+percent+science%22&pg=PR20}}</ref> As an editor, he valued the goal of scientific accuracy in science fiction stories: "Not only did Gernsback establish a panel of experts——all reputable professionals from universities, museums, and institutes—to pass judgment on the accuracy of the science; he also encouraged his writers to elaborate on the scientific details they employed in their stories, comment on the impossibilities in each other's stories, and even offered his readers prize money for identifying scientific errors."<ref name="Getting Out of the Gernsback Continuum">{{cite journal |last1=Ross |first1=Andrew |title=Getting Out of the Gernsback Continuum |journal=Critical Inquiry |date=1991 |volume=17 |issue=2 |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/1343843 |access-date=May 6, 2024}}</ref>  He also played an important role in starting [[science fiction fandom]], by organizing the [[Science Fiction League]]<ref name="pohl196712">{{Cite magazine
 |last=Pohl
 |first=Frederik
 |date=December 1967
 |title=On Hugos
 |url=https://archive.org/stream/Galaxy_v26n02_1967-12_modified#page/n5/mode/2up
 |magazine=Galaxy Science Fiction
 |pages=6, 8
}}</ref> and by publishing the addresses of people who wrote letters to his magazines. Fans began to organize, and became aware of themselves as a movement, a social force; this was probably decisive for the subsequent history of the genre.

Gernsback created his preferred term for the emerging genre, "scientifiction", in 1916.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://sfdictionary.com/view/104/scientifiction | title=Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction: Scientifiction }}</ref> He is sometimes also credited with coining "science fiction" in 1929 in the preface of the first ''Science Wonder Stories'',<ref name="Latham">{{cite book |last1=Latham |first1=Rob |title=The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction |date=2014 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=9780199838844 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=D44dBAAAQBAJ&q=Hugo+Gernsback+coined+the+term&pg=PA105 |quote=...that term - and the separation anxiety it caused - appeared in the twentieth century when Hugo Gernsback coined the term in 1929 in his magazine ''Science Wonder Stories''.}}</ref><ref name=gunn /> although instances of "science-fiction" (mostly, but not always, hyphenated) have been found as far back as 1851,<ref>{{cite web | url=https://sfdictionary.com/view/209/science-fiction | title=Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction: Science fiction }}</ref> and the preface itself makes no mention of it being a new term.

In 1929, he [[Experimenter Publishing#Bankruptcy|lost ownership of his first magazines]] after a bankruptcy lawsuit. There is some debate about whether this process was genuine, manipulation by publisher [[Bernarr Macfadden]], or a Gernsback scheme to begin another company.{{citation needed|date=January 2017}} After losing control of ''Amazing Stories'', Gernsback founded two new science fiction magazines, ''Science Wonder Stories'' and ''Air Wonder Stories''. A year later, due to Depression-era financial troubles, the two were merged into ''[[Wonder Stories]]'', which Gernsback continued to publish until 1936, when it was sold to [[Thrilling Publications]] and renamed ''Thrilling Wonder Stories''. Gernsback returned in 1952–53 with ''[[Science-Fiction Plus]]''.

Gernsback was noted for sharp, sometimes shady,<ref>{{cite book| title= Science-Fiction, The Early Years | url= https://archive.org/details/sciencefictionea0000blei | url-access= registration | first= Everett F. |last= Bleiler |publisher= Kent State University Press |year= 1990 | page= [https://archive.org/details/sciencefictionea0000blei/page/282 282]| isbn= 9780873384162 }}</ref> business practices,<ref>{{cite book| title= Lovecraft: a Biography | url= https://archive.org/details/lovecraftbiog00deca | url-access= registration | first= L. Sprague |last=De Camp | publisher= Doubleday| isbn= 0385005784 | year= 1975}}</ref> and for paying his writers extremely low fees<ref>{{cite journal | last = Banks | first = Michael A. | title = Hugo Gernsback: The man who invented the future. Part 3. Merging science fiction into science fact | journal= The Citizen Scientist| publisher = Society for Amateur Scientists | date = October 1, 2004 | archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20110226124923/http://www.sas.org/tcs/weeklyIssues/2004-10-01/feature1/index.html |archive-date= February 26, 2011| url = http://www.sas.org/tcs/weeklyIssues/2004-10-01/feature1/index.html | access-date = February 13, 2007 }}</ref> or not paying them at all.<ref>{{cite book| title=The Gernsback Days| first1= Mike |last1= Ashley |first2=Michael |last2= Ashley |first3= Robert A. W. |last3= Lowndes |publisher= Wildside Press LLC |year= 2004 |page= 241}}</ref> [[H. P. Lovecraft]] and [[Clark Ashton Smith]] referred to him as "Hugo the Rat".<ref>{{cite book| title= Lovecraft: a Biography | url= https://archive.org/details/lovecraftbiog00deca | url-access= registration | first= L. Sprague |last=De Camp |page= [https://archive.org/details/lovecraftbiog00deca/page/298 298] | publisher= Doubleday| isbn= 0385005784 | year= 1975}}</ref>

[[Barry N. Malzberg|Barry Malzberg]] has said:

<blockquote>Gernsback's venality and corruption, his sleaziness and his utter disregard for the financial rights of authors, have been well documented and discussed in critical and fan literature. That the founder of genre science fiction who gave his name to the field's most prestigious award and who was the Guest of Honor at the [[10th World Science Fiction Convention|1952 Worldcon]] was pretty much a crook (and a contemptuous crook who stiffed his writers but paid himself $100K a year as President of Gernsback Publications) has been clearly established.<ref>{{cite journal| title=Resnick and Malzberg Dialogues XXXXVI: The Prozines (Part 1) |first1= Mike |last1= Resnick |first2= Barry |last2= Malzberg |journal= The SFWA Bulletin |date=  December 2009 – January 2010 |volume = 43 |number= 5 | pages= 27–28}}</ref> </blockquote>

[[Jack Williamson]], who had to hire an attorney associated with the American Fiction Guild to force Gernsback to pay him, summed up his importance for the genre:

<blockquote>At any rate, his main influence in the field was simply to start Amazing and Wonder Stories and get SF out to the public newsstands—and to name the genre he had earlier called "scientifiction."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/interviews/williamson54interview.htm|first1=Larry |last1=McCaffery |title=An Interview with Jack Williamson|publisher=DePauw University |work=Science Fiction Studies |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231115050734/https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/interviews/williamson54interview.htm |archive-date= Nov 15, 2023 }}</ref></blockquote>