Tag: Algis Budrys

Budrys’ Inferno, by Algis Budrys – July, 1963 [Richard M. Powers]

The cover of the Berkley Medallion edition of Budrys Inferno, typifying the work of Richard Powers: Two medusa-like shapes (for lack of a better word) float above the surface of a planet (well, there’s one crater in the foreground), against a sky of pale red, pink, and tan.  The only solidly human representations appear as the form of two stylized, silhouetted figures fighting (or dancing?) in the lower left.  

In the foreground looms the stylized head (well, I guess it’s a head – it certainly looks like it’s viewed from behind!) of an alien observer.  But, is the observer viewing the horizon, or looking at us? 

Like much of the art of Richard Powers, answers, explanations, and identification are uncertain. 

Contents

Introduction – essay by Algis Budrys

Silent Brother, from Astounding Science Fiction, February, 1956

Between the Dark and the Daylight, from Infinity Science Fiction, October, 1958

And Then She Found Him …, from Venture Science Fiction, July, 1957

The Skirmisher, from Infinity Science Fiction, November, 1957

The Man Who Tasted Ashes, from if Science Fiction, February, 1959

Lower Than Angels, from Infinity Science Fiction, October, 1956

Contact Between Equals, from Venture Science Fiction, July, 1958

Dream of Victory, from Amazing Stories, August-September, 1953

The Peasant Girl, from Astounding Science Fiction, June, 1956

Rogue Moon, by Algis Budrys – November, 1960 [Richard M. Powers]

“How do you want me to talk about it?”
Hawks answered rapidly. 
A vein bulged down the center of his forehead. 
“Do you want me to talk about what we’re here to do,
or do you want me to say something else? 
Are you going to argue morality with me? 
Are you going to say that,
duplicate man or no duplicate man,
a man dies on the Moon and makes me no less a murderer? 
Do you want to take me to court and from there to a gas chamber? 
Do you want to look in the law books
and see what penalties apply to the repeated crime of systematically driving men insane? 
Will that help us here? 
Will it smooth the way?

“Go to the Moon, Barker.
Die.
And if you do, in fact, find that you love Death as feverishly as you’ve courted her,
then, just perhaps,
you’ll be the first man to come back in condition to claim revenge on me!”
He clutched the edge of the opened chest plate and slammed it shut.
He held himself up with the flats of his palms on it
and leaned down and his face was directly over Barker’s faceplate opening.
“But before you do,
you’ll tell me how I can usefully do it to you again.”

– Algis Budrys –

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Cover detail: Richard Powers did a remarkable job of capturing the essence of the novel’s plot within a single painting.

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Here’s the another venue of Rogue Moon: The December, 1960, issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.  Mel Hunter’s whimsical robot, here seen amusing himself (itself?) with wind-up dolls of people-in-pajamas, appeared on a number of TMFSF covers.