Ballantine’s 1961 imprint of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex has a truly lovely cover.
Though at first glance I assumed this image was a painting, perhaps enhanced and accentuated with an airbrush – due to the visual “softness” (for lack of a better word) of the woman, the rock upon which she’s sitting, the plant over which she’s bending, and the “rays” in the background – this was not so. As revealed in the book, this image is actually a photograph by famed photographer Elliott Erwitt (Elio Romano Erwitz).
The soft and diffuse appearance of the cover, then, is probably attributable to the use of a filter that created a foggy, slightly out-of-focus effect, while I suppose the intense yellowish cast is from dyeing the finished photographic (paper) print, or, printing the black and white image on color photographic paper, with a yellow filter interposed between negative and print.
Regardless of the technology, the image powerfully connotes subtle and passive (almost unconscious) eroticism, detachment from the world in a moment of self-absorption and contemplation. And self-absorption. (I already said that?!) This is enhanced by Erwitt having posed the model such that her face is almost completely obscured. She’s anonymous, in he own world, and not ours…
(Back Cover)
…and with that, a caveat!…
Whether for “this” post in particular or really most any of my posts “in general”, the appearance of a book at WordsEnvisioned by no means implies my endorsement of it eitheras a literary work in terms of its plot, premise, and literary quality, or especially – for works of non-fiction – my acceptance of and agreement with its intellectual or philosophical basis.
In other words, the book’s cover is simply interesting in and of itself as an example of illustration.
That’s why it’s “here”:
Not only do I not judge a book by its cover, I never judge a cover by the book.
This is emphatically so for The Second Sex, for “Feminism” is by now in the year 2025 (and I think has always been, even in the days of Mary Shelley), a politicized form of gender-based Manicheanism that is entirely unrelated to the many-faceted and parallel worlds … it’s really the same world … of women and men as complimentary human beings, who must navigate the complexity of life and human relationships as they are actually lived.
In this regard, for an insightful take on Simone De Beauvoir, I highly recommend Janice Fiamengo’s YouTube video – at Studio B – Probing Western Culture – “The Monstrous Lies of Simone De Beauvoir”, from September, 2022. Here it is:
For another take on the irrevocably (?!) fraught topic of “Feminism”, I highly recommend Dr. Martin Van Creveld’s The Privileged Sex, published by DLVC Enterprises, Mevasseret Zion, Israel, in 2013. To quote: “This book argues that the idea women are the oppressed gender is largely a myth, and that women, and not men, are the privileged gender.” You can download the book at Archive.org. I believe its contents were reflected in the following series of posts some few years ago (they’re now unavailable) at Dr. Van Creveld’s blog, under the heading “The Gender Dialogues”. Namely:
Dialogue No. I: First Things First – October 15, 2020 Dialogue No. II: The Privileged Sex – October 22, 2020 Dialogue No. III: Similar but Different – October 29, 2020 Dialogue No. IV: Who Has It Better? – November 5, 2020 Dialogue No. V: Feminism… – November 12, 2020 Dialogue No. VI: … and Its Discontents – November 19, 2020 Dialogue No. VII: How about Sex? – November 26, 2020 Dialogue No. VIII: In Search of a Solution – December 3, 2020 Dialogue No. IX: Marching towards Segregation? – December 10, 2020 Dialogue No. X: Concerning Prostitution – December 17, 2020 Dialogue No. XI: The Future – December 24, 2020 Dialogue No. XII: The Feminist Planet – December 31, 2020 Dialogue No. XIII: Making It Personal – January 7, 2021 Dialogue No. XIV: Concluding Thoughts – January 14, 2021
Another relevant book by Dr. Van Creveld, Men Women & War, published by Cassell & Co., London, England, 2001, is also available at Archive.org, albeit for virtual “borrowing” rather than download. To say that the book’s conclusions stand at variance with the political and social ethos of the contemporary “West” is an understatement. Specifically, “Throughout history, women have been shielded from the heat of battle, their role limited to supporting the men who do the actual fighting. Now all that has changed, and for the first time females have taken their place on the front lines. But, do they actually belong there? A distinguished military historian answers the question with a vehement no, arguing women are less physically capable, more injury-prone, given more lenient conditions, and disastrous for morale and military preparedness.”
A book can draw your attention by its cover, but its power and impact by nature ultimately derive from the words upon its pages.
If so in print, and even moreso in pixels. To that end, many posts at WordsEnvisioned – particularly those for novels – include an excerpt which gives a representative sample of the author’s literary style, and more importantly, to lesser or greater degree, embody the ethos, spirit, or animating idea behind the work.
As such, in February of 2018 I posted images of the 1958 Bantam Books’ edition of Carson McCullers’The Member of the Wedding, sans other content. That literary lacuna is now remedied with an excerpt from the novel, which you can read below.
You can view the cover of the 1962 paperback edition of McCullers’ The Ballad of the Sad Caféhere.
And now F. Jasmine walked with a soldier
who in his mind included her in such unknown pleasures.
But she was not altogether proud.
There was an uneasy doubt that one could not quite place or name.
The noon air was thick and sticky as hot syrup,
and there was the stifling smell of the dye-rooms from the cotton mill.
She heard the organ-grinder sounding faintly from the main street.
The soldier stopped. “This is the hotel,” he said.
They were before the Blue Moon
and F. Jasmine was surprised to hear it spoken of as a hotel,
as she had thought it was only a café.
When the soldier held the screen door open for her,
she noticed that he swayed a little.
Her eyes saw blinding red, then black, after the glare,
and it took them a minute to get used to the blue light.
She followed the soldier to one of the booths on the right.
“Care for a beer,” he said, not in an asking voice,
but as though he took her reply for granted.
F. Jasmine did not enjoy the taste of beer;
once or twice she had sneaked swallows from her father’s glass and it was sour.
But the soldier had not left her any choice.
“I would be delighted,” she said. “Thank you.”
Never had she been in a hotel,
although she had often thought about them and written about them in her shows.
Her father had stayed in hotels several times,
and once, from Montgomery,
he had brought her two tiny little cakes of hotel soap which she had saved.
She looked around the Blue Moon with new curiosity.
All of a sudden she felt very proper.
On seating herself at the booth table, she carefully smoothed down her dress,
as she did when at a party or in church, so as not to sit the pleats out of the skirt.
She sat up straight and on her face there was a proper expression.
But the Blue Moon still seemed to her more like a kind of café than a real hotel.
She did not see the sad, pale Portuguese,
and a laughing fat lady with a golden tooth poured beer for the soldier at the corner.
The stairway at the back led probably to the hotel rooms upstairs,
and the steps were lighted by a blue neon bulb and covered with a runner of linoleum.
A sassy chorus on the radio was singing an advertisement:
Denteen Chewing Gum! Denteen Chewing Gum! Denteen!
The beery air reminded her of a room where a rat had died behind a wall.
The soldier walked back to the booth, carrying two glasses of the beer;
he licked some foam that had spilled over his hand
and wiped the hand on his trousers seat.
When he was settled in the booth, F. Jasmine said,
in a voice that was absolutely new to her –
a high voice spoken through the nose, dainty and dignified:
“Don’t you think it is mighty exciting?
Here we are sitting here at this table
and in a month from now there’s no telling on earth where we’ll be.
Maybe tomorrow the army will send you to Alaska like they sent my brother.
Or to France or Africa or Burma.
And I don’t have any idea where I will be.
I’d like for us to go to Alaska for a while, and then go somewhere else.
They say that Paris has been liberated. In my opinion the war will be over next month.”
The soldier raised his glass, and threw back his head to gulp the beer.
F. Jasmine took a few swallows also, although it tasted nasty to her.
Today she did not see the world as loose
and cracked and turning a thousand miles an hour,
so that the spinning views of war and distant lands made her mind dizzy.
The world had never been so close to her.
Sitting across from the soldier at that booth in the Blue Moon,
she suddenly saw the three of them – herself, her brother, and the bride –
walking beneath a cold Alaskan sky,
along the sea where green ice waves lay frozen and folded on the shore;
they climbed a sunny glacier shot through with pale cold colors
and a rope tied the three of them together,
and friends from another glacier called in Alaskan their J A names.
She saw them next in Africa, where, with a crowd of sheeted Arabs,
they galloped on camels in the sandy wind. Burma was jungle-dark,
and she had seen pictures in Life magazine.
Because of the wedding, these distant lands, the world,
seemed altogether possible and near:
as close to Winter Hill as Winter Hill was to the town.
It was the actual present, in fact, that seemed to F. Jasmine a little bit unreal.
“…writing is different because you do not have to learn or practise…”
____________________
“Kissing your hand may make you feel very good but a diamond bracelet lasts forever.”
____________________
Bergey, Bergey, Bergey!…
Earle K. Bergey, cover illustrator of mainstream publications, pulp magazines, and paperbacks – all in a variety of genres – produced a body of work that while more conventional in terms of subject matter than that of artists like Frank Kelly Freas or Edmund Emshwiller, is eye-catchingly distinctive, and is truly emblematic of mid-twentieth-century illustration.
His science-fiction art commenced in the late 1930s and continued until his untimely death in 1952 … see examples here, here, and here. As described at Wikipedia, his, “…science fiction covers, sometimes described as “Bim, BEM, Bum,” usually featured a woman being menaced by a Bug-Eyed Monster, alien, or robot, with an heroic male astronaut coming to her assistance. The bikini-tops he painted often resembled coppery metal, giving rise to the phrase “the girl in the brass bra,” used in reference to this sort of art. Visionaries in TV and film have been influenced by Bergey’s work. Gene Roddenberry, for example, provided his production designer for Star Trek with examples of Bergey’s futuristic pulp covers. The artist’s illustrations of scantily-clad women surviving in outer space served as an inspiration for Princess Leia‘s slave-girl outfit in Return of the Jedi, and Madonna’s conical brass brassiere.”
Commencing in 1948, Bergey became heavily involved in creating cover art for paperbacks. This began with Popular Library’s 1948 edition of Anita Loos’ Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, which was first published in 1925. Though the book is a light-hearted work of conventional fiction (perhaps lightly semi-autobiographical; perhaps loosely inspired by fact), Bergey’s cover is a sort-of…, kind-of…, maybe…, perhaps…, well…, variation on a theme of “Good Girl Art” characteristic of American fiction of the mid-twentieth-century, and likewise is a stylistic segue from Bergey’s science fiction pulp cover art. Sans shining copper brassiere, however.
Here is it…
From Bergey’s biographical profile at Wikipedia, here’s an image of the book’s original cover art. The only information about the painting (does it still exist?) is that it’s “oil on board”.
A notable aspect of this painting, aside from the extraordinarily and deliberately idealized depiction … exaggeration?! … of Miss Lorelei Lee (looks like she’s being illuminated by a klieg light, doesn’t it?) is the appearance of the men around her, each of whom is each vastly more caricature than character. Well, exaggeration can work in two directions.
____________________
She was a
GIVE AND TAKE GIRL
Lorelei Lee was a cute number with lots of sex appeal and the ability to make it pay off. With her curious girl friend, Dorothy, she embarked on a tour of England and the Continent. And none of the men who crossed their path was ever the same again. When one of Lorelei’s admirers sent her a diary she decided to write about her adventures. They began with Gus Eisman, the Button King, who wanted to improve her “mind” and reached a climax in her society debut party – a three-day circus that rocked Broadway to its foundations. A hilarious field study of the American chorus girl in action set down in her own inimitable style!
____________________
Lorelei Lee’s appearance in Ralph Barton’s cartoons in the 1925 edition of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is – wellll, granting that they’re just cartoons; thirty-three appear in the book – vastly less exaggerated than her depiction on Bergey’s cover. Three of his cartoons are shown below…
____________________
It would be strange if I turn out to be an authoress. I mean at my home near Little Rock, Arkansas, my family all wanted me to do something about my music. Because all of my friends said I had talent and they all kept after me and kept after me about practising. But some way I never seemed to care so much about practising. I mean I simply could not sit for hours at a time practising just for the sake of a career. So one day I got quite tempermental and threw the old mandolin clear across the room and I have never really touched it since. But writing is different because you do not have to learn or practise and it is more tempermental because practising seems to take all the temperment out of me. So now I really almost have to smile because I have just noticed that I have written clear across two pages onto March 18th, so this will do for today and tomorrow. And it just shows how tempermental I am when I get started. (Illustration p. 13)
____________________
“Kissing your hand may make you feel very good but a diamond bracelet lasts forever.”(Illustration p. 101)
____________________
“Dr. Froyd seemed to think that I was quite a famous case.”(Illustration p. 157)
A qualifier: Despite being a movie aficionado and voracious reader, I’ve not actually viewed this movie, for … despite being able to appreciate and enjoy most any genre of film … I’ve absolutely never been a fan of musicals. (Ick.)
What would Gentlemen Prefer Blondes be without “Diamond’s Are a Girl’s Best Friend”? (Starts at 59:00 in the film.) The idea of a rotating chandelier formed of women strikes me as really bizarre, if not disturbing… Oh, well.
Before NCR was “NCR”, the company was appropriately known as the National Cash Register Corporation. After having been acquired by ATT in 1991, a 1996 restructuring of that firm led to the spin-off Lucent Technologies and NCR, with the firm being the only “spun-off” company that has retained its name.
This advertisement, from August 9, 1943, illustrates the company’s National Class 3000 Bookkeeping Machine.
The advertisement is quite simple in style and design. A sketch of a model using an NC 3000 is repeated four times in the same illustration, giving an impression of “depth” and activity as in – well, quite appropriately! – an office setting. An example of a neatly completed bill appears in the background.
The full text of the advertisement appears at bottom. Note the use of alpha-numeric telephone number prefixes (“CIrcle”, “MOtt”, and “CAnal”).
Bookkeepers for a Nation
Unheralded! Unsung! … It’s time to praise the bookkeepers of our nation … for, without them, the wheels of industry would not turn to produce vital war materials and keep supplies rolling up to the home front and on to you.
Without machines to help them do this job, hundreds upon thousands of new bookkeepers would be needed to keep our records, and millions of man-hours would be stolen from our war effort.
National Typewriting-Bookkeeping Machines in industry, in business and in government are speeding record making and record keeping for the nation because they are simple and easy to operate…for they alone combine the standard adding machine and typewriter keyboards with full visibility of forms in the machines… Any typist with a knowledge of an adding machine becomes a proficient operator with a few hours’ practice.
Nationals are flexible…for they can be changed to do all sorts of bookkeeping…like the statement you receive from the department store or the wholesaler…or for purchase records…payroll writing…posting general ledgers…and numerous other applications.
National Typewriting-Bookkeeping Machines, as well as all other National products and systems, save man-hours and provide protection over money and records for the bookkeeping of the nation.
National Accounting-Bookkeeping Machines may be secured by essential industries through priorities… A stock of modern used National Cash Registers is also available for business needs.
40 ROCKEFELLER PLAZA, CIrcle 5-6300 321 EAST 149TH STREET, MOtt Haven 9-3323 138 BOWERY, CAnal 6-4906
______________________________
Here’s an illustration of an NC 3000 from Office Museum:
These two images – showing the front and rear of an NC 3000, on its stand – are from the Smithsonian Museum of American History. This example was manufactured in 1938 or 1939.
Akin to the frequent appearance of advertisements in The New York Times for devices and systems for faster and streamlined communication (such as the Private Automatic Exchange telephone system), so was the promotion of machines that would enable a firm or organization to rapidly manipulate numerical data.
That is, calculating machines.
The two advertisements below – for the Dalton Calculating and Adding Machine – appeared in the closing months of the First World War, and in terms of text and graphics are fitting examples of the way such devices were brought to the attention of the public.
Though known and marketed as “Adding” machines, the advertisements specifically emphasize the machine’s parallel capabilities in the performance of the subtraction, multiplication, and division. Given the (simplified) description of how these operations are actually performed, in terms of keystrokes and data entry, it’s evident that the copy-writer assumed that his audience would have a basic familiarity with calculating machines, probably from the use of earlier generations of such devices. Given the timing of the advertisements, it’s notable that the “first” example, from September 17, 1918, specifically alludes to mobilization for America’s effort in “The Great War”, a central issue underlying this effort being speed. (A brief segue, as it were.) An analogy is drawn to the capabilities of the Dalton Calculating Machine. But, with appearance of the example from over a month later – in late October – the war, which would end thirteen days later, is neither mentioned nor alluded to.
Obviously, the future was at stake, not the present.
The full text of both advertisements is presented below.
______________________________
September 17, 1918
Put greater Speed into your Office Accounting
“Speed up” is our national “middle name”. We gather our men, materials, machinery together and then the wheels commence to turn with mighty force. The same is applicable to the new office girl who is given a DALTON Adding-Calculating Machine to figure with.
Here is her instrument for the production of figure facts. No machine equals it in simplicity of keyboard. Only 10 keys, one for each numeral. She writes 1276.91 and then 1.53, then .77. She notes each figure is put into its proper column automatically. Consider the ease of figuring, the accuracy, the relief afforded by this service.
Shortly she begins to operate the keys without looking at them at all. This is “touch operation”. It is the fastest, moist accurate method of handling figures, and is practicable only on the DALTON. Multiplication – all figure work requiring multiplication is easily handled. The DALTON adds, subtracts, multiplies, divides, makes out statements, tabulates. It is the “all-around” adding, listing, calculating machine for figure work in any business.
Phone Barclay 9729 for Demonstration
Compare your present methods with the 10-KEY DALTON. It may mean a saving in labor or time you did not consider possible. Phone today or write for data descriptive of the DALTON.
GRUBBS & SHERIDAN
642-646 Woolworth Bldg.
Dalton
Main Office and Factory, Cleveland, Ohio
ADDING AND CALCULATING MACHINE
____________________________________________
October 29, 1918
The All-around Calculating Machine for Every Business
No other office figuring machine has the practical application of the DALTON. Aside from the simplicity of the keyboard arrangement which eliminates the necessity of experienced help – aside from its utility as the fastest adding and listing machine made – it is also a versatile all-around calculating machine.
Adding machines, as a rule, are designed for adding and listing only. The DALTON is far more than an adding machine. It is as easy to multiply on the DALTON as it is to add. The cipher (0) key makes this possible. Multiplication of the most complicated problems is but a question of seconds.
See it yourself. Here is a machine for any arrangement in any business. Railroads, great mercantile houses, business firms everywhere, are standardizing on DALTONS. It adds, subtracts, multiplies, divides, lists, every operations, adds two totals at once, makes statements, tabulates, etc.
Phone Barclay 5350 for Demonstration
Is your office strictly efficient? Office costs, like plant or store costs, can only be cut by more efficient machinery. Let us bring a DALTON to your office for inspections. Or write for booklet descriptive of this new time and labor saver.
New York Sales Agents: GRUBBS & SHERIDAN 642-646 Woolworth Bldg.
But, for those activities to take place, something else is necessary: Information has to be stored.
For which purpose, the three mid-1918 advertisements below – promoting The Dictaphone sound recording machine – are examples.
The Dictaphone Company was founded by Alexander Graham Bell, the name – Dictaphone – being trademarked by the Columbia Graphophone Company in 1907. The technology of the device was based on the use of wax-coated cardboard cylinders for sound recording. The Dictaphone company existed through 1979 (!), when it was purchased, though retained as an independent subsidiary, by Pitney Bowes.
______________________________
Though the advertisement uses different images – the Dictaphone itself; a “boss” or manager surveying inefficiency in an office setting; a generic office setting – and the “copy” likewise differs, the fundamental thrust of the ads is identical: More efficient use of the employee labor, greater output of correspondence, and supplanting activity of absent employees. As per August 20, 1918: “No wonder that every stenographer away on her vacation adds greatly to the burden or short help, mail congestion and overtime work.” (Uh-oh!) Each advertisement closes with the suggestion that the prospective client should obtain a copy of Dictaphone Company’s booklet, “The Man at The Desk”.
The full text of the three advertisements follows each image.
Enjoy, and, wonder!
______________________________
July 8, 1918
Why The Dictaphone for you?
The Dictaphone keeps the mail going out on time in spite of summer vacations.
The Dictaphone is the easiest, the most comfortable, the nerve-saving method of hot-weather dictation.
Two Dictaphone operators can write more letters per day than four able stenographers. Dictaphone operators can wrote from 50% to 100% more letters per day, better letters, too.
Convince yourself with a demonstration in your office, on your work. No obligations.
Secretaries and Stenographers: Send for free book, “One Way to Bigger Pay.”
Phone, Worth 7250 280 Broadway “The Shortest Route to the “Mail Chute”
Write for “The Man at the Desk”
It is not a Dictaphone unless trade-marked “The Dictaphone,” made and merchandised by the Columbia Gramophone Company.
______________________________
August 13, 1918
“If I Only Had the Dictaphone!”
Four of his stenographers are spending two hours apiece per day taking dictation, and the fifth is on her vacation. No wonder that much important dictation must wait until tomorrow.
Install the Dictaphone in his office, and he would not miss the girl on her vacation. The other three girls would easily turn out more letters per day than all four when they have to write each other in shorthand as well as on the typewriter.
And with the Dictaphone right at his elbow all the time, he could dictate his important mail at the hour most convenient to him.
You need the Dictaphone as much as he. Phone or write today for a demonstration in your office, on your work.
THE DICTAPHONE
Registered in the U.S. and Foreign Countries Phone 7250 Worth Call at 280 Broadway Write for the booklet, “The Man at the Desk,” Room 224, 280 Broadway, New York
It is not a Dictaphone unless it is trade-marked “The Dictaphone,” made and merchandised by the Columbia Graphophone Company.
“The Shortest Route to the Mail Chute”
______________________________
August 20, 1918
The Dictaphone solves vacation troubles
Look at the waste! The typewriter is absolutely idle. One stenographer has been taking dictation continuously for nearly two hours. The second stenographer is puzzling over her shorthand notes. And all this time, not one letter is actually being written.
No wonder that every stenographer away on her vacation adds greatly to the burden or short help, mail congestion and overtime work.
What is the remedy? Stop writing each letter twice. The Dictaphone makes it necessary to write each letter only once – on the typewriter. Result – from 50% to 100% more letters per day – better letters, too, and at one-third less cost. Phone or write for demonstration in your office, on your work.
To Secretaries and Stenographers
You have to pay for the time you lose going back and forth to take dictation – and waiting to take dictation – with overtime work and constant strain and anxiety. Send for free book “One Way to Bigger Pay.”
THE DICTAPHONE Registered in the U.S. and Foreign Countries Phone 7250 Worth Call at 280 Broadway Write for the booklet, “The Man at the Desk,” Room 224, 280 Broadway, New York
It is not a Dictaphone unless it is trade-marked “The Dictaphone,” made and merchandised by the Columbia Graphophone Company.
This advertisement – from The Philadelphia Inquirer of April 1, 1919 -is fascinating, in its depiction of a product and an era.
In fact, in its own way, it’s kind of cool.
Promoting Murad Turkish cigarettes, a man and woman – “husband and wife” (could be…) – “friends with benefits 1919 style” (good possibility…) – members of the upper crust – (very, very likely…) delve into a treasure chest, and discover a box of Murad cigarettes, an example of which is also displayed in the lower-left corner of the illustration. They’re both dressed in Eastern-inspired finery; the man in a flowing robe and faux-Pharonic turban; the woman in a bejeweled headdress. Or at least, a very-much imagined, very-much fantasized version of such finery.
SRITA – Stanford Research Into the Impact of Tobacco Advertising (of Stanford University) – has interesting commentary on the origin and nature of this form of advertising, at its enormous digital collection of advertisements – almost 60,000 – pertaining to all manner of tobacco and related products. The Murad Collection (140 images) is described as follows:
“In the early 1900s, manufactures of Turkish and Egyptian cigarettes tripled their sales and became legitimate competitors to leading brands. The New York-based Greek tobacconist Soterios Anargyros produced the hand-rolled Murad cigarettes, made of pure Turkish tobacco. P. Lorillard acquired the Murad brand in 1911 through the dissolution of the Cigarette Trust, explaining the high quality of the Murad advertisements in the following years. Murad, along with other Turkish cigarette brands referenced the Oriental roots of their Turkish tobacco blends through pack art and advertising images. They also capitalized on the Eastern-inspired fashion trends of the time, which were inspired by the Ballets Russes (1909-1929) and its performance of Scherazade. The vibrant colors, luxurious jewels, exoticism and suggestive nature of the images in these advertisements contributed greatly to their appeal.
Women drenched in pearls, jewels and feathers, wearing harem pants or flowing dresses, were paired in the ads with men in expensive suits or in exotic turbans. The Orientalism, exoticism and luxury are evoked through Eastern-inspired garb accentuated the Turkish origins of the tobacco and presented it in an alluring, modern light. Indeed, the women in these ads, in particular, is seen as less of a reflection on Victorian femininity than a fantasy of an exotic enchantress from a foreign land or a modern woman shedding the shackles of Victorian propriety.”
An example of a Murad cigarette package produced by Soterios Anargyros, from Pinterest Turkish Cigarette Page – as depicted in the ad – is shown below.
A green-skinned woman (note her otherwise red pumps and equally red lipstick, as well as her strawberry-blond hair?) holding a pistol, is restrained by a guy in a skin-tight purple body-suit, while a red-headed (also) green warrior approaches upon a duck-billed-sort-of-pterodactyl, followed by reptile reinforcements? And behind all, three massive, almost-featureless, gray towers? And, what’s with that green-skinned guy laying in the foreground?
Gadzooks, what is going on here?
Well, there’s an explanation: Walter Popp’s cover art for the June, 1952 issue of Fantastic Adventures is a representation of “The Woman in Skin 13”, a tale by Paul W. Fairman. Strangely though, the cover lists the author’s name as “Gerald Vance”. This is an odd, for the magazine’s table of contents and the leading page of the story itself (it starts on page 8) clearly list the author as Fairman. Likewise, the Internet Speculative Fiction Database indicates that “Vance” was the pen-name for Randall Garrett, William P. McGivern, Rog Phillips, Richard S. Shaver, Robert Silverberg, and Henry Slesar – not a single “Paul W. Fairman” among them.
I first noticed this cover art some years back, I think (?) in Brian Aldiss’ compilation Science Fiction Art: The Fantasies of SF, published by Bounty Books (New York), back in 1975.
The scene depicted stands out as much for its strangeness as its GGA – “Good Girl Art” – qualities, the latter being manifested in much of artist Popp’s oeuvre.
In light of Fantastic Adventures, akin to many other science-fiction pulps now having been digitized and thus being immediately available at the Luminist Archive, and, the Pulp Magazine Archive, I thought it’d be interesting to read Fairman’s original text which was the basis of Popp’s painting. I wanted to see how the genre was presented in periodicals whose cover art has typically been – in retrospect! – far more memorable than their literary content. (Of course, with exceptions.) At least, as opposed to stories published in higher-tier pulps in the genres of 40s and 50s era science-fiction and fantasy, such as Astounding Science Fiction, Galaxy Science Fiction, and, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
So, Fairman’s story, while hardly great, is not bad, either; I think apt words would be “adequate” and “serviceable”. It is an entertaining and mild diversion. But, while competently written, it doesn’t at all possess the degree of originality in terms of plot and theme, let alone character development, that would makes one “pause” and ponder the tale, whether in the midst of reading it, or afterwards. It’s not at all great, by any stretch of the imagination. It’s not altogether bad, by any stretch of the imagination.
The plot is based on an alien invasion of Earth which begins in and expands from Chicago, by human-appearing – and, for all practical purposes, biologically human – invaders known as the Argans, who arrive aboard a generation-ship made of steel (yes, steel) known as the Narkus, with the goal of colonizing the earth. The males and females of this species, “…according to the refugees and the counter-attackers, were of two colors. The males were of a violet hue; the females, all the same shade, of green. Physically, both sexes were, according to Earth standards, magnificent specimens. They wore little clothing, but seemed entirely comfortable even in the comparative chill of night and early morning.”
The story centers around an effort (solely on the part of the United States, despite Chicago only being the starting point of a global invasion) to conduct an offensive against the Argans in order to regain captured territory, and, drive the aliens away. This action hinges on the infiltration of the Argans by one Mary Winston (the green-skinned woman on the cover), upon whose mind the memories and particularly the personality of a captured Argan female have been superimposed and imprinted. This process is the basis of the story’s title: “Skin 13” refers to the 13th effort (the prior 12 having been unsuccessful) to create a formula capable of dying human skin green in order to simulate the skin color of Argan females.
Paralleling Mary’s clandestine infiltration of Argan forces, her significant other – one Mark Clayton (the purple-suited guy on the cover) – leads a team of commandos into the heart of Argan-controlled territory, with the eventual goal of reuniting with Mary and returning her to Earth forces. En route, there are interactions with “zants” and “zors”. The former are a caste of Argan slaves, their control maintained by forces addiction to “dream pellets”; the latter (featured on the cover) are flying reptiles of a sort.
The ending – a bittersweet twist – I will not give away!
In sum, we have two oft-used plot elements of science-fiction: Extraterrestrial invasion, and, mind transference. It is the latter that’s really the crux of the story, and which Fairman develops to a great and solid extent.
So, given that I read the story, I thought it’d be interesting to turn it into a stand-alone document, should anyone “out there” be curious about Fairman’s now sixty-eight-year-old tale. So, in a roundabout way, I turned the file (from the Luminist Archive) into a stand-alone document (which, incidentally, incorporates the two illustrations appearing in the original text) which you can access here.
Neither great nor bad, the story is a passing and entertaining diversion.
Which, I suppose, is just what Paul Fairman and the publisher of Fantastic Adventures wanted.
[Though I created this post back on August 15, 2021, I’ve felt through the intervening year (it’s now July of 2022) that a central aspect of the story of “Red Sky at Morning” – the movie “Red Sky”, rather than Richard Bradford’s original novel upon which the film is based – has been missing. That missing piece is, given the centrality of Catherine Burns’ performance to the movie “Red Sky”, the story of Burns’ own life. While some of the links listed below, such as Wikipedia and IMDB, shed light on Burns’ life and brief acting career, by nature the information therein is limited in scope and depth.
However, the puzzle is a puzzle no longer. Scott Feinberg and Scott Johnson’s poignant and moving article “Catherine Burns: The Vanishing of an Oscar-Nominated Actress”, from February 3, 2020, atHollywoodReporter.com, provides a much fuller biography of Burns, encompassing her upbringing, brief acting career, and subsequent, intentionally anonymous life as a writer.]
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“I am one of a kind,” she said. “Ah, but what kind?” – Catherine Burns, 1989
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There wasn’t anything I could do. I just stood there with my hands behind me, wondering what was happening, and what was going to happen.
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“How old is this friend of yours that has the figure?” “My age. Seventeen.” “My God, are you insane? I already have a civic reputation as a lewd old man.” “This is a really nice girl. Her father’s a minister.” “Worse and worse.”
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“Red sky at night, sailors’ delight. Red sky at morning, sailors take warning.”
Red Sky at Morning. I remember this movie.
I remember catching it on NBC television in the 1970s. (The specific date and time were, just now I’ve found, Wednesday, January 30, 1974, at ten PM. )
I remember being as uninterested as I was unimpressed with the film – “Boring!”– which – looking back – was probably more reflective of my age than the film itself. Yet even then, to the small extent that I viewed it (“Isn’t anything going to happen?! It’s World War Two after all…!”) I noticed what I’d deem, in retrospect, to have been the air of skepticism? – distance? – deliberate anti-nostalgia? – surrounding the characters and story, especially in light of it having been set well into America’s engagement in the Second World War. The events of which, I noticed, were far, far more backdrop than central to the story.
And, I remember the presence of Richard Thomas in the film. That guy from The Waltons… What was he doing in New Mexico? I thought he was in Virginia…
(I was always interested in movies, television programs, and books dealing with history, but somehow, The Waltons left me cold. The show seemed to have been permeated by a Potekmin-Village-like air of near mathematically-generated-sentimentality, especially the grating, contrived, ingenuous “Niiight, ‘sooo-and-sooo’…. routine that accompanied each episode’s closing credits (I’d turn the volume down whenever that came on) particularly ironic given the post-WW II ideological ethos of the CBS Television network (and not just CBS) – which today, looking back from 2021, seems quaint.)
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So, moving forward.
Here’s the 1986 Harper Perennial edition of Richard Bradford’s Red Sky At Morning. What really caught my attention far more than the story itself (!) – well, thus far! – is William Low’s lovely, subtle, and entirely well-conceived cover art, which expresses a transition from youth to adulthood; the uncertainty between moods of “beginning”, “possibility”, and the arrival of a new horizon – or impending danger, the “unknown”, and “oncoming challenge” – all depending on the viewer’s mindset – “Do you see morning or evening?”; the manner in which most of the composition is actually occupied by horizon and sky, rather than characters and action; the characters themselves, representing a triad of youth, young adulthood, and (wizened? detached? patient? skeptical?) middle age:
There’s a conversation going on…
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So. I have not read the novel just yet (too much of a backlog!), but these excerpts give an appreciation for Bradford’s prose…
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“Amadeo,” she said, “seems to be forgetting that he’s a servant and not a member of the family. Your father’s always been too lenient with both of them. He seems to lose all perspective when he come to Sagrado, and forgets his class distinctions. Class distinctions are extremely important, because without them nobody knows where his place in life is. A stable society is a society in which everyone knows his situation.”
“And anything else is Red Communism, right?”
“Don’t you dare be sarcastic with me. Don’t you dare be snotty. You’re already picking up a lot of filthy manners from those tacky trash you go to school with, that Greek boy and that Davidson girl. Do you know that she’s Jewish?”
“I thought her father was the Episcopal minister,” I said.
“He is,” she said. “That’s just the point. That’s the first thing they do, become Episcopals.”
“Well, if they’re Episcopals, how can they be Jewish? I mean, if you switch from being a Baptist to being a Methodist, you’re not a Baptist any more.”
“I don’t care how Episcopalian they pretend to be. I don’t care if one of them becomes the Archbishop of Canterbury.”
“Okay,” I said. “First thing tomorrow I’ll go out and paint a swastika on St. Thomas’s.”
“You just shut your mouth, Joshua M. Arnold, or I’ll come over there and slap it shut for you. I’m going to write your father about your behavior.”
“You might mention in the same letter that Kimbob’s got pneumonia. Dad might need some cheering up.”
She got up from he chair and walked three or four steps and slapped me on the check with her right hand. I didn’t even have time to finch; she’d never slapped me before. It didn’t really hurt, but it stung, and it made me sick to my stomach. I felt as though I’d been hit by a crazy stranger. I wanted to hit her back, to slug her a good one, so I locked my hands behind my back to be sure I wouldn’t. She cracked me another one, backhand, on the nose, and it made tears come to my eyes. I could feel my nose starting to bleed. There wasn’t anything I could do. I just stood there with my hands behind me, wondering what was happening, and what was going to happen. I was much bigger than she was, and heavier and stronger. I’d never noticed before what a little woman my mother was. I looked at her face closely while she was hitting me, and it was a stranger’s face. Her cheeks were fuller than they’d ever been, and her skin was gray. There were tiny grape-colored lines in her cheeks near her nose, and the whites of her eyes were pink, as it she’d been swimming in a chlorinated pool. Each time she slapped me I caught a whiff of sherry.
She said, “Apologize! Apologize! Apologize!” and each time she said it she slapped me. But when I opened my mouth she hit me in it. I don’t know how many time she slapped me. My face was getting numb, and the slaps sent little dark red drops of blood from my nose flying around the room. After five or six blows, I realized, in a detached and clear-headed way, that I wasn’t angry any more, just bored. So I finally brought my hands around in front of me and grabbed her wrists and held them. They were thin and without strength. I said, as slowly and clearly as I could, “I’m sorry, Mother,” and dropped her wrists and walked into my bedroom. It was only after I’d sat down on the side of the bed that my legs began to tremble.
I sat in the dark for several minutes, waiting for her to come in and start again, but she didn’t. I turned on the light and went into the bathroom and wiped the blood off my face with a wet washcloth, and then I threw up the coffee that Chango’s parents had served me. (115-117)
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I walked home alone, and saw that the frying pan from breakfast was still in the sink where I’d left it. My mother was still in her room; I could hear her humming tunelessly to herself. I washed the frying pan and put it away, and then went down the hill, turning left on Camino Chiquito to go to Romeo’s studio.
He had a dirty white bandage wrapped around his head, and a purple bruise extending down his jaw. He pointed to it. “Anna moved out, and left me with this. She hit me with an iron saucepan during a perfectly civil discussion about art, and when I awoke she was gone, along with eighteen dollars and several cases of Vienna sausage, which I’d been saving for when I was really broke. Come in. I want you to meet Shirley.”
Shirley was sitting at the table, smoking a cigarette, and wearing the same dirty bathrobe that Anna had worn. She was very large and sleepy-looking, and acknowledged my presence by slowly nodding her head. Her bathrobe was untied, and she was naked underneath it. She arranged it arranged her very deliberately, without changing her expression. “Romeo”, she said, yawning, “I’m tired. Can I rest now?”
“Shirley, my dear, you’ve been resting for half an hour. Don’t you remember? Look at all the cigarette butts in the ashtray.”
“Oh,” she said, “half an hour. I’m so-o-o tired.” She cradled her head on her arms and conked off.
Romeo took the burning cigarette from between her fingers and put it out. “You want some coffee?”
I nodded, and we walked over to the kitchen area. “Have you been giving her sleeping pills?” I asked him.
“No, it’s her thyroid. When she first came three days ago I took her down to my doctor, and he gave her a basal metabolism test. He told me that clinically she’s been dead for some time. Has no thyroid gland at all. He wrote a prescription for thyroid stimulants, but I like her this way. If I gave her the pills she might get jumpy and start throwing things, like Anna. This way she’s easy to handle.”
“Can she model?”
“She’s a terrific model. She’s like a catatonic. I can arrange her in any position, standing, sitting, kneeling, leaning over, balanced on one toe, and she falls asleep and never moves. Of course, she’s not very good as a housekeeper, but she eats very little. It doesn’t take much fuel to keep an engine that sluggish moving. All in all, I’d say she was about perfect. She may even be intelligent, but she can’t stay alert long enough to let me know.”
“I know a girl who’d be a good model,” I said. “She has a good figure, anyway.”
“Good figures have nothing to do with it. Or very little. A model has to have some imagination and lots of muscular control, and she has to know how to take orders. If she looks like Miss America she’ll probably be a lousy model. Girls that are always preening themselves and showing you their profiles and wondering if they have a pimple on their behinds. How old is this friend of yours that has the figure?”
“My age. Seventeen.”
“My God, are you insane? I already have a civic reputation as a lewd old man.”
“This is a really nice girl. Her father’s a minister.”
“Worse and worse. I can see that you have no appreciation for the niceties. Here, drink your coffee. It may help to clear your mind.” (120-122)
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“At the heart of this coming-of-age story of young man sitting out World War II with his mother is a father-son relationship of intense mutual respect and loyalty. The year is 1944. When Mr. Arnold volunteers his services to the navy, Josh Arnold and his mother are transplanted from Mobile, Alabama, to the hills of New Mexico. The leading player is seventeen-year-old Josh, who narrates the story with deadpan irreverent humor. Miss Anne, Josh’s genteel Southern Belle mother, gradually withers in Sagrado, tippling sherry and playing bridge with Jimbob Buel, their permanent houseguest, while Josh becomes an integral member of the Corazon, Sagrado community – Chango, a criminal kid turned softie and Chango’s sister Viola, a would-be-nun-turned criminal; Steenie Stenopolus, who collects sex facts from his father, the OB-GYN; Marcia, the rector’s daughter; and others. The group is as delightful as they disreputable. In the correspondence between father and son, we watch Josh come into his own as he reconciles news of the war with the events and people that are shaping his life in Sagrado. In this New Mexican hill town, Bradford takes a piece of America and catches the enduring spirit of youth and the values of life that count.”
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The 1971 film Red Sky at Morning is the subject of Larry Karaszewski’s review, at Trailers from Hell.
On another note, it was only while completing this post that I learned about the extraordinarily talented Catherine Burns who played Marcia Davidson, her acting career having spanned 1967 through 1984. Burns also published a children’s novel, The Winter Bird (link given below), possibly (?) one of a number of works. According to Wikipedia, “Little is known about Burns’ life following her acting career; Shire said that she had resented the publicity and scrutiny from it, saying “She hated the movie [Last Summer]… and most everything that came with it. She wanted to be remembered as a published writer of novels.”
You can listen to the movie’s theme, “Red Sky at Morning Suite” (quite an appropriate name!), by Billy Goldenberg (William Leon Goldenberg), at Valdez444’s YouTube Channel.
And – yes! – you can view the full movie at Christian Arthur’s YouTube Channel (Gadzooks – download it now while you still can….!) ((Just kidding.)) (((Or am I…?))) ((((!))))
“It was because there was only one Phoenix. Only one in the whole world.”
Time flies. It really, really does.
Case in point, “this” post, dating back to 2017, pertaining to Ballantine Books’ 1976 anthology “The Best of C.L. Moore”. Now in 2022 (one hell of a year it’s turning out to be, and what of the future?), it’s time for a rewrite…
As one of my several posts presenting Ballantine Books’ Classic Science Fiction series “The Best Of…” (insert appropriate author’s name [here]!), the time arrived to revisit and refine the post’s text and images. Partially…because I like to improve my existing posts. Partially … especially … because Catherine Moore is among my favorite science fiction authors, her writing displaying remarkable levels of depth, richness, and substance, all presented through a singularly distinctive literary style.
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First things first … C.L. Moore’s portrait, from Tellers of Weird Tales, where the caption is given as follows: “Catherine L. Moore (1911-1987) — The date of the photograph is unknown, but the author-to-be is quite young, perhaps still a student. Look upon this and other pictures of her, read her stories, and you’ll not wonder why Forrest J Ackerman called her “Catherine the Great,” why E. Hoffman Price confessed his love for her, and why Henry Kuttner proposed to her shortly after their first meeting. From the collection of Julius Schwartz and reprinted in Locus, March 1988.” (For this post, I’ve used Photoshop to slightly enhance the image.)
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Here’s the paperback edition of The Best of C.L. Moore, with cover art by The Brothers Hildebrandt.
The worn-around-the-edges and not-so-pristine-quality of my copy is evidence less of its forty-four year age than my several (!) readings of it over the intervening decades. Even without the painters’ signature, the cover is immediately distinguishable as a Hildebrandt work, by virtue of the richness, texture, and brightness of side elements (in this case, curtains and stairway) set around a central brightness, illumination, or backlighting. Though not evident in this cover by virtue of the subject matter (the protagonist Deirdre from the story “No Woman Born” having become a cyborg), there’s an extremely distinctive muscularity to some – not all – of the characters in Hildebrandt art, inspired by and reflecting the influence of comics.
From Pinterest, here’s the Hildebrandt cover art in its pre-publication form: sans title, publisher’s logo, and boring stuff like price and Ballantine book number. Even with having been tweaked via Photoshop Elements (yeah, I did that), the colors here are less saturated those displayed on the book, suggesting that Ballantine brightened the colors and shifted the tones towards yellow, red, and orange to make the cover art more noticeable; more catchy. Accompanying this, the right and left sides, and, top edge were slightly cropped to allow Deirdre’s figure to occupy more of the cover area.
As in my other posts about science fiction and fantasy anthologies, the book’s contents are listed below. But this time, I’ve done things a little done differently: Each title is linked to a PDF version of the listed story. These PDFs were created from the digital version of the pulp magazine in which the story itself originally appeared, as accessed through the Internet Archive’sPulp Magazine Archive, through which digital copies are available in a variety of formats. In this case, relevant issues were downloaded in Comic Book Zip format, and, using CBR Reader, the pages comprising the story were converted to JPGs, along with tables of contents. The individual pages – files – were then combined to create a single PDF of the story, after lots of adjustment for color, and, brightness and contrast.
Of the stories listed below, the original scanning and uploading to the Internet Archive was done for eight by Sketch the Cow, and for two (“Black Thirst” and “The Black God’s Kiss”) by zatoichi01.
For two stories (“No Woman Born” and “Vintage Season”) the magazine covers were scanned from my own copies of Astounding, while other covers are from the Internet Archive issue, or, some-random-else-where on the Internet. (I don’t yet own a copy of the singularly significant July, 1939 issue of Astounding!) In all cases, page numbers are identical to and correlate with those in the original magazine, while interior art associated with the stories is naturally included.
Though these stories are obviously – by definition! – immediately present in “this” Ballantine volume, and certainly have been anthologized many times elsewhere, after viewing them at the Pulp Magazine Archive, I thought it’d be an interesting endeavor to make them available – digitally – in the (purely visual, not physical!; purely visual, not digitized text) format in which they first appeared. While I’m sure that some visitors to this blog, and particularly this post, may already be more than familiar with “Golden Age” science fiction and fantasy, perhaps stories might ignite a spark (and perhaps an ember, and maybe a flame?!) of interest in a wider audience.
As for C.L. Moore’s overall body of work, two of the stories – “Shambleau” (Moore’s first published work) and “Black Thirst” (her second published story) are tales of Northwest Smith, while “The Black God’s Kiss” is the first story (and her fifth published tale) featuring Jirel of Joiry. Notably, “Vintage Season” the last listed (and chronologically last published) story in the anthology is by Lawrence O’Donnell, the pen name for collaborative authorship by Moore and her husband, Henry Kuttner.
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This (undated) well-known image of the husband-and-wife writing team otherwise known (!) as “Lawrence O’Donnell” (or, “Lewis Padgett”) is from James Gunn’s 1975 Alternate Worlds – The Illustrated History of Science Fiction.
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Aside from the above-mentioned stories, Jirel of Joiry was Moore’s protagonist in the following stories, all published in Weird Tales…
“Black God’s Shadow” – December, 1934 “Jirel Meets Magic” – July, 1935 “The Dark Land” – January, 1936 “Hellsgarde” – April, 1939
…while Northwest Smith was the central character in these stories, also in Weird Tales…
“Scarlet Dream” – May, 1934 “Dust of Gods” – August, 1934 “Julhi” – March, 1935 “The Cold Gray God” – October, 1935 “Yvala” – February, 1936 “Lost Paradise” – July, 1936 “The Tree of Life” – October, 1936 “Nymph of Darkness” – December, 1939 (Co-Authored with Forrest J. Ackerman)
…with Jirel and Northwest appearing in only one story in Moore’s oeuvre, “Quest of the Starstone”, in the magazine’s November, 1937 issue.
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As for the quality of Moore’s writing, it’s outstanding. Stylistically, her use of language is utterly remarkable in depicting changing mental states, perceptions, and thoughts of her characters – or action and activity – even if this only spans, in the context of an actual tale, a limited amount of time, or, a brief event. This skill likewise applies to her ability to create and describe the physical nature of imagined worlds, and the psychological and emotional impact of these places; these lands; these settings, upon men and women; upon individuals and groups; upon peoples and civilizations.
Her work lies upon the intersection of science fiction and fantasy, for while it certainly includes elements and tropes of science fiction (space travel, genetic engineering, time travel, aliens, extraterrestrial intelligence, parallel universes, cybernetics, dystopias, as well as physically decayed or morally degenerate cultures and civilizations, as in “Judgement Night”), these largely serve as background points or foundations for tales that in reality are character driven, and founded in elements of myth and legend.
In this, Moore’s work is the antithesis of “hard” science fiction, and, had her greatest years of productivity occurred from the 40s through the 60s, her writing would, I think, have found a ready home in Galaxy Science Fiction, or, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
Coupled with this is Moore’s sense of realism about human nature and “life” (the final paragraph of “The Black God’s Kiss” is quite stunning, and – by being utterly un-“woke” in the world of 2022 – reveals her understanding of human nature). Not all; not necessarily most, or her stories have upbeat, optimistic, happy endings, many of her tales concluding, at best, on notes of uncertainty and ambivalence. For example, “Greater Than Gods,” a tale of the intersection and conflict between parallel universes and, the implications of this for humanity’s future, ends with a successful resolution, but not an entirely happy one. Likewise the superb “Shambleau”: The threat is confronted and ultimately destroyed, but at the tale’s end, hero Northwest Smith’s mindset is one of ambivalence, for though he has survived (and this only because of his rescue, at the last moment, by his friend), he is not the same man he was before the tale began, and may never be again.
With all this, and more, many of Moore’s tales could be readily adapted for for the cinema (or streaming video). As to that eventuality, now, nearly a century after the appearance of her first story? Who knows. But, it’s nice to think about.
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There are numerous depictions of Jirel of Joiry and Northwest Smith, ranging from book covert art, to interior illustrations, to simple imagined images. So while we’re at it, here’s Hervé Leblan’s depiction of an encounter between Jirel and Northwest, as a single image created from the cover art of Jirel de Joiry, and, Les Aventures de Northwest Smith, both published in Paris in late 2010. The fact that you can’t actually see Jirel’s face lends a touch of intrigue to the composition!
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Titles of Moore’s four other pulp fiction works – listed at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database as having been written specifically by her, as opposed to collaboration with Henry Kuttner (the latter by far representing the bulk of her work) – follow:
Particularly valuable in Dr. Sadler’s discussion is the focus paid to “Vintage Season”. And, like all of Dr. Sadler’s Speculative Fiction videos, the feedback, commentary, and (yes!) speculation by attendees of his lectures (not visible in the video) is invaluable.
Then again, then again…
Eric Rosenfield, at Literate Machine, takes an entirely different approach, for instead of focusing upon Moore in the context of the literary, philosophical, and symbolic aspects of her writing, his video is instead a study of Catherine L. Moore herself, as a writer; simply a person, in “Vintage Season – C.L. Moore and the “Golden Age of Science Fiction“. Mr. Rosenfield’s insightful video discusses Moore’s life, her husband Henry Kuttner, and other twentieth century science fiction and fantasy writers in the context of the straightforward challenges inherent to making a nominal living as a writer of pulp fiction; the effect of mid-twentieth century technological, economic, and cultural changes upon the worlds of writing and publishing; the psychological and (quite literally) physical toll incurred by at least some writers (think Henry Kuttner, Cyril K. Kornbluth, and perhaps H. Beam Piper) from the demanding nature of their vocation. Stepping “back” – far back; say, from an allegorical altitude of twenty-thousand-feet – what emerges from Rosenfield’s retrospective is a tale of struggle, accomplishment, and eventually, sad irony.
Particularly valuable at Mr. Rosenfield’s video is this comment by viewer Hollis Ramsey: “I waited in vain for some pithy comments on “Vintage Season” as well as on the tendency of Kuttner and Moore’s collabs to have the unhappy endings that I remarked upon in my comments on your video about “Mimsy Were the Borogoves” (not “Borogroves”). One of the things I find attractive in Kuttner and Moore’s short fiction IS their ability to refuse conventional “once upon a time … happily ever after” summations. Not only do “Vintage Season” and “Mimsy Were the Borogoves” end with death or separation, but “When the Bough Breaks” also ends with death, albeit the death of their horrible child being a great relief to his parents. In addition, my favorite C. L. Moore story, “The Bright Illusion,” ends in the deaths of 3 of the 4 characters … BUT for the 2 lovers we can’t be certain that their deaths are the finale to their love. Now THAT’S a real kicker!”
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To close, an excerpt from “No Woman Born”, the inspiration for Hildebrandt’s cover art:
“Could you ever duplicate this body?” she asked.
Maltzer glanced down at his shaking hands. “I don’t know. I doubt it. I – ”
“Could anyone else?”
He was silent. Deirdre answered for him.
“I don’t believe anyone could. I think it was an accident. A sort of mutation halfway between flesh and metal. Something accidental and … and unnatural, turning off on a wrong course of evolution that never reaches a dead end. Another brain in a body like this might die or go mad, as you thought I would. The synapses are too delicate. You were – call it lucky – with me. From what I know now, I don’t think a … a baroque like me could happen again.” She paused a moment.
“What you did was kindle the fire for the phoenix, in a way. And the phoenix rises perfect and renewed from its own substance. Do you remember why it had to reproduce itself that way?”
Maltzer shook his head.
“I’ll tell you,” she said. “It was because there was only one Phoenix. Only one in the whole world.”
