Literary Art and Illustration

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…”

And otherwise…

Chester S. Geier, at…

… Internet Speculative Fiction Database

… FindAGrave

… The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

… GoodReads

“The Soul Stealers”, at …

… Internet Speculative Fiction Database

… Project Gutenberg

Good Lord, what is going on here?!

The cover of the Summer, 1952 issue of Fantastic – the combined effort of Bayre Phillips and L.R. Summers for the magazine’s first issue – is obviously intended to set up an air; an atmosphere; a mood … to interest readers in the magazine, for it’s unrelated to any of the essays, novelettes, or short stories within the pulp. The central element is the green-skinned woman (she’s emphatically not an Orion slave-girl), who’s holding a goblet filled with a red liquid of an undefined nature, which – port wine? – cherry daiquiri? – tomato juice? – something darkly else entirely? – ! – is fortunately left to the reader’s imagination. Is she about to partake of this drink? Or, is this an offering to the unwary reader? And, that look upon her face; the forceful gaze of her eyes… Threat or submission? (I think the former.) Demanding or beckoning? (The former I think.) What about that head-dress? At passing first, from a distance, a mere mass of intertwined feathers. At focused second, closely, a melange of intertwined writhing bodies.

The cover’s ultimate message, enhanced by a bright, yellow, featureless background, is not “Danger – stay away!”

It is, “Danger – come closer. If you dare!”

Illustration by Virgil W. Finlay for “Six and Ten are Johnny”, by Walter M. Miller, Jr. This story has never been anthologized.
(page 31)

The back cover features Pierre Roy’s oil on canvas painting of 1927 or 1928, “Danger on the Stairs”, which is in the holdings of the Museum of Modern Art, on 53rd Street in Manhattan.

This is the pulp’s rear cover…