Introduction

There have been three distinct series of British reprints of Amazing

• AMZ1 - a single issue, Ziff-Davis, London, 1946
• AMZ2 - 24 pulp-sized issues, Thorpe & Porter, Leicester 1950-53
• AMZ3 - eight digest sized issues, Strato Publications, Leicester, 1953-55

This last followed directly on from the second series and was distributed by Thorpe & Porter, the change in format reflecting the change in the US original which took effect from April/May 1953. Tuck groups them together as a single series of 32, which it may have been. The Strato/Thorpe & Porter combination comes up with several other magazines, they were both based in Leicester and they may have been related companies - I don't know for sure. I have split them into separate series because of the change in format and the fact that the numbering begins again from v1#1.

Before any of these locally published editions came out, the US version of AMZ was being imported and distributed by the London-based Atlas Publishing and Distributing Co Ltd. I have a single example from February 1938, the US issue with a paper sticker over the price showing the importer's name and a one shilling UK price. The same company had been importing "Astounding" in this format since at least 1934, so AMZ may also have been distributed in the UK from an earlier date.

There was also a Canadian edition from 1933-1935, AMZ4, which is described briefly below.

AMZ1 - First Series

The single issue in this series was published by Ziff Davis, presumably the UK branch of the company that was publishing the US original at this time. Both back and front cover come from the Amazing of February 1939, as did the lead story, though not all of the contents. This is one of the very few examples that I know of where the British reprint reproduces the back cover as well as the front. Almost all others that I have seen carry a British advertisement or trailer for another magazine, or in one or two isolated instances, text continued from inside. The front cover differs from the original only in a red banner across the bottom, covering the original text advertising stories that are not actually in this reprint.

This magazine looks like a rather flimsy item besides a US pulp of the same period, containing only 64 pages and those on much thinner paper. The copy I have, however, seems to bear out the belief that UK reprints of this period were generally made on higher quality paper than their US originals. Though the paper in this one is thin, it has survived with remarkably little deterioration in colour or flexibility. It is a trend I have noted in other pulps in my own collection, though it must be admitted that I have relatively few original US pulps.

AMZ2 - Second Series

SFFWF indexes only the first series of Amazing BRE and makes the rather curious observation that "this is the only one whose contents were shuffled", leaving you to draw the conclusion, perhaps, that the other two series are not indexed because they match original US numbers issue for issue. This, unfortunately, is not entirely true, as I discovered when I compared the contents list given in Stone's IBSFM with SFFWF, for the first few issues of AMZ2. It is true that most of the British issues draw all of their contents from one US source issue, but I quickly found one that didn't. The list below, therefore, shows the US issue that corresponds to the cover and lead story of the British reprint, and probably most of the contents, but not with 100% certainty. In many cases also, the page count of the British issue falls short of the original and some stories are omitted. You can see, moreover, that there is no particular sequence to the US issues that the reprints were based on.

The second series was published approximately bi-monthly, but with some stretches of monthly and occasional longer gaps. Note that the British magzines carried no dates and those given below are those attributed by IBSFM. This is true also for the third series. The first two issues of the second series were unnumbered.

AMZ3 - Third Series

The third series adopted digest size and was published bi-monthly, following the US edition three to four months behind. Again, the British magazine appears to draw most, and in some cases all, of its content from the US magazine. The first few issues were shorter than the US original, so omitted some illustrations and stories. From v1#3 onwards, however, they have the same page count (allowing that the US original appeared to count the covers as pages). The British edition then carries all of the stories from the original - and, curiously, an extra story in some cases. How did they find the space to do this? Presumably by omitting some of the non-fiction content - editorials, articles, illustrations, etc. I don't have the US originals to check against, and SFFWF does not usually index non-fiction content.

AMZ4 - Canadian edition

Tuck describes a Canadian edition of Amazing that ran for 24 issues from September 1933 to August 1935, dates and numbering identical to the corresponding US issues. He says that they were identical to the US magazine except for the overprint "Printed in Canada on Canadian paper". There is an example (March 1934) of one of these magazines at right and you can see the overprint in the blown-up detail from the bottom left hand corner. I have two of these Canadian editions and they are indeed identical to the US magazine, as far as I can tell from the SFFWF index. Even the advertisements seem to be the originals. The title page gives the Toronto address of Teck Publications as well as the New York editorial address.

Source of Images

The majority of the images from all four series were scanned from copies in my own collection. #11 of the second series was kindly contributed by Dave Wood, and others were from magazines offered for sale on eBay.

Images Wanted

Several of the images in the second and third series are of rather poor quality - please see the wants list if you may be able to supply better ones.