The magazine sprung a great deal of spin-off series, mostly short-lived and ceased today: Other winners include Nicoletta Vallorani and Massimo Mongai. In 1994 Urania published the first novel by now-world-famed Valerio Evangelisti, who had won the Premio Urania for that year with Nicholas Eymerich, inquisitore. The first winner was Vittorio Catani with his Gli universi di Moras ( Urania #1120). The winner is awarded with publication in the magazine. The competition of Premio Urania (' Urania Award') was launched in 1990, open to all previously unpublished Italian novels from famous or unknown authors. In recent times Italian SF writers are a more frequent presence. Italian authors appeared uncredited, only under pseudonyms. Most of the novels and short stories were from US and British authors (with some French novels in the 1950s). Their successor was Gianni Montanari, a well-known SF editor and writer, who worked for the magazine until 1990. From 1964 to 1985 novels and short stories were selected by the renowned Italian writers and intellectuals Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini, who also appeared in the magazine with a few short stories written under pseudonyms. The first editor was Giorgio Monicelli (brother of movie director Mario Monicelli): Monicelli is credited with the invention of the word fantascienza, meaning science-fiction in Italian.

Since the very beginning Urania has been indeed the best selling SF magazine of Italy, also introducing to Italian readers some famed authors like Isaac Asimov, Alfred Elton van Vogt, Robert A. Short story collections were thenceforth published in the main series, which at its height had a weekly periodicity with a circulation of 160,000 copies a month. The latter, however, lasted only 14 issues, and Romanzi di Urania soon took the simpler name, which still holds today. The original name of the series was I Romanzi di Urania ('Urania's novels'), to differentiate it from another magazine with the same name (but popularly known as Urania Rivista, 'Urania Magazine'), which featured only short stories. The first issue featured the novel The Sands of Mars by Arthur C.

Le sabbie di Marte by Arthur C. Clarke