pseudo-scientific adj.

I have always been highly interested by pseudo-scientific tales, especially of travel to other planets, as I am a deep student of astronomy. I believe your best stories have been reprints from Wells, Verne, Serviss and Burroughs, although the latter’s work hardly belongs in your magazine.

Give a pseudo-scientific writer the merest germ of an idea—based on known science of today—and, presto, he’s at the typewriter!

The earth, whirling in its orbit, suddenly plunges into a black, nebula-like mist! What happens afterward, as related by masterful DONALD WANDREI, makes one of the most fascinating pseudo-scientific stories of the year. Wandrei’s BLACK FOG shows you just what takes place when evolution comes to a stop!

Mr. Smith has combined these fine elements of dramatic conflict with a brilliant exhibition of pseudo-scientific pyrotechnics that promises to have our more mathematically-minded readers working overtime on theirscratch-pads.

However, there is still a vast backlog of pseudo-scientific and fantasy writing of worth which is not well known to current stf readers.

In a sense, this story attacks irresponsibility, since it devalues a most familiar structure in pseudo-scientific stories: the twin correlates of Now and Utopia.

Within a few months, however, Weird Tales had adopted Argosy' s term of ‘pseudo-scientific stories’ on its contents page. It is of parenthetical interest to note that ‘pseudoscientific’ was often used as a single word by Argosy.

Another term often found in the readers' departments of Munsey magazines was IMPOSSIBLE STORIES. That term received some use up until about 1920 when it all but disappeared. It was awkward to state in every issue that ‘we will continue to present “different stories.”’ Therefore they evolved a new term that received widespread use throughout the publishing world, and in the early twenties was by far the most popular single reference to the genre, even though everything else under the sun kept popping up. The new term was PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC STORIES, and they might still be using it today if it hadn’t been for Hugo Gernsback.

Science Fiction appeared as a heading in the Guide for the first time in Volume 12 (1939-1941), but then it was only to refer the reader to Pseudoscientific Stories.