Re: (ReacTor) When Did SFF Get Too Big?

On 10/2/2024 3:27 AM, Charles Packer wrote:

On Thu, 26 Sep 2024 20:02:52 -0400, Ahasuerus wrote:
 

>
On a more serious note, Earl Kemp's comment:
>
  > I knew everything that was being published and read everything up
  > until the 1940s
>
makes a good deal of sense. As I wrote back in March, there were only 3
stable science fiction monthlies between mid-1930 and mid-1938:
*Amazing*, *Astounding* and *Wonder* (*Thrilling Wonder* after 1936.)
>
Things began to change in mid-1938 with the launch of *Marvel* and then
the Golden Age started in 1939: *Planet Stories*, *Captain Future*,
*Startling Stories*, *Dynamic*, *Famous Fantastic Mysteries*, *Science
Fiction*/*Future Fiction*, *Strange Stories*, *Uncanny Tales*, *Marvel
Science Stories*, *Fantastic Adventures*, *Science Fiction Quarterly*,
*Super Science Stories*, *Astonishing Stories*, *Cosmic Stories*,
*Fantastic Novels*, *Stirring Science Stories*, *Unknown*.
>
Even if you skipped the reprints (some magazines specialized in
reprints), there was a significant amount of SF content being published
every month.

  Looking at the Google Ngram for the category English Fiction
(using "planet" as a proxy for SF) I see a distinct bump at 1940.
 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?
content=planet&year_start=1900&year_end=2019&corpus=en-
fiction&smoothing=0&case_insensitive=false
 Shortened: https://tinyurl.com/c67kwdj2
 Could that be explained by what you have listed? Then I wonder
what the bump at 1930 is.

It may be related to the timeline of the Gernsback era:
1926, April: _Amazing_
1929, June: _Science Wonder_
1929, July: _Air Wonder_
1930, January: _Astounding_
1930, June: _Air Wonder_ and _Science Wonder_ merge to become _Wonder Stories_, which becomes _Thrilling Wonder Stories_ in August 1936
The peak during the early 1950s may be related to the explosion in the number of SF digests in 1953.