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By the time you are reading this column, in late spring of 2026, the science fiction genre will have marked its 100th anniversary. Though preceded by individual authors ranging from Mary Shelley to Edgar Rice Burroughs, it was on March 10, 1926 that the first issue of Amazing Stories hit the newsstands—the birthing cry of modern science fiction, if not as a genre, certainly as an industry and a fandom. Every magazine, every book, every author, every convention, every argument over whether Star Trek or Star Wars is better . . . it all started one century ago, with one