The magazine that started it all is, astonishly, not only still with us but about to celebrate its 100th birthday. We received a press release about it from the editor in chief, Lloyd Penney.

Amazing Stories HQ — and Everywhere Else Imagination Has Ever Gone

On March 10, 2026, Amazing Stories will mark a singular milestone: one hundred years since the moment science fiction became a genre with a name, a home, and a future.

On a cold Wednesday in Manhattan—March 10, 1926—The Experimenter Publishing Company released the first issue of Amazing Stories. Its cover was impossible to miss: bright yellow, boldly optimistic, and illustrated by Frank R. Paul, who would soon be recognized as the founding visual architect of science fiction. Behind that cover stood editor and publisher Hugo Gernsback, holding a radical idea: that stories grounded in real science, boldly extrapolated into tomorrow, deserved a magazine of their own.

With his opening editorial, “A New Kind of Magazine,” Gernsback didn’t just launch a publication—he defined a genre. He called it scientifiction: stories that were entertaining, intellectually serious, rooted in known science, and unafraid to speculate. Sometimes they advocated. Sometimes they warned. Always, they invited readers to imagine what might be.

That first issue of Amazing Stories did more than publish fiction. It established science fiction’s rules of engagement, made the future visible, and—perhaps most importantly—created a conversation. The magazine’s letters column became the birthplace of science fiction fandom, a community that would grow into clubs, fanzines, conventions, cosplay, superheroes, and an enduring global culture. The modern world’s relationship with the future can be traced, in no small part, back to those pages.

It is no exaggeration to say that the last century would look very different without Amazing Stories.

Why This Matters Now

At a time when scientific progress is accelerating faster than ever—reshaping how we live, work, communicate, and even define what it means to be human—science fiction’s original mission feels newly urgent. For a century, Amazing Stories has explored both the promise and the peril of innovation, reminding us that the future is not something that simply happens to us, but something we actively imagine, question, and choose. As we confront challenges that once seemed purely speculative, science fiction remains what it has always been at its best: a rehearsal space for tomorrow, powered by curiosity, skepticism, and hope.

Readers, writers, historians, fans, and future-builders are invited to join the celebration of this extraordinary anniversary. Celebrate Join in person at Ravencon in Richmond, Virginia, April 26–28, 2026. Or celebrate in your own way: read a story, discover a new author, write a review, or visit the Amazing Stories website to explore a sampling of what began on a newsstand in 1926 and helped shape the imagination of a century.

It has been our privilege, honor, and joy to keep this vital and now legendary publication alive. We look forward—with appropriate scientific optimism—to carrying its legacy into the next hundred years.

A formal centennial celebration will be held at Ravencon, Richmond, Virginia, April 26–28, 2026.