Tales of Wonder was the first professional British science fiction magazine

Science fiction magazine

A science fiction magazine is a publication that offers primarily science fiction, either in a hard copy periodical format or on the Internet....

. It was published from 1937-1942 and was edited by Water Gillings. Although it was preceded in 1934-1945 by Scoops, that was more of a boy's newspaper

Newspaper

A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...

 than a magazine

Magazine

Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...

.

Publication historoy

The first U.S. science fiction (sf) magazine, Amazing Stories

Amazing Stories

Amazing Stories was an American science fiction magazine launched in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback's Experimenter Publishing. It was the first magazine devoted solely to science fiction...

, was imported into the U.K. from its launch in 1926, and other magazines from the U.S. market were also available in the U.K. from an early date. However, no British sf magazine was launched until 1934, when Pearsons launched Scoops, a weekly in tabloid format aimed at the juvenile market. Soon Haydn Dimmock, Scoops editor, began to receive more sophisticated stories, targeted at an adult audience; he tried to change the magazine's focus to include more mature fiction but within twenty issues falling sales led Pearson's to kill the magazine. The failure off Scoops gave British publishers the impression that Britain could not support a science fiction publication.

Tales of Wonder ended in the Spring 1942 with Issue #16. On the cover of that issue the publishers explained the reason for the magazine's demise

Demise

Demise, in its original meaning, is an Anglo-Norman legal term for a transfer of an estate, especially by lease...

:

"Since this issue went to press, we have been obliged - owing to paper restrictions and war conditions generally - to discontinue this magazine while the war lasts. No further issue will appear until peace comes when we hope to resume publication as before."

Bibliographic details

	Winter	Spring	Summer	Autumn	Winter
1937					1
1938		2	3	4	5
1939		6	7	8	9
1940		10	11	12
1941	13	14		15
1942		16
Issues of Tales of Wonder, showing issue number. Walter Gillings was editor throughout.

Footnotes