Mount Morris, Illinois: Techni-Craft Publishing Corporation, February-March 1933 (volume 1, numbers 1-2). Bedsheet, two issues, pictorial wrappers, stapled. A short-lived magazine published by science fiction pioneer Hugo Gernsback during the Great Depression that lasted only two issues, February and March 1933. Launched to capitalize on the brief, intense public fascination with the "technocracy" movement popularized by Howard Scott. Scott argued that the economic crisis was caused by an irrational pricing system and proposed replacing money with "energy credits" managed by scientific experts. The magazine quickly folded as the initial craze over Scott's technocratic economic models faded, though the broader concept of expert-led technical governance continued to influence futuristic and science fiction writing. Technocracy, a social reform movement popular in the United States and Canada in the 1930s and 1940s, proposed replacing politicians and businesspeople with scientists and engineers to achieve a kind of technological utopia. See William E. Akin, Technocracy and the American Dream: the Technocrat Movement, 1900-1941, University of California Press (1977) and Howard P. Segal, Technological Utopianism in American Culture, Syracuse University Press (2005). Early SF fan's signature at the top edge of the recto of the first leaf of each issue. Cover edges lightly worn, short closed splits at spine ends, front and rear covers of first issue soiled and spotted, both issues are very good. Exceptionally rare, perhaps Gernsback's most elusive publication. (#179512).
Price: $1,500.00
No statement of printing.