Is –
Amazing Science Stories, published in the UK in 1951 –
a brief, “unremarkable”, over-sized, uncredited and wholly forgettable magazine, were it not for its title.
One of the early SF magazines published in Australia was titled Thrills Incorporated.
Thrills (#1 not yet in the collection) was primarily targeted at the (now called) YA market and plagued by plagiarism early on (including a pirated version of Bradbury’s Marionettes, Inc), but that’s not why we’re here.
Amazing Science Stories was largely comprised of reprints from the unacknowledged reprint magazine Thrills Incorporated, making it an unremarkable reprinter of reprints. It also contained some reprints from the British edition of Super Science Stories.
Unfortunately, both the artist(s) and the editor of this magazine are uncredited, but we can remark on its size and on its title.
Size wise, Amazing SS is a “bedsheet” pulp or just about US letter size. Name wise, this title is not associated with Amazing Stories or Amazing Science Fiction in any way – not historically, not tangentially, not “Libre Familias”, to use probably bad Latin.
I don’t think that Ziff-Davis had a current trademark for the name at the time (1951). Whether or not this variation would have been deemed infringing is debatable, though I personally lean in the direction of yes, it is. (Confusion in the marketplace….)
Now its just an historical relic. (And no, it has not escaped me what this magazine’s catalog abbreviation would be.)
(And I just figured out what tomorrow’s entry will be. It’s an oldie, but a goodie, and ties directly into a big historical thing that has affected and still (to some degree) still affects the genre to this day.
