Hollywood Publisher Galaxy Press Marks 70th Anniversary of Pulp Magazine That Heralded Peak of Golden Age of Fantasy Fiction

‘Unknown’ Magazine’s March, 1939 Launch Established Icons of Genre – de Camp, Boucher, Heinlein, Hubbard, and others

Pulp Fiction Fantasy Plots Still Going Strong on Today’s Silver Screen

HOLLYWOOD, Calif., March 12 /PRNewswire/ — It’s been 70 years and the fantasy plots from the Golden Age of Fantasy fiction are still going strong. Then, as now, there were headlines of record unemployment, foreclosures, and the threat of war. Then, as now, America turned to stories like those found in the first issue of Unknown magazine published in March, 1939.

The reading and listening public are enjoying pulp stories as evidenced by some of the most popular and successful film and television plot lines today as well as the continuing success of Galaxy Press’ latest pulp fiction series, Stories from the Golden Age, by a leading contributor to Unknown, author L. Ron Hubbard. (www.goldenagestories.com)

“We’re paying tribute to the 70th anniversary of ‘Unknown’ as one of the great pulp magazines of its day by keeping the pulp tradition alive,” said John Goodwin, Galaxy president. Galaxy Press is releasing its next 4 of the 80 novels–9 released in total–by L. Ron Hubbard in full print and theatrical audiobook form complete with original cover artwork. Each story has been produced as full cast recordings with sound effects.

“It’s obvious that people still need escapist fiction,” Goodwin said. “‘Unknown’ published some of the truly great names in pulps–including Sprague de Camp, Anthony Boucher, Robert Heinlein, and L. Ron Hubbard–as the premier fantasy magazine of the day.”

Many of Hollywood’s blockbusters from Star Wars to Spiderman and Indiana Jones find their origins in the pulp pages of the 1930s and 40s. Some of the classic fantasies are set in very real settings instead of make-believe. A displaced family in war-torn Europe became the focus for C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia, a scientist tests his new theory of inter-dimension travel on a down-and-out victim of a depression-era foreclosure in Hubbard’s’ The Ultimate Adventure, or a young man from a distant planet grows up on a small farm in Smallville and later moves to the big city to save the world (Superman).

Unknown magazine’s four-year publishing run (March 1939 to October 1943) ended like that of other pulp magazines because of a paper shortage caused by World War II. Hubbard wrote 14 full-length short novels and short stories for the magazine. Fortunately, these stories are now being republished by Galaxy Press in the Stories from the Golden Age series (www.goldenagestories.com).

SOURCE Galaxy Press