In today’s issue of Authors by Alphabet I’m taking a brief look at Hugo Gernsback.

Gernsback was an amazing man. He started the pulp fiction title of Amazing Stories thereby bringing science fiction to life. Gernsback is the person responsible for the phrase ‘science fiction’ and used it despite preferring the word ‘scientifiction’. If it wasn’t for him so many science fiction writers and readers wouldn’t be doing what they do now. Unfortunately, he wasn’t always a nice person and didn’t necessarily pay his writers.

One of the many awards you’ll hear of is the Hugo Awards. They started life as the Annual Science Fiction Achievement Award and were presented at WorldCon in 1953, again in 1955 and every year thereafter. Their nickname was the ‘Hugo Awards’ until 1992 when it was accepted as the official name. Yes, named after Hugo Gernsback. He was that influential they felt it important to have awards named after him.

Looking on my bookshelf I found this book by Isaac Asimov. Containing three years worth of Hugo Award winners with brilliant authors:

When these were announced I wonder if people knew they’d become household names?

Not really known for his writing, I did find several copies of his book Ralph 124c 41+ for sale on Booktopia and chose the cheapest for you. Here is a small selection of some of his publications:

A fairly eclectic selection of publications. I can’t tell you if these cover his interests or if he just had ideas of what would grab the public eye and mind.