Almost in time for the Holidays: The BEST of Amazing Stories 1940

Our partners in pulpdom – FuturesPastEditions – have labored mightily to get this book out in time for both the holiday season and the 2016 Retro Hugo Awards.

Each and every work within the pages of this massive volume is eligible for consideration for a Retro Hugo Award.

Featuring a kicking cover by Robert Fuqua, illustrating Eando Binder’s Adam Link Fights a War. (Adam Link was featured in not one, but TWO Outer Limits episodes and, historically interesting, is the first robot character to appear under the title I, Robot. (Ike’s publisher’s would borrow that title a few years later for a small collection of short stories….), The Best of Amazing Stories, The 1940 Anthology brings you four short stories, five novelettes and a novella.

From the introduction:

You will see all these elements on display in the stories reprinted here, which we believe are among the most outstanding Palmer published in Amazing during 1940. Guiding our selections are what we feel are three key signifiers of quality: 1) reader reaction as reflected in the magazine’s letter columns, 2) a story having been deemed worthy of reprint by the field’s most able anthologists (Groff Conklin, Philip Strong, Isaac Asimov, Damon Knight, Martin Greenberg, et al), and 3) our own personal reading of all twelve issues published that year.
The gem of the year, a novelette which still enjoys classic status today, was undoubtedly “The Voyage that Lasted 600 Years,” the first story ever set on board a ship making a generations-long voyage to a distant star. Once again Amazing was in the lead with a cornerstone sf idea that remains a vital part of the field to this day (beating out Robert A. Heinlein’s “Universe,” which is often misremembered as the first use of a generation starship, by a full year).

This volume of stories culled from the 12 issues of 1940 come with a bonus – reproductions of the original illustrations accompanying the stories. Included in this volume are stories by –

Don Wilcox – The Voyage That Lasted 600 Years (novelette)
David Wright O’Brien – Truth is a Plague (novelette)
Ralph Milne Farley – The Living Mist (novelette)
A. W. Bernal – Paul Revere and the Time Machine (novelette)
Malcolm Jameson – Monster Out of Space (novelette)
Nelson S. Bond – Sons of the Deluge (novella)
Ed Earl Repp – The Day Time Stopped Moving (short story)
Ross Rocklynne – The Mathematical Kid (short story)
Richard O. Lewis – The Strange Voyage of Dr. Penwing (short story)
Donald Bern – The Three Wise Men of Space (short story)
with interior illustrations by Frank R. Paul, Julian S. Krupa and H. R. Hammond

And please note our pro forma anti-slate statement:

This special 1940 Retro-Hugo edition of The Best of Amazing Stories is not intended to tell World Science Fiction Convention members who or what to vote for (or not to vote for). At the same time it is not possible for most readers to obtain copies of all the science fiction stories and novels published during 1940 or even those classics that might be ranked among the best. Unfortunately, many of the latter are not in print, and those that are are scattered widely among many different anthologies and not easy to assemble. In fact, the best collection of such stories is undoubtedly Isaac Asimov’s and Martin H. Greenberg’s Isaac Asimov’s The Great SF Stories 2: 1940 (DAW 1979), a paperback which can be found from used book sellers and which we highly recommend.
Hence, we offer this present book in the hope that it may help contemporary readers become more informed about, at least, some of the better science fiction of the year 1940.

All for a special, reduced introductory price!

History, some rip-roaring fiction straight from the pages of 1940 and a chance to catch up on your 1940 reads, all in one sweet volume!

This new volume in FuturesPast Editions Amazing Stories Classics series can be purchased here. And don’t forget our other volumes in the series The Best of 1926, The Best of 1927, the May 1944 facsimile issue, Seeds of Life novel by John Taine, our 88th Anniversary issue and the Giant 35th Anniversary issue reproduction (print and Kindle as soon as we can convince Amazon to re-list it).