The Magazine of the Week is the June-July 1931 issue of Miracle Science and Fantasy Stories. This was the second and last issue of this magazine. I would tell you about the great significance of Miracle to pulp fiction and to the field of science fiction, but it had none. Indeed, because Miracle was so short-lived, had low circulation, and never printed any stories by any important authors, many collectors have forgotten that it ever existed. But it did, and the proof is sitting in my office. You have now seen all of the science fiction pulp magazines from the decade after Amazing Stories first appeared in 1926: Amazing, Wonder, Astounding, and Miracle (well, not really, because there were some hero pulps with significant SF elements like Doc Savage and The Secret 6, and there was a British SF magazine called Scoops, but we have to stop somewhere). However, while Amazing Stories was the first science fiction magazine, it was not the first magazine of fantastic literature, which encompasses fantasy and horror in addition to science fiction. Some argue that the first magazine of fantastic literature was Black Cat, which started way back in 1895, or Thrill Book, a short-lived pulp magazine from 1919, but I don't believe either was sufficiently focused on fantasy to qualify. You will see an issue of the first real magazine of fantastic literature next week.
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