100 Years of Wonder
deadline for submissions:
April 5, 2026
full name / name of organization:
Science Fiction Foundation
contact email:
paulmarchrussell@gmail.com
source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/08/18/100-years-of-wonder
2026 marks the centenary of Hugo Gernsback’s Amazing Stories, the first anglophone magazine devoted to what Gernsback originally called ‘scientifiction’. To commemorate and critically explore what many regard as the birth of genre science fiction, the autumn 2026 issue of Foundation (no. 153) will present a series of articles that investigate and re-evaluate the history of the pulps.
Despite defining the genre for many lay readers outside of the sf community, pulp science fiction has long been a contentious subject. From Brian Aldiss (Billion Year Spree) to Jeff VanderMeer (The Big Book of Science Fiction), writers, editors and historians have tried to diminish the significance of pulp sf and the so-called ‘Golden Age’. By contrast, Gary Westfahl in The Mechanics of Wonder (1998) rebuked such attempts and asserted the importance of Gernsback and John W. Campbell to an understanding of what science fiction is. More recently, Jeannette Ng caused outrage by publicly denouncing Campbell’s racism. Alec Nevala-Lee’s revisionist history of Campbell and Astounding Science Fiction has contributed to this critical reassessment, whilst successive anthologies from Lisa Yaszek have emphasised the role of women in the early years of pulp sf.
This special issue seeks to further this critical engagement. What can we meaningfully say about the legacy of the pulps in the light of an increasingly more diverse science fiction field, let alone the gathering focus on Indigenous futurisms, non-print-based media, and non-anglophone literature? Can we talk about pulp traditions in other parts of the world, not necessarily influenced by the US model, which continue to influence local sf cultures? To what extent is fandom still indebted to the pioneering activities of the 1930s?
We invite contributions of between 4000 and 8000 words, written in accordance with the journal’s style guide, no later than 5 April 2026. Topics may include (but are not limited to):
• The prehistory of pulp sf – Edgar Rice Burroughs and the Munsey magazines, etc.
• The roles of Gernsback and Campbell as editors and critics
• The importance of editors other than Gernsback and Campbell
• The visual look of the pulps
• The relationship between the pulps and their readers
• The legacy of First Fandom – zines, clubs, conventions, cosplay
• Women writers and readers and the pulps
• Black pulp science fictions
• The economics of pulp – copyright, distribution, royalties, agents
• Pulps versus the slicks
• Technocracy and the Great Depression
• Bio-engineered futures
• Pulp sub-genres: planetary romance, space opera, super-science, social science fiction
• Pulp sf cinema/comics – Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Just Imagine, etc.
• The ‘big three’ – Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, A.E. van Vogt
• The Futurians
• Pulp sf and World War Two
• US pulp sf and British scientific romance
• Pulps versus the digests: did pulp sf die?
• Pulp sf and Latin America
• Retrofuturism and the legacy of pulp sf
All submissions should be emailed to the current editor at paulmarchrussell@gmail.com
Last updated August 20, 2025
