Amazing Stories, Vol. 1 No. 4

# Museum Catalog Note: Amazing Stories, [Date from OCR unclear]

This issue features the opening installment of "Station X," a science fiction serial depicting espionage and international intrigue. The story concerns Alan Macrae, a man hired for a mysterious six-month posting at an unidentified foreign radio station, sworn to complete secrecy about his location and duties. Macrae is preoccupied by premonitions of danger, which he discusses with his fiancée May Treherne on Plymouth Hoe before his departure. The narrative emphasizes Macrae's inexplicable dread despite having no concrete information about the position's hazards.

The editor's essay "Fiction Versus Facts" by Hugo Gernsback defends the magazine's selection criteria, asserting that scientifiction stories should remain plausible rather than purely fantastical. Gernsback cites Jules Verne's "A Trip to the Center of the Earth" as an example of otherwise scientifically sound narrative marred by an improbable conclusion, and quotes author G. Peyton Wertenbaker on scientifiction's literary and imaginative value. The editor promotes an ideal ratio of seventy-five percent literature to twenty-five percent science in scientifiction stories.