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Scoops

Entry updated 15 June 2020. Tagged: Publication.

UK small weekly tabloid magazine, 20 issues 10 February to 23 June 1934, published by C A Pearson Ltd, London, in the editorial department of Haydn Dimmock (1895-1955), editor of The Scout, though the managing editor was Bernard Buley (1899-1973). Scoops was intended as a Boys' Paper that would "transport its readers from the everyday happenings into the future"; whatever appeal it might have had for adults was not helped by the decision to use, mostly, writers of ordinary boys' adventure fiction. Most material was presented anonymously and there was little by real sf writers – exceptions being A M Low with the serial "Space" (17 February-21 April 1934; vt Adrift in the Stratosphere 1937), a reprint serialization of The Poison Belt (1913; 5 May-9 June 1934) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and stories by Maurice G Hugi and John Russell Fearn. Buley himself contributed the serial "Master of the Moon" (10 February-21 April 1934) about a master Scientist who has established an empire on the Moon and plans to conquer Earth. This was followed by "The Black Vultures" (28 April-23 June 1934) by George E Rochester (1898-1966), featuring another scientist intent on ruling the world. The use of the term "science fiction" in the Summer 1934 to describe the Doyle serial (see above) seems to represent its first professional use in the UK. All issues are now collector's items. Scoops was the first UK sf magazine, but not a very good one. Five tales from it, along with eight new stories, were later assembled as The Boys' World of Adventure (anth 1937) edited anonymously. [MA/FHP/PN/DRL]

see also: W P Cockroft.

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