Imagination: Stories of Science and Fantasy, October, 1950, featuring “The Soul Stealers”, by Chester S. Geier [Hannes Bok]

Imagination, first published in 1950 and edited in its first year by Ray A. Palmer, and from 1951 through 1958 by William L. Hamling, featured two issues in its eight-year-long lifespan with cover art by Hannes Bok. Symbolically and appropriately, the inaugural issue – with an absolutely stunning cover – was one of these two issues.

Like the overwhelming majority – if not the entirety? – of Bok’s works, several aspects of the painting immediately key the viewer as to the identity of its creator: Its visual “texture”. Bold, heavily saturated colors. Very strong contrast between light and dark. A tacit sense of eroticism (not in all his paintings) which while obvious is neither overwhelming nor really central to the composition. The presence of animals recognizable from the world of nature (that’s some big bird the girl’s riding!), accompanied by fanciful, delicate, creatures whose anatomy straddles that of insect, bird, man, and as the case may be, alien. The influence of Maxfield Parrish is obvious, but this is far more of a background influence than a template, for Bok’s work was truly unique, and I think vastly better than Parrish’s, whose paintings I’ve never really liked anyway. (Some of them kind of freak me out! Really. Ugh.)

Akin to Bok’s cover of the first issue of Ray Palmer’s Science Stories, I was fortunately able to find an image of the original art for the first issue of Imagination, and doubly fortunate that this image is in high resolution. Paralleling Science Stories, differences in color saturation between the magazine-cover-as-printed, and the digital image of the original art, are very strong. As you can see, below.

Of even greater fortune, I recently obtained a (physical, not photon!) copy of the first issue of Imagination, which considering its almost-seventy-four-year age, is in remarkably good condition, with an almost – except for a little page yellowing! – “hot off the press” feel to it.

Here it is:

“Wraithlike, they came out of the darkness –
Dead men who walked among the living.
What grim secret lay in their sightless eyes –
a warning to all other men!”

As for the cover story – Chester S. Geier’s “The Soul Stealers” – I can offer neither description nor opinion. I’ve not read it. Though it’s never been anthologized or reprinted, it is available via Project Gutenberg, here. As for Geier himself, he was active from the early ’40s through the mid ’50s.

In the meantime, enjoy this leading (and only) illustration from the story.

“There was danger in the presence of this girl,
and yet somehow,
Terry Bryan knew he must reach her…”