April 2022 – Literary Art and Illustration

Time for another cover from Horace L. Gold’s Beyond Fantasy Fiction…

Specifically, the magazine’s issue of March, 1954, the fifth of the ten issues comprising the publication’s total run, seven of which (July, September, and November of ’53, and, January, May, July and September of ’54) are the subjects of my prior posts.

The illustration’s by Scott Templar, about whom I’m unable to find much of anything (or, any thing) further. However, this illustration was used as the cover art for Philip José Farmer’s The God Business, one of the two titles comprising Armchair Fiction’s book number 192, in their Sci-Fi & Horror Double Novels series, the other being S.J. Byrne’s The Naked Goddess, the latter first published in the October, 1952 issue of Ray Palmer’s Other Words.

Consistent with the theme of cover art for all other issues of Beyond, the cover has absolutely no relationship or tie-in to any story featured in the magazine. Rather, it simply sets up a mood – in this case, a mood of dreadful whimsy (or, is it whimsical dread?) – in the realm of the supernatural, rather than science fiction. In this case, the arm of a violet and hopefully unviolent c r e a t u re (!) emerges from within the pages of a book entitled “Demonology”, turning off the stained-glass shaded lamp of a somnolent reader. Is the sleepy fellow a warlock in retirement? A bibliophile making forays within Fortean flights of fancy? A scholar of the strange? A librarian in his leisure?

What about the book itself: Though the title is “Demonology”, is this the work’s actual title, or simply a chapter heading? Of vastly greater import, could this work in reality be one of the extremely rare copies of the revised and illuminated American edition of the dread Necronomicon, which never quite made its way into the holdings of Miskatonic University?

Contents…

The God Business, by Philip José Farmer
Hell to Pay, by Randall Garrett (Gordon R.P.D. Garrett)
Gone Witch, by Roy Hutchins
Lover Boy, by Dick Francis (Richard Stanley Francis)
The Green-Eyed Corner, by Jay Clarke
Henry Martindale, Great Dane, by Miriam Alled deFord
Then – Nothing, by D.V. Gilder
The Watchful Poker Chip, by Ray Bradbury