Amazing Stories, Vol. 1, No. 1

About this issue

This early issue of Amazing Stories features classic scientifiction tales. The April 1926 table of contents includes Jules Verne's "A Trip to the Center of the Earth," a Verne serialization of "Off on a Comet" (the lead story, whose Chapter I introduces a duel between Captain Hector Servadac and Count Wassilli Timascheff over an unspecified matter of honor), H.G. Wells's "The New Accelerator" and "The Crystal Egg," G. Peyton Wertenbaker's "The Man From the Atom," Murray Leinster's "The Runaway Skyscraper" (a Fourth Dimension tale), Justin Hall's "The Man Who Saved the Earth," Charles S. Wolfe's "Whispering Ether" (a radio story), and Edgar Allan Poe's "The Facts in the Case of Mr. Valdemar." Hugo Gernsback's editorial essay defines "scientifiction" as romance interwoven with scientific fact in the tradition of Poe, Verne, and Wells, emphasizing the instructive and prophetic value of such stories as vehicles for scientific education and speculation.