Literary Art and Illustration – Page 10 – Images and Thoughts to Inspire Your Intellect and Infuse Your Imagination!

Analog Science Fact -> Science Fiction – June, 1963 – Featuring “The Trouble With Telstar”, by John Berryman [John Schoenherr]

Condé Nast‘s iteration of Analog from late 1961 through August, 1980 – during which interval there were four variants of the magazine’s full title – included the large-format “bedsheet” Analog Science Fact -> Science Fiction, which was published from March, 1963, through March, 1965. I’ve always admired the aesthetics, simplicity, and minimalism of this cover design, which along with Life, Look, and Advertising Age, bespeaks of a publication you might find in the lobby of, say? … Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce / Sterling Cooper & Partners on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan. Well come to think of it, in the alternate world of “Mad Men” Ken Cosgrove (one of the few distinctly likeable and even fewer ethical characters of the series) did write on the side – for Analog’s competitor Galaxy. Y’know, the story about the woman who laid an egg, and, the clumsy (or malicious?) robot who broke the bridge between two worlds. For which efforts he was admonished by Roger Sterling.

So, here’s the cover of the June, ’63 issue of Analog. John Schoenherr’s painting is lovely. Though the exterior Telstar wasn’t gold in color (perhaps the artist wanted to suggest sunlight reflecting off a white surface?), the juxtaposition of the satellite, astronaut, and X-20 Dyna-Soar spaceplane, all set against a sparkling impression of one of our galaxy’s spiral arms in the background – notice that the background is very, very dark blue, but not pure black? – makes a great canvas. A caveat: I haven’t read this story, which has only reprinted in two anthologies edited by John W. Campbell, Jr. As described at GoodReads it, “centres on an engineer who travels into space to repair an elusive fault in the indicated Communications satellite (the first experimental AT&T Telstar satellite had been launched into orbit by NASA in July 1962).”

And more?

John Berryman, at…

… GoodReads

… Internet Speculative Fiction Database

… Classics of Science Fiction (discussing “Special Flight” from May, 1939)

The Trouble with Telster, at…

… Internet Speculative Fiction Database

Telstar (itself!), at…

… Wikipedia

… Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

“July 23, 1962 – Telstar: First Live Satellite Broadcast”, at Real Time 1960s (uploaded July 25, 2022)

“Telstar 1 – The Satellite That Changed the World”, at Curious Droid (uploaded August 24, 2022)

Worlds of Tomorrow, June, 1963, featuring “Spaceman on A Spree”, by Mack Reynolds [Unknown artist]

While the overwhelming majority of images at this blog are of illustrations from my own books, magazines, and random paraphernalia, a relative few – such as in “this” post – have been taken from images (JPGs) already available on the Internet, or, adapted from PDFs. I most commonly accessed files in the latter format via the Luminist Archive, or, the Pulp Magazine Archive, which seem (?!?) to a degree, to share the came content.

That’s how I found the below images from the June ’63 issue of Worlds of Tomorrow, which features illustrations from the relatively-lesser-known-artist Norman Nodel, for Mack Reynold’s “Spaceman on a Spree”. Which fact brings with it a caveat: I’ve not read much of Reynold’s fiction. But, what I have read has left me with a feeling of puzzled, if not disappointed, ambivalence. He certainly was a more than capable creator of plot, theme, and characters, and his stories – such as “Speakeasy”, from the January ’63 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction – feature innovative and novel technology. But, I was very disappointed with the very abrupt, and abruptly pessimistic, ending. I don’t know if such a literary trajectory is characteristic of all his tales, but it did seem so for “Genus Traitor”, from the August ’64 issue of Analog.

Regardless, I was favorably struck by Nodel’s illustrations in this issue, which I suppose were created in pen & ink. Utterly different in style from the work of Finlay, Emshwiller, and Rogers, his drawings fall more in the spectrum of those by Gray Morrow and Dan Adkins, which I suppose is reflective of the era in which they were created.

Hmm. Maybe now I’ll read this story, after all?