page:  = Super Science Stories = 
   
   Super Science Stories was an American pulp science fiction magazine published by Popular Publications from 1940 and 1943 , and again from 1949 to 1951 . Popular launched it under their " Fictioneers " imprint , which they used for magazines paying writers less than one cent per word . Frederik Pohl was hired in late 1939 , at 19 years old , to edit the magazine ; he also edited Astonishing Stories , a companion science fiction publication . Pohl left in mid @-@ 1941 , and Super Science Stories was given to Alden H. Norton to edit ; a few months later Norton rehired Pohl as an assistant . Popular gave Pohl a very low budget , so most manuscripts submitted to Super Science Stories had already been rejected by the higher @-@ paying magazines . This made it difficult to acquire good fiction , but Pohl was able to acquire stories for the early issues from the Futurians , a group of young science fiction fans and aspiring writers . 
   Super Science Stories was an initial success , and within a year Popular increased Pohl 's budget slightly , allowing him to pay a bonus rate on occasion . Pohl wrote many stories himself , to fill the magazine and to augment his salary . He managed to obtain stories by writers who subsequently became very well known , such as Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein . After Pohl entered the army in early 1943 , wartime paper shortages led Popular to cease publication of Super Science Stories . The final issue of the first run was dated May of that year . In 1949 the title was revived with Ejler Jakobsson as editor ; this version , which included many reprinted stories , lasted almost three years , with the last issue dated August 1951 . A Canadian reprint edition of the first run included material from both Super Science Stories and Astonishing Stories ; it was unusual in that it printed some original fiction rather than just reprints . There were also Canadian and British reprint editions of the second incarnation of the magazine . 
   The magazine was never regarded as one of the leading titles of the genre , but has received qualified praise from science fiction critics and historians . Science fiction historian Raymond Thompson describes it as " one of the most interesting magazines to appear during the 1940s " , despite the variable quality of the stories . Critics Brian Stableford and Peter Nicholls comment that the magazine " had a greater importance to the history of sf than the quality of its stories would suggest ; it was an important training ground " . 
   
   = = Publication history = = 
   
   Although science fiction ( sf ) had been published before the 1920s , it did not begin to coalesce into a separately marketed genre until the appearance in 1926 of Amazing Stories , a pulp magazine published by Hugo Gernsback . By the end of the 1930s the field was booming , and several new sf magazines were launched in 1939 . Frederik Pohl , a science fiction fan and aspiring writer , visited Robert Erisman , the editor of Marvel Science Stories and Dynamic Science Stories , to ask for a job . Erisman did not have an opening for him , but told Pohl that Popular Publications , a leading pulp publisher , was starting a new line of low @-@ paying magazines and might be interested in adding a science fiction title . On October 25 , 1939 , Pohl visited Rogers Terrill at Popular , and was hired immediately , at the age of nineteen , on a salary of ten dollars per week . Pohl was given two magazines to edit : Super Science Stories and Astonishing Stories . Super Science Stories was intended to carry longer pieces , and Astonishing focused on shorter fiction ; Super Science Stories was retitled Super Science Novels Magazine in March 1941 , reflecting this policy , but after only three issues the title was changed back to Super Science Stories . 
   Popular was uncertain of the sales potential for the two new titles and decided to publish them under its Fictioneers imprint , which was used for lower @-@ paying magazines . Super Science Stories ' first issue was dated March 1940 ; it was bimonthly , with Astonishing Stories appearing in the alternate months . In Pohl 's memoirs he recalls Harry Steeger , one of the company owners , breaking down the budget for Astonishing for him : " Two hundred seventy @-@ five dollars for stories . A hundred dollars for black and white art . Thirty dollars for a cover . " For Super Science Stories , Steeger gave him an additional $ 50 as it was 16 pages longer , so his total budget was $ 455 per issue . Pohl could only offer half a cent per word for fiction , well below the rates offered by the leading magazines . Super Science Stories sold well , despite Pohl 's limited resources : Popular was a major pulp publisher and had a strong distribution network , which helped circulation . Steeger soon increased Pohl 's budget , to pay bonuses for popular stories . Pohl later commented that he was uncertain whether the additional funds really helped to bring in higher quality submissions , although at the time he assured Steeger it would improve the magazine . Some of the additional money went to Ray Cummings , a long @-@ established sf writer who came to see Pohl in person to submit his work . Cummings refused to sell for less than one cent a word ; Pohl had some extra money available when Cummings first visited him , and though he disliked Cummings ' work was never able to bring himself to reject Cummings submissions , or even to tell him that he could not really afford to pay the rate Cummings was asking . Pohl comments in his memoirs that " for months he [ Cummings ] would turn up regularly as clockwork and sell me a new story ; I hated them all , and bought them all . " 
   By reducing the space he needed to fill with fiction Pohl managed to stretch his budget . A long letter column took up several pages but required no payment , and neither did running advertisements for Popular 's other magazines . Some authors sent inaccurate word counts with the stories they submitted , and savings were made by paying them on the basis of whichever word count was less — the author 's or one done by Popular 's staff . The result was a saving of forty to fifty dollars per issue . Snipped elements of black and white illustrations were also reused to fill space , as multiple uses of the same artwork did not require additional payments to the artist . 
   Towards the end of 1940 Popular doubled Pohl 's salary to twenty dollars per week . In June 1941 Pohl visited Steeger to ask for a further raise , intending to resign and work as a free @-@ lance writer if he was unsuccessful . Steeger was unreceptive , and Pohl commented later " I have never been sure whether I quit or got fired " . Instead of replacing Pohl , Popular assigned editor @-@ in @-@ chief Alden H. Norton to add the magazines to his responsibilities . The arrangement lasted for seven months , after which Norton asked Pohl to return as his assistant . Norton offered Pohl thirty @-@ five dollars a week as an associate editor , substantially more than the twenty dollars a week he had received as editor , and Pohl readily accepted . 
   Pohl was not eligible to be drafted for military service as he was married , but by the end of 1942 his marriage was over and he decided to enlist . As voluntary enlistment was suspended he was unable to immediately join the army , but eventually was inducted on April 1 , 1943 . Paper was difficult to obtain because of the war , and Popular decided to close the magazine down ; the final issue , dated April 1943 , was assembled with the assistance of Ejler Jakobsson . 
   In late 1948 , as a second boom in science fiction publishing was beginning , Popular decided to revive the magazine . Jakobsson later recalled hearing about the revival while on vacation , swimming in a lake , five miles from a phone : " A boy on a bicycle showed on shore and shouted , ' Call your office . ' " When he reached a phone , Norton told him that the magazine was being relaunched and would be given to Jakobsson to edit . Damon Knight , who was working for Popular at the time , also worked on the magazine as assistant editor , although he was not credited . The relaunched magazine survived for almost three years , but the market for pulps was weak , and when Knight left in 1950 to edit Worlds Beyond Jakobsson was unable to sustain support for it within Popular . It ceased publication with the August 1951 issue . 
   
   = = Contents and reception = = 
   
   Because of the low rates of pay , the stories submitted to Super Science Stories in its first year had generally already been rejected elsewhere . However , Pohl was a member of the Futurians , a group of science fiction fans that included Isaac Asimov , C.M. Kornbluth , Richard Wilson and Donald Wollheim ; the Futurians were eager to become professional writers and were eager to submit stories to Pohl . The Futurians were prolific ; in Pohl 's first year as an editor he bought a total of fifteen stories from them for the two magazines . Pohl contributed material himself , usually in collaboration with one or more of the Futurians . Particularly after his marriage to Doris Baumgardt in August 1940 , Pohl realized that his salary covered their apartment rent with almost no money left over , and began to augment his income by selling to himself as well as to other magazines . The first story Pohl ever published that was not a collaboration was " The Dweller in the Ice " , which appeared in the January 1941 Super Science Stories . All of the stories Pohl bought from himself were published under pseudonyms , though in fact Pohl used pseudonyms for everything he wrote until the 1950s . 
   The first issue , dated March 1940 , contained " Emergency Refueling " , James Blish 's first published story , two stories by John Russell Fearn ( one under the pseudonym " Thornton Ayre " ) , fiction by Frank Belknap Long , Ross Rocklynne , Raymond Gallun , Harl Vincent and Dean O 'Brien ; and a poem by Kornbluth , " The Song of the Rocket " , under the pseudonym " Gabriel Barclay " . Blish 's most notable contribution to the magazine was " Sunken Universe " , which appeared in the May 1942 issue under the pseudonym " Arthur Merlyn " . This later formed part of " Surface Tension " , one of Blish 's most popular stories . Other writers whose first story appeared in Super Science Stories include Ray Bradbury , Chad Oliver , and Wilson Tucker . Bradbury 's first sale , " Pendulum " , was bought by Norton , and appeared in the November 1941 issue ; Tucker 's writing career began with " Interstellar Way Station " in May 1941 , and Oliver 's " The Land of Lost Content " appeared in the November 1950 Super Science Stories . Asimov appeared four times in Super Science Stories , starting with " Robbie " , his first Robot story , under the title " Strange Playfellow " . 
   Although most stories submitted to Super Science Stories were rejects from the better @-@ paying markets such as Astounding Science Fiction , Pohl recalled in his memoirs that John W. Campbell , the editor of Astounding , would occasionally pass on a good story by a prolific author because he felt readers did not want to see the same authors in every issue . As a result , Pohl was able to print L. Sprague de Camp 's Genus Homo , in the March 1941 Super Science Stories , and Robert Heinlein 's " Let There Be Light " and " Lost Legacy " in the May 1940 and November 1941 issues : these were stories which , in Pohl 's opinion , " would have looked good anywhere " . Pohl also suggested that Campbell rejected some of Heinlein 's stories because they contained mild references to sex . A couple of readers did complain , with one disgusted letter writer commenting " If you are going to continue to print such pseudosophisticated , pre @-@ prep @-@ school tripe as " Let There Be Light " , you should change the name of the mag to Naughty Future Funnies " . 
   The second run of Super Science Stories included some fiction that had first appeared in the Canadian reprint edition , which outlasted the U.S. original and printed eleven stories that had been acquired but not printed by the time Popular shut Super Science Stories and Astonishing down in early 1943 . These included " The Black Sun Rises " by Henry Kuttner , " And Then – the Silence " , by Ray Bradbury , and " The Bounding Crown " by James Blish . From mid @-@ 1950 a reprint feature was established . This led to some reader complaints , with one correspondent pointing out that it was particularly galling to discover that Blish 's " Sunken Universe " , reprinted in the November 1950 issue , was a better story than the original material in the magazine . The magazine also reprinted stories from Famous Fantastic Mysteries , which Popular had acquired from Munsey Publishing in 1941 . 
   Some of the original stories were well @-@ received : for example , Ray Bradbury 's " The Impossible " , which appeared in the November 1949 issue , and was later included in Bradbury 's book The Martian Chronicles , is described by sf historian Raymond Thompson as a " haunting ... comment on man 's attempts to realize his conflicting hopes and dreams " . Thompson also comments positively on Poul Anderson 's early story " Terminal Quest " , in Super Science Stories 's final issue , dated August 1951 ; and on Arthur C. Clarke 's " Exile of the Eons " in the March 1950 issue . John D. MacDonald also contributed good material . 
   The book reviews in Super Science Stories were of a higher standard than elsewhere in the field , and historian Paul Carter regards Astonishing and Super Science Stories as the place where " book reviewing for the first time began to merit the term ' literary criticism ' " , adding that " it was in those magazines that the custom began of paying attention to science fiction on the stage and screen also " . The artwork was initially amateurish , and although it improved over the years , even the better artists such as Virgil Finlay and Lawrence Stevens continued to produce cliched depictions of half @-@ dressed women threatened by robots or aliens . H. R. van Dongen , later a prolific cover artist for Astounding , made his first science fiction art sale to Super Science Stories for the cover of the September 1950 issue . 
   Sf historian Mike Ashley regards Super Science Stories as marginally better than its companion magazine , Astonishing , adding " both are a testament to what a good editor can do with a poor budget " . According to sf critics Brian Stableford and Peter Nicholls , the magazine " had a greater importance to the history of sf than the quality of its stories would suggest ; it was an important training ground " . 
   
   = = Bibliographic details = = 
   
   The first run of Super Science Stories was edited by Frederik Pohl from March 1940 through August 1941 ( nine issues ) , and then by Alden H. Norton from November 1941 through May 1943 ( seven issues ) . Ejler Jakobsson was the editor throughout the second run , from January 1949 to August 1951 . The publisher was Popular Publications for both versions , although the first was issued under Popular 's Fictioneers imprint . It was pulp @-@ sized throughout both runs . At launch the magazine had 128 pages and was priced at 15 cents ; the price increased to 20 cents when it went to 144 pages in March 1941 , and again to 25 cents for the May 1943 issue , which had 128 pages again . The second run was priced at 25 cents throughout and had 112 pages . The title was Super Science Stories for both runs except for three issues from March to August 1941 , which were titled Super Science Novels Magazine . The volume numbering was completely regular , with seven volumes of four numbers and a final volume of three numbers . It was bimonthly for the first eight issues , from March 1940 to May 1941 , and then went to a regular quarterly schedule . 
   
   = = = Canadian and British editions = = = 
   
   In 1940 , as part of the War Exchange Conservation Act , Canada banned the import of pulp magazines . Popular launched a Canadian edition of Astonishing Stories in January 1942 , which lasted for three bimonthly issues and reprinted two issues of Astonishing and one issue of Super Science Stories . With the August 1942 issue the name was changed to Super Science Stories , and the numeration was begun again at volume 1 number 1 ; as a result the magazine is usually listed by bibliographers as a separate publication from the Canadian Astonishing , but in many respects it was a direct continuation . The price was 15 cents throughout ; it lasted for 21 regular bimonthly issues in a single volume ; the last issue was dated December 1945 . It was published by Popular Publications ' Toronto branch , and the editor was listed as Alden H. Norton . 
   Each issue of the Canadian edition corresponded to one issue of either Astonishing or Super Science : for example , the first two Canadian issues drew their contents from the February 1942 Super Science Stories and the June 1942 Astonishing , respectively . This pattern continued for ten issues . The next issue , dated April 1944 , contained several reprints from the US editions , but also included two original stories that had not appeared anywhere before — these had been acquired for the US magazine and remained in inventory . A total of eleven of these original stories appeared in the Canadian Super Science Stories . Later issues of the magazine also saw many reprints from Famous Fantastic Mysteries ; in tacit acknowledgement of the new source of material , the title was changed to Super Science and Fantastic Stories from the December 1944 issue . The artwork was mostly taken from Popular 's US magazines but some new art appeared , probably by Canadian artists . There was no other Canadian presence : the letters page , for example , contained letters from the US edition . 
   In 1949 , when the second run of the US Super Science Stories began , another Canadian edition appeared , but this was identical in content to the US version . Two British reprint editions of the second run also appeared , starting in October 1949 . The first was published by Thorpe & Porter ; the issues , which were not dated or numbered , appeared in October 1949 and February and June 1950 . The contents were drawn from the US issues dated January 1949 , November 1949 , and January 1950 respectively ; each was 96 pages and was priced at 1 / - . The second reprint edition was published by Pemberton 's ; these were 64 pages and again were undated and were priced at 1 / - . 
   The British issues are abridged versions of US issues from both the first and second series . The titles corresponded to the titles on the US magazine from which the stories were taken , so all were titled Super Science Stories except for the April 1953 issue , which was titled Super Science Novels Magazine . 
   
   