Introduction

From the late 1800s to the 1950s, pulp magazines provided working-class readers with inexpensive popular literature by favorite authors. The growing genre of science fiction literature found a wide audience in such publications. The first science fiction story published was Charles H. Palmer’s “Citizen 504,” which appeared in the first issue of Argosy in December 1896. Additional pulp magazines specializing in speculative fiction, such as Astounding Stories of Super-Science and Amazing Stories, helped popularize science fiction, making it accessible to mass audiences. Inexpensive pulp paperback novels helped feed the demand for such literature, and the works of well-known authors were published in high-quality hardcover books.