Literary Art and Illustration – Page 131 – Images and Thoughts to Inspire Your Intellect and Infuse Your Imagination!

Vanguard Science Fiction, June, 1958 – First issue, last issue, only issue! [Edmund A. Emshwiller]

So for every author, so for every artist: Whether in terms of the written word, or objects and images fashioned from the “stuff” of the world around us, the works of writers and illustrators (and especially illustrators!) – by the distinctiveness of their style, theme, mood, and message – readily reveal the identity of the creators: You don’t always need a signature to know who made the brush-strokes.

In terms of science fiction art, the works of “EMSH” – Edmund A. Emshwiller – are some of the most visually distinctive. Characterized by boldness of color (and typically, a variety of colors within a single composition), sharpness and clarity (and almost always, objects and people distinctly defined), dramatic action (and often, scenes where action has temporarily halted for a dramatic pause), technical intricacy (and inevitably, portrayals of technology of the future), you usually “know” when you’re viewing his creations. Then again, his emblematic signature of “EMSH”, always sort-of-hidden somewhere in his paintings, simplifies things a bit, too!

Case in point, the cover of the June, 1958, issue of Vanguard Science Fiction, the magazine’s first, last, and (alas!) only issue. In this case the palette is limited to shades of yellow and very dark green; the background of space otherwise entirely black, with the exception of a planet in the distance. (No, it’s not earth.) The source of illumination – and therefore the lighter shades of color – actually arises from a very dramatic element in the painting: The flames emanating from the spacecraft’s five clustered engines.

But, the cover art tells a story, and a very (did I say “very”?) grim story at that: A pair of astronaut-technicians are performing repairs to their ship. Then, somehow (how?) the engines fire. One astronaut desperately attempts to grab hold of the spacecraft. The other is engulfed by the flames emerging from the engine cluster. Not good. No, not good at all. But, in artistic terms, Ed Emshwiller’s dramatic portrayal of this scene – directly inspired by the opening of A. Bertram Chandler’s cover story, “SOS: Planet Unknown”, in which this incident is really a minor detail in the story arc – was, precisely because of its jarring and disturbing nature, riveting.

As for Chandler’s story itself? Well, it’s competently constructed. The protagonists and other characters are well-drawn and distinctive, while the tale’s undertone is disturbing and somewhat graphic (verbally graphic, that it), akin to something you might have read in Venture Science Fiction. With that, oddly, the action in “space” only comprises the first few paragraphs, which – crisply and very tightly written – go at a brisk pace, the remainder of the story occurring at a much more methodical pace on an uncharted planet, where we find that the plot revolves vastly less around the theme of space exploration than it does biology. (Or, alien biology, to be specific.) Not the greatest story by any means, but certainly an adequate and entertaining read.

So, recently, after a long measure of searching, I finally had the good fortune of obtaining my own nice copy of this magazine. Here it is…

Admittedly, I wanted to get this one for a long time. I had my first glimpse of the cover art in James Gunn’s 1973 Alternate Worlds, where a photo of the cover occupies an entire page (specifically, page 208) in this large format (8 1/2″ x 12″) book. Reproduced in color, the image is one of the fifty-five images of the covers of science fiction pulps found in the book, where they’re grouped into sections by era or magazine title. Gunn’s book is equally valuable in the abundance of photographic portraits of science fiction authors that grace its pages, let alone invaluable for the very text itself.

(As for the fate of the two hapless astronaut-technicians? Well, you can find that here…)

Reference(s)

Gunn, James E. (with Introduction by Isaac Asimov) Alternate Worlds – The Illustrated History of Science Fiction, A&W Visual Library (by arrangement with Prentice-Hall, Inc.), Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1973

A. Bertram Chandler at…

James Blish, at…

James E. Gunn (biography), at…

Wikipedia

The Wind From Nowhere, by J.G. Ballard – April, 1974 (October, 1959 / February, 1961) [David Pelham]

“The wind came from nowhere … a super-hurricane that blasted round the globe at hundreds of miles per hour burying whole communities beneath piles of rubble, destroying all organized life and driving those it did not kill to seek safety in tunnels and sewers – where they turned against each other in their desperate struggle to survive …”

When in 1974 Penguin Books published J.G. Ballard’s novels The Wind From Nowhere, The Drowned World, The Drought, and The Terminal Beach, the cover artist for each volume was David Pelham, who served as Art Director at Penguin from 1968 to 1979.

All four covers share the same style: A central object – an army tank; a building; a nuclear bomb (“fat-man”, to be specific); an automobile (well, at least the tail fins of an automobile!) – is rendered in almost photographic crispness as the central object of the composition, yet simplified to such an extent that minor technical details, surface textures, and the “dings and dents” and imperfections natural to any well-used man-made object are entirely absent.

And… The objects are rendered in shades of yellow, orange, and red, utterly and deliberately unlike their actual colors. The color shading of each (for example, take a close look at the tank turret, below…) it looks as if much of the painting was done via airbrush.

And yet… That’s all there is. Other than backgrounds in shades of violet, orange, and blue, there’s nothing else. No people; no background scenery; no spacecraft; no planets, stars, or galaxies floating in the distance.

And even more… The “objects” are positioned in each painting in a position that symbolizes the obsolescence, powerlessness, and irrelevancy of man’s technical and architectural creations, in a world of impersonal forces transcending human understanding and control.

Look at the cover below. It shows a British Centurion main battle tank (to be specific, an early version of the tank), of about 52 tons weight, the design of which dates back to the mid 1940s. And yet, it’s suspended in space, tossed in mid-air, irrelevantly leaf-like, very much by The Wind From Nowhere.

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To give you a clearer idea, here’s a nicely done scale model of a Centurion tank, showing how closely Pelham followed the actual vehicle’s design and shape, and his simplification or removal of small details. Well, this image also gives you a nice view of the “top” of the tank, too!

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The book’s rear cover. All four 1974 Penguin books feature an explanatory blurb, a Penguin penguin set on a purple oval, and nothing else. No excerpts; no reviewer’s quotes; no plugs for other books. Simple and stark, like the front cover.

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You can view the cover art of Penguin’s other 1974 editions of Ballard’s work at David Pelham: The Art of Inner Space (from 2012), where Pelham discusses working with J.G. Ballard, influences on his cover designs, and aspects of working at Penguin.

You can view the visual influences on the other three 1974 covers at the links below:

The Drought – Inspired by Cadillac Ranch (April, 1974)

The Drowned World – Inspired by Chrysler Building in New York City (1974)

The Terminal Beach – Inspired by “Fat Man” atomic bomb (plutonium implosion weapon) (1974)

Plus… Also from The Art of Inner Space, here Pelham’s design for the SlipCase for Penguin’s Boxed set of Ballard’s four novels. Continuing with a theme of technology juxtaposed against the natural world (note that the plane isn’t just embedded in the earth, the port wing is broken, too!), the cover “object” is a “beached” American B-29 Superfortress very heavy WW II bomber. Interestingly, the plane’s insignia are an accurate representation (except for the nose art) of the striped tail markings of a B-29 of the 45th Bomb Squadron, 40th Bomb Group, 20th Air Force, the “Eddie Allen”, which bore tail letter “M”.

(Atomic bomb? Centurion tank? B-29 Superfortress Pelham seems to have had an intriguing focus on military technology!)

Here’s the real “Eddie Allen”, serial number 42-24578, in flight, in Army Air Force Photograph 75743AC / A45756).

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And, a painting of “Eddie Allen” during a bombing mission, from the flickr photostream of Robert Sullivan.

References

Biography of James G. Ballard, at Wikipedia

The Wind From Nowhere, at Wikipedia

David Pelham: The Art of Inner Space, at Ballardian

Cover Illustrations by David Pelham, at Science Fiction Book Art

Centurion Tank, at Wikipedia

Centurion Tank, at Tank Nut Dave

Tamiya 1/35 Centurion Mk III Tank (plastic model), at IModeler