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From: Ahasuerus <ahasuerus@email.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: (ReacTor) When Did SFF Get Too Big?
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2024 10:36:27 -0400
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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.