Published in the March, 1939, issue of Amazing Stories, “Marooned Off Vesta”, the third science-fiction story written by Isaac Asimov and an example of “hard” SF, was his first published tale.
Though the story is significant in terms of Asimov’s literary oeuvre, ironically, given his centrality in the history of science fiction, I’ve not read the tale. Then again (minor blasphemy, given the ethos of this blog?!), with the exception of Pebble In the Sky, I’ve not read any tale in the Foundation series or any of his robot stories. The reason being, simply put, that I’ve never liked Asimov’s writing style, though some decades ago – at the time I read it; perhaps it resonated with me then! – I greatly enjoyed The End of Eternity in terms of plot and pacing.
Regardless, I thought it’d be nice to present Robert Fuqua’s very busy lead illustration for “Marooned Off Vesta”. Like many such examples from the era, the spaceship is imagined with a very strong nautical or industrial “air”, what with rivets, portholes (are they portholes?!), pipes, girders, and hinges. Evocative of its time. It makes such a strange contrast with Fuqua’s cover painting that one could be forgiven for assuming that the illustrations were created by different artists. I can only suppose that the truly awful cover painting – in contrast to the absolutely lovely cover art that appeared in earlier issues of Amazing – was simply a reflection of what the magazine’s readers, and thus its editors, actually wanted. (Megacephalic, big-eared, naked, spindly aliens inside a golden-geared fishbowl? Gadzooks!)
While you’re here, you might want to visit Virgil Finlay’s 1959 version of Fuqua’s interior art…
As for the real Vesta, check out this NASA Video “Dawn Spacecraft’s Farewell Portrait of Giant Asteroid Vesta“…
Marooned Off Vesta, at…
… Internet Speculative Fiction Database
… ArtStation (by Cosmin Panfil)
… Science Daily (“Geologists propose theory about a famous asteroid”)
Robert Fuqua, at…
… Internet Speculative Fiction Database