Wonder Stories - Contents and Reception

Contents and Reception

When Air Wonder Stories was launched in the middle of 1929 there were already pulp magazines such as Sky Birds and Flying Aces which focused on aerial adventures. Gernsback's first editorial dismissed these as being of the "purely 'Wild West'-world war adventure-sky busting type". By contrast, Gernsback said he planned to fill Air Wonder solely with "flying stories of the future, strictly along scientific-mechanical-technical lines, full of adventure, exploration and achievement." Non-fiction material on aviation was printed, including quizzes, short popular articles, and book reviews. The letters column made it clear that the readership comprised more science fiction fans than aviation fans, and Gernsback later commented that the overlap with Science Wonder readers was 90% (a figure that presumably referred only to the subscription base, not to newsstand sales).

Gernsback frequently ran reader contests, one of which, announced in the February 1930 issue of Air Wonder Stories, asked for a slogan for the magazine. John Wyndham, later to become famous as the author of The Day of the Triffids, won with "Future Flying Fiction", submitted under his real name of John Beynon Harris. Later that year a contest in Science Wonder Quarterly asked readers for an answer to the question "What I Have Done to Spread Science Fiction". The winner was Raymond Palmer who later became editor of Gernsback's original magazine, Amazing Stories. He won the contest for his role in founding a "Science Correspondence Club".

Science Wonder's first issue included the first part of a serial, The Reign of the Ray, by Fletcher Pratt and Irwin Lester, and short stories by Stanton Coblentz and David H. Keller. Air Wonder began with a reprinted serial, Victor MacClure's Ark of the Covenant. Writers who first appeared in the pages of these magazines include Neil R. Jones, Ed Earl Repp, Raymond Z. Gallun and Lloyd Eshbach. The quality of published science fiction at the time was generally low, and Lasser was keen to improve it. On 11 May 1931 he wrote to his regular contributors to tell them that their science fiction stories "should deal realistically with the effect upon people, individually and in groups, of a scientific invention or discovery. ... In other words, allow yourself one fundamental assumption—that a certain machine or discovery is possible—and then show what would be its logical and dramatic consequences upon the world; also what would be the effect upon the group of characters that you pick to carry your theme."