Introduction

Scoops, though it was intended as a boys' paper, was printed in newspaper format and carried mostly juvenile fiction, has a legitimate claim to be considered the UK's first SF magazine and is often so described. It was published by C A Pearson, Ltd of London and ran for 20 issues weekly from February to June 1934. The magazine carried many serials, sometimes several concurrently and some of them running to a dozen parts. Fortunately it managed to wrap them all up by the time it folded with issue #20. It was printed on oversize paper, larger than most scanners can manage, and consequently the images you see are often heavily cropped, as is the case with some of the images shown here.

Scoops is an especially poignant title for me as I once owned a full set, but sold it 25 years ago for a price which would now be stretched to buy me a back a single decent copy. Needs must. The images here are a mixture of issues offered for sale on eBay and scans borrowed from Morgan Wallace's Waystation Central web site.