The Gernsback Continuum.

The winners of the Hugo Awards for 2010 were announced last weekend at WorldCon, science fiction's largest annual convention, held in Australia this year.  Unlike my usual experience with their movie equivalent the Oscars, I'm actually familiar with most of the Hugo winners and have read the winners of the Best Novel and Best Novelette awards - well, one of the winners of Best Novel, it was a tie between China Miéville's The City and The City (which I have read) and The Windup Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi (which I have not read but may well).

I've obliquely mentioned Hugo Gernsback a few times, most often in reference to the award which is named after him, and perhaps this is an appropriate moment to go into more detail about Mr. Gernsback and how it is that science fiction's premier prize bears his name.

It must be remembered that we live in an entirely new world.

Hugo Gernsback, Editorial - Issue One of Amazing Stories, 1926

As the 20th Century got under way, it would have seemed that the future was being created every single day, and Hugo Gernsback was determined to be part of that future. Born Hugo Gernsbacher on August 16, 1884 in Luxembourg, he emigrated to the United States in 1904, planning a career as an inventor.

Once in America, Gernsback established the Electric Importing Company in order to market an improved battery which he had developed, but unfortunately he did not experience much success with his new invention. As a result, he decided to expand the company into a more general supply house for radio parts and equipment.

In order to help create a market for that equipment, he began to include plans and articles in the company's catalogue. Eventually it developed into the first electronics and radio magazine: Modern Electrics, first published in 1908.

In 1911, the first portion of a twelve-part science fiction serial written by Gernsback appeared in the magazine - Ralph 124C 41+: A Romance Of the Year 2660.*   Ralph, the titular character, is an inventor and one of the top ten scientists of his time. The story deals with his meeting with Alice 212B 423, with whom he falls in love but has to rescue from a rejected Martian suitor, and even revives her from death at his rival's hands.

The tale takes place against Gernsback's view of the future, which in retrospect contains a combination of surprisingly accurate predictions of technology that we have now, and complete misses (to be fair, there's still a few hundred years left to make up the shortfall.) Ralph 124C 41+ was revised and published into book form in 1925.

In 1926, Gernsback launched Amazing Stories, the first magazine to be dedicated solely to "scientifiction", as he called it. Initially Amazing Stories only reprinted material by H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, but importantly it offered for the first time a potential venue for new authors. Over time it presented stories by now legendary science fiction authors such as Edgar Rice Burroughs, A. A. Merrit, Jack Williamson, E. E. "Doc" Smith, Edmond Hamilton, and Philip Francis Nowlan, whose classic character Buck Rogers first appeared in the August 1928 edition of Amazing.

In 1929, Gernsback was forced to declare bankruptcy, and although Amazing continued to be published it was no longer under his control.

He quickly recovered, and began publication of three new magazines: Air Wonder Stories, Science Wonder Stories, and Science Wonder Quarterly. The first two were merged into Wonder Stories in 1930, and Science Wonder Quarterly became Wonder Quarterly. It was Science Wonder Stories which was credited by future science fiction author Isaac Asimov for introducing him to science fiction in 1929.

Unfortunately, Gernsback experienced financial difficulty with the Wonder Stories line as well, and sold the titles in 1936.  Although he continued in the publishing business until his death in 1967, he never returned to the science fiction market.

(The odd thing is that although Gernsback certainly is a dedicated visionary, he's a failed one when it comes to practical terms.  None of his magazines were financial successes, and his chosen name for the genre - scientifiction - was never accepted.)

Gernsback is often referred to as "the father of science fiction", but in my opinion, that's really not a fair description of Gernsback's role.  I would be far more inclined toward H. G. Wells as the parental figure for the genre. Instead, I think that Gernsback occupies a far more important role in the development of science fiction than simply being its father.

In many ways, Gernsback had the same relationship with science fiction that Henry Ford had with the automobile.  Ford didn't invent the automobile, but what he did do was create a factory assembly line system that allowed for the relatively cheap construction of cars, and as such made them a commodity that almost anyone could afford.  You could say that Ford popularized the car, made it into something that anyone and everyone knew about.

Gernsback performed the same sort of service for science fiction. Not only did his various magazines put a monthly dose of SF on every newstand in North America (and some in England), they also offered a venue for the readers of those magazines to offer their own speculations about the future to come.  An entire generation of classic science fiction authors such as Isaac Asimov, Frederik Pohl, Donald Wollheim, and Arthur C. Clarke acknowledged their early experience with Gernsback's publications as the primary influence in the direction of their future careers.

It's on that basis that Hugo Gernsback fully earned the privilege of having his name given to science fiction's top honour: the Hugo Award, a prize which he himself received in 1960 as a special recipient.

I bet no one ever handed that Oscar guy a golden statue of himself...

- Sid

*  It's a pun - "Ralph, one to foresee for one." -  just in case not everyone sounded that out.