Otto Witt

Otto Witt (1875–1923) was a Swedish writer. He was one of the prominent figures in early Swedish science fiction. He did, among other things, publish Hugin, a science magazine which was filled "with speculative articles and fiction".^[1] Hugin was one of the first magazines to regularly carry science fiction in the world, although it appears to have had little influence outside Sweden.^[1]

Hugin

Hugin was published between 7 April 1916 and 15 January 1920.^[2] The schedule was in theory fortnightly, though it was in practice plagued by delays and published irregularly.^[2][3] It ran for 85 issues, though many were double- or triple-numbered, making for a total of 65 individual issues.^[3][4] The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction describes it as a "popular science magazine [...] which included some short sf".^[5] It has been described as an early science fiction magazine, for instance by Swedish science fiction critic Sam J. Lundwall; US science fiction scholar Sam Moskowitz rejects this characterization, writing that the proportion of science fiction to non-fiction content was so low (some issues containing no fiction at all) that it does not even count as a fiction magazine.^[4][6][7] Swedish science fiction critic John-Henri Holmberg, in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, similarly writes that describing Hugin as a science fiction magazine "is greatly overstating the truth" as the bulk of the magazine's content consisted of non-fiction.^[4]