Allen Glasser

Allen Glasser, left, and Mort Weisinger.
Photo courtesy Forry Ackerman.

(September 4, 1908 – October 1971)

Al Glasser was an early fan in New York, active beginning in the 1930s. He was a founding member and one-time president of the first sf club, The Scienceers, and edited its clubzine, The Planet, arguably SF's first real fanzine, in the early 1930s. He wrote about The Scienceers in Joe Christoff's fanzine Sphere: See Allen Glasser's History of The Scienceers.

He used Sears Langell and George Zambock as pennames. Starting in 1932, he edited The Time Traveller. Robert Madle recalled of him in Mimosa 27 (December 2001, p. 15):

I liked finding out what other people thought of the stories I read so I began reading the Readers’ Depart­ments in the magazines, and some of the letter writers soon became as famous to me as some of the authors. In particular there was one fan, Allan Glasser, who I really think, historically, can be named as the first real science fiction fan. He had letters in the old Science Wonder Stories, and had earlier won a couple of Hugo Gernsback’s contests. He wrote some of the most fantastic letters.

He had a short story, "Across the Ages," published in the August, 1933, issue of Amazing. However, Sam Moskowitz in The Immortal Storm pages 14–15, relates that the Glasser story was a direct copy of "The Haze of Heat" (actually, "The Heat Wave" by Robert Ord and Marion Ryan from the April 1929 Munsey's Magazine). This plus other alleged plagiarisms destroyed Glasser's position in fandom and resulted in the demise of The Time Traveller, which merged with Science Fiction Digest, becoming Fantasy Magazine in 1934.

In the 1950s, though, Glasser was one of the founding members of the Lunarians.

• Bibliography at ISFDB.
• Entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.

Fanzines and Apazines:

• The Planet [1930]
• The Science Fiction Alphabet [1956]
• The Time Traveller [1932]

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Person

1908—1971

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