Literary Art and Illustration – Page 2 – Images and Thoughts to Inspire Your Intellect and Infuse Your Imagination!

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction – May, 1957 (Featuring “Adjustment”, by Ward Moore) [Frank Kelly Freas] [Updated post 2024…!]

Note!… Originally created in March of 2020, I’ve updated this post to include a comment by Brett Bayne, which follows:

Hello,
I have just finished reading your fascinating and informative blog post about Ward Moore’s story “Adjustment,” published in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and featuring cover art by Frank Kelly Freas. You helpfully included a link to a PDF of the story. Thank you for that. Here’s my question: Is the young woman depicted in the original painting supposed to be Lucille Ball? It sure looks like her!
Let me know your thoughts.
Many thanks,
Brett Bayne in L.A.

I present my thoughts about Mr. Bayne’s question below…!

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Like other science fiction artists, Frank Kelly Freas’ works display a certain style that makes them immediately (well, almost immediately!) identifiable.

Though he was more than capable of rendering the human figure in a purely representative and natural form, the distinctive “quality” of Freas’ compositions seems to lie in the very faces of the central or most prominent figures in his compositions. These are often exaggerated in dimension, proportion, or shape, making them symbolically “fit” the mood of the story, and, the character’s specific role within it.

Case in point, the cover of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for May of 1957, illustrating a scene from Ward Moore’s tale “Adjustment”. The surprised and utterly abashed fellow on the left is “Mr. Squith” (great choice of surname – though “Mr. Squish” or “Mr. Squid” would do just as well!), who, if not a hero in a classical sense – well, he’s no hero, in any sense! – is most assuredly the protagonist, albeit a protagonist of a passive and – to the reader – utterly exasperating sort.

Well. “Adjustment” might have been just a little risque in its day, but in the brittle and tired world of 2020, the tale has an air of quaintness, charm, and even innocence of a sort. Mr. Squith, it turns out, is rather oblivious to the nature of human social interactions, and the cues and signals – spoken and especially unspoken – that pass between people, in effect becoming the tale’s straight man and object of humor.

As for Freas’ art itself?

Well, here’s the cover as published…

…and, below is the cover – from Heritage Fine Auctions – as originally painted. (The painting was sold as part of an auction held on June 27- 28, 2012.)

Though I’m not certain of the details, it seems that the editors of Fantasy and Science Fiction had second thoughts about Freas’ cover as originally created, with Freas adjusting the art for “Adjustment” accordingly. Likewise, the promotional blurb about the magazine itself – which typically appeared on the rear cover, if at all – was strategically located to the front.

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And now for something sort of different. Well, uh, divertingly different… Well. You know.

Yes, even when I created this post four years ago (now being 2024), I was immediately struck by the similarities (exaggerated similarities, but similarities nonetheless) between the “face” (not * ahem * physiognomy) of the woman on Freas’ cover – most immediately attracting the attention and astonishment of our preternaturally naive and (alas) erotically oblivious protagonist, Mr. Squith – and that of Lucille Ball. I didn’t write as much at the time, but this is especially so in light of the pleasing but very generic faces of the bemused ladies at lower left. Mr. Squith’s lady is very much an individual. A recognizable individual. An identifiable individual.

By way of comparison, three pictures of Lucille Ball are shown below.

The verdict? No coincidence.

In other words, “Here’s Lucy!”

“I Love Lucy” 1958 promo image.

New York Post, August 4, 2021: “Rare tapes revealed: Lucille Ball has SiriusXM podcast decades after death”

Cast of I Love Lucy with William Frawley, Desi Arnaz, and Vivian Vance – Undated photo. “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour aired on CBS from 1962 to 1967. … The photo has only a “date use” stamp for 27 April 1989, which is the day after Lucille Ball’s death. The photo was apparently kept in the newspaper’s photo files after it was received and not published in that respective newspaper until after Ball’s death.”

You can read Mr. Squith’s adventure here, and about Lucy Ball at Wikipedia.

Alas, poor, naive Mr. Squith…

March 12, 2020 – 320

A Reimagined Cover: The Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. – October, 1959 [Richard M. Powers] [Revised June, 2018 and March, 2024…]

So!

At long last, seasons 5 and 6 of The Expanse have finally been made available on DVD. A few moments ago I finished watching episode 1 of Season 5, which continues entirely undiminished from the superlative quality – in acting, writing, pacing, special effects (but of course), plot, and “mood” – from the prior four seasons’ episodes. Though I’m more than tempted to binge-watch the entirety of the new release – episode-to-episode in a continuous chain – without letup; with pause; without sleep (?); without food and drink (?!?) (naaah, just vastly exaggerating on those last two) – I’ll not do so, for I prefer to view each episode individually, thus enhancing the anticipation for and impact of each successive viewing. I’ll stretch it out. Then, I’ll go back to re-watch the entire season, to pick up the nuances of each episode that I may not have noticed the first time around.

Aside from its superb quality, a central theme of The Expanse – not explicitly articulated in the series, but nonetheless omnipresent – is that regardless of technological change, human nature in all its variations of good, evil, and somewhere-in-between, does not fundamentally change, and thus and inevitably, neither does human society. This is a tremendous and near-irreconcilable contrast with Star Trek (at least, Trek’s earliest incarnations, particularly TOS) many episodes of which were undergirded by a weighty and truly deadening air of progressive utopianism – human salvation and transcendence through the (forced) perfection of mankind? – reflective of both Gene Roddenberry’s personal beliefs and the tenor of the 60s. Yet, in spite of The Expanse’s realistic portrayal of the often disconcerting complexities of human nature, I think – it seems; it looks like – there’s an undercurrent of existential justice – just recompense for evil; the arduous and eventual endurance of good – that is manifest in the show’s “universe”, even if subtle, imperfect, and all too often sadly incomplete. As in, alas, our own world.

Anyway…

…back to this post!

Back in 2021 I spent a measure of time with an experiment in Photoshop Elements: Basically, I wanted to “re-imagine” the cover art of some particularly striking examples among my very many scans of the covers of science fiction books and pulps, in order see these works as originally painted, prior to the addition of titles, text, and publisher’s logos. Two are these are already “on display”: William Timmins’ cover for the January, 1946 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, and, Chesley Bonestell’s cover for the December, 1950 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Here’s another, albeit “this” post originally dates back to June of 2018: Richard Powers’ cover for Dell’s October, 1959 printing of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.’s, The Sirens of Titan. This image – which continues here from this post as it was originally created six years ago – shows my actual copy. (Purchased for about $1.00 a couple of decades ago at a used bookstore. (‘What’s a bookstore?” you might ask?”)) Thus, the seller punched a hole in the “price” at the cover’s upper right.

As t the novel itself? Ironically, I cannot offer deep commentary here, having read the book some decades ago. (Really.) Suffice to say that I know I enjoyed and was impressed by the author’s originality, but nowhere near enough to compel reading of Vonnegut, Jr.’s other, more “mainstream” works. Which, I have not.

Anyway, Powers’ cover art is typically wonderful, and beautifully displays his suggestion of a futuristic city-scape via elevated, bulbous “Jetsons” like towers; horizontally differentiated shades of color that gently suggest a distant if obscured horizon; strange and indefinable objects that suggest a blend of the organic, metallic, and mechanical; and – somewhat of a rarity for a Powers’ cover from the 50s and 60s – human figures that are clearly defined, as opposed to being miniscule and dwarfed by their surroundings. (Despite the abstractness of his work, the artist was entirely capable of rendering the human form to great effect.)

With that, here’s the cover as I re-created it using Photoshop Elements, by which I deleted all text, and cleaned up nicks, chips, and dings. This gives a glimpse approximating (I hope closely!) what Powers created before he handed the painting off to Dell’s art department.

Here are close-ups of the edited cover.

First, the lady. Or more correctly, one of the Titanian Sirens.

And, the whatever-it-is. If you rotate the image to the left so that the long dimension is horizontal, you’ll see that the sphere suggests a vague resemblance to a woman’s face.