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August 16: The Father of Science Fiction

lawrencebush
August 16, 2010

300px-Amazing_StoriesHugo Gernsback, for whom the Science Fiction Achievement awards, “Hugos,” are named, was born in Luxembourg on this day in 1884. Gernsback founded the first sci-fi magazine, Amazing Stories, in 1926. He was also an electronics entrepreneur who founded the Wireless [radio] Association of America in 1913; it had 10,000 members within a year. In 1925 he created radio station WRNY, and in 1928 he began sending out his own television broadcasts, with postage stamp-sized screen images that were received by scanners owned by 2,000 inventor-enthusiasts in the New York area. Among Gernsback’s 80 patented inventions were the Osophone, an early bone conductor hearing aid; among the many magazines he published were Amazing Detective Stories, Modern Electrics, Radio and Television, Science and Mechanics, Sexology, and Technocracy Review.

“What description of clouds and sunsets was to the old novelist, description of scientific apparatus and methods is to the modern Scientific Detective writer.”—Hugo Gernsback

Listen to a 2008 WICN Inquiry interview with Gary Westfahl, author of Hugo Gernsback and the Century of Science Fiction, about Gernsback’s work as author and editor, and “why his name always generates strong reactions.”