Edd Cartier – Literary Art and Illustration

Unknown – May, 1940, featuring “The Roaring Trumpet”, by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt [M. Isip]

The them of parallel worlds has long been prominent in science-fiction and fantasy, with some works – such as Poul Anderson’s entrancing “Three Hearts and Three Lions” (published as a novella in the September, 1953 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction) combining these themes to marvelous and entertaining effect. As vastly more of a devotee of science-fiction than fantasy, I was truly impressed by Anderson’s story, particularly in terms of world-building, pace of action, the refreshing delineation and individuation of characters, and the subtle undercurrent of pathos that courses through the tale.

An earlier embodiment of this dual-genre – “science-fantasy” – is L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt’s “The Roaring Trumpet”, which appeared in the May, 1940 issue of Unknown. Like the Anderson tale, “Trumpet” has a lengthy entry at Wikipedia. Therein, it’s revealed that the story is the first of the five Harold Shea stories penned by the dual authors, which – albeit Wikipedia’s a little confusing on the point! – comprise the “Incomplete Enchanter” series which, together with the complimentary “Complete Enchanter” series, form the – ahem, wait for it… “Enchanter” series. (I think I got it right!)

And yet…

True confession!… I’ve not actually read “The Roaring Trumpet”. Rather, I discovered the story by not-so-randomly perusing Unknown at Archive.org in order to view the illustrations that appeared in the magazine during its late ’30s – early 40s existence. I was (I remain) especially taken by Edd Cartier’s illustration on page 17, which depicts the first (and random, though instrumental to the story!) meeting between the unknowing protagonist Harold Shea and Odinn, who as drawn by Cartier has an incredible Ian McKellen-ish / Gandolf-ish “vibe” about him.

(On first perusal, before I actually read about and skimmed the story, I assumed that Shea had chanced across a wizard or warlock. What, with the long, gaunt and cloaked figure; the lengthy black cloak; the hoary, untrimmed beard; the look of annoyed detachment (with compassion underneath). “Ah-hah,” I imagined, “it’s Gandolf’s ne’er do well half-brother Blandolf, making an appearance in the world of human myth!”)

Here’s how their encounter went down:

“Welcome to Ireland!” Harold Shea murmured to himself, and looked around. The snow was not alone responsible for the grayness. There was also a cold, clinging mist that cut off vision at a hundred yards or so. Ahead of him the track edged leftward around a little mammary of a hill, on whose flank a tree rocked under the melancholy wind. The tree’s arms all reached one direction, as though the wind were habitual; its branches bore a few leaves as gray and discouraged as the landscape itself. The tree was the only object visible in that wilderness of mud, grass and fog. Shea stepped toward it and was dumfounded to observe that the serrated leaves bore the indentations of the Northern scrub oak.

But that grows only in the Arctic Circle, he thought, and was bending closer for another look when he heard the clop-squash of a horse’s hoofs on the muddy track behind him.

He turned. The horse was very small, hardly more than a pony, and shaggy, with a luxuriant tail blowing round its withers. On its back sat a man who might have been tall had he been upright, for his feet nearly touched the ground. But he was hunched before the icy wind driving in behind. From saddle to eyes he was enveloped in a faded blue cloak. A formless slouch hat was polled tight over his face, yet not so tight as to conceal the fact that he was both full-bearded and gray.

Shea took half a dozen quick steps to the roadside and addressed the man with the phrase he had carefully composed in advance for his first human contact in the world of old Ireland:

“The top of the morning to you, my good man, and would it be far to the nearest hostel?” He had meant to say more, but paused a trifle uncertainly as the man on the horse lifted his head to reveal a proud, unsmiling face in which the left eye socket was horribly vacant. Shea smiled weakly, then gathered his courage and plunged on: “It’s a rare bitter December you do he having in Ireland.”

The stranger looked at him. Shea felt; with much of the same clinical detachment he himself would have given to an interesting case of schizophrenia, and spoke in slow, deep tones: “I have no knowledge of hostels, nor of Ireland; but the month is not December. We are in May, and this is the Fimbulwinter.”

A little prickIe of horror filled Harold Shea, though the last word was meaningless to him. Faint and far, his ear caught a sound that might be the howling of a dog – or a wolf. As he sought for words there was a flutter of movement. Two big black birds, like oversize crows, slid down the wind past him and came to rest on the dry grass, looked at him for a second or two with bright, intelligent eyes, then took the air again.

“Well, where am I?”

“At the wings of the world, by Midgard’s border.”

“Where in hell is that?”

The deep voice took on an edge of annoyance. “For all things there is a time, a place, and a person. There is none of the three for ill-judged questions and empty jokes.” He showed Shea a blue-clad shoulder, clucked to his pony and began to move wearily ahead.

“Hey!” cried Shea. He was feeling good and sore. The wind made his fingers and jaw muscles ache. He was lost in this arctic wasteland, and this old goat was about to trot off and leave him stranded. He leaped forward, planting himself squarely in front of the pony. “What kind of a runaround is this, anyway? When I ask someone a civil question-”

The pony had halted, its muzzle almost touching Shea’s coat. The man on the animal’s back straightened suddenly so that Shea could see he was very tall indeed, a perfect giant. But before he had time to note anything more he felt himself caught and held with an almost physical force by that single eye. A stab of intense, burning cold seemed to run through him, inside his head, as though his brain bad been pierced by an icicle. He felt rather than heard a voice which demanded, “Are you trying to stop me, niggeling?”

For his life. Shea could not have moved anything but his lips, “N-no,” he stammered. “That, is, I just wondered if you could tell me how I could get somewhere where it’s warm-”

The single eye held him unblinkingly for a few seconds. Shea felt that it was examining his inmost thoughts. Then the man slumped a trifle so that the brim of his hat shut out the glare and the deep voice was muffled. “I will be tonight at the house of the bonder Sverre, which is the Crossroads of the World. You may follow.” The wind whipped a fold of his blue cloak, and as it did so there came, apparently from within the cloak itself, a little swirl of leaves. One clung for a moment to the front of Shea’s coat. He caught it with numbed fingers, and saw it was an ash leaf, fresh and tender with the bright green of spring – in the midst of this howling wilderness, where only arctic scrub oak grew!

L. Sprague de Camp

“A weird and tingling chill bore into Shea’s mind
as the old man’s single eye glared down at him…”

(page 17)

And otherwise…

“The Roaring Trumpet”, at ...

… Wikipedia (has detailed plot summary)

L. Sprague de Camp photo, from …

Gunn, James E., Alternate Worlds – The Illustrated History of Science Fiction, A&W Visual Library, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1975

Gandalf (both Grey and White), at …

… Wikipedia

Masters of Time, by A.E. van Vogt – 1950 [Edd Cartier]

In the same way that different readers can have utterly disparate evaluations of the same story – whether in terms of an author’s literary style, or, such fundamental elements as plot, theme, and setting – so and even more can different artists depict a story’s events and character by strikingly different visual styles. This is nicely epitomized in the illustrations created by Hubert Rogers and Edd Cartier to present the world imagined by A.E. van Vogt for his tale “Recruiting Station”. First published in the March, 1942 issue of Astounding Science Fiction…

… the story was reprinted by Fantasy Press as “Masters of Time” in their 1950 book by the same title, the publication also including van Vogt’s unrelated tale “The Changeling“, which originally appeared in Astounding in April of 1944.

Being far-too-far away in time from having read “Recruiting Station” (decades!) to remember the story’s precise details, suffice to say that though the tale doesn’t have the consistency of focus (emphatically not a hallmark of Van Vogt’s writing!) the author anomalously showed in his truly superb 1942 “Asylum”, it displayed the sense leaps of imagination coupled with creative-disconnectedness – of time, place, and sequence events – that made his story-telling fascinating, entrancing, perplexing (and yes, eye-rollingly maddening) at the same time, and, the presence of female protagonists central to the story, I think reflective of his early work as a writer of romances. MPorcius Fiction Log has a thorough evaluation of the story, aptly concluding with the following, “In my opinion, “Recruiting Station” is a good example of what van Vogt is all about. It is also interesting as a product of its time, as I have suggested, and feminist readers might find noteworthy its depiction of a college-educated professional woman who is given the responsibility of saving the universe but who at the same time has a man at the center of her psychological life, a man whose help she needs to succeed in her awful mission and to achieve personal happiness. Students of van Vogt’s long career may find his descriptions of the soldiers in the story as lusty, adventurous men unafraid of death, to be of a piece with his interest in “the violent male.” “Recruiting Station” gets a big thumbs up from this van Vogt aficionado.”

Fantasy Press’ 1950 publication has great cover and full page (just two in the whole book!) illustrations by Edd Cartier, while the chapters are headed by two alternating illustrations.

“Forty feet a day. In a blaze of wonder,
Garson stood finally with his troop
a hundred yards from that unnatural battle front.
Like a robot he stood stiffly among those robot men,
but his eyes and mind fed in undiminished fascination
at the deadly mechanical routine that was the offense and defense.”

(page 69)

(Interesting contrast with Hubert Roger’s cover!)

“The Jeep caught him when he was still twenty feet from the fence.
The cool-eyed women who operated it
pointed the steadiest pistols Craig had ever faced.
A few minutes later, at the house,
Craig saw that the whole gang had been rounded up:
Anrella, Nesbitt, Yerd, Shore, Cathcott, Gregory, all the servants;
altogether forty people were lined up
before a regular arsenal of machine guns manned by about a hundred women.”

(page 171)

(Though 1950 was well into the “jet age”, the aircraft above have very much of a WW II “vibe” to them. Otherwise, the lady is serious!)

(Chapter 10 heading illustration)

(Chapter 12 heading illustration)

Time Has Been Mastered (!), at…

… Wikipedia

… GoodReads

… Internet Speculative Fiction Database

You Too Will be Recruited (?), at…

… Wikipedia

… MPorcius Fiction Log

… Sevagram

… Prospero’s Isle (full text)

Unknown – February, 1940, featuring “Death’s Deputy”, by L. Ron Hubbard [Edd Cartier]

Though I’ve not read L. Ron Hubbard’s Death’s Deputy – first published in the February, 1940 issue of Unknown, and then in book form by the Fantasy Publishing Company Inc., in 1948 – the book’s simple premise would have been the solid basis for an episode of such a program as “The Twilight Zone” (the original series), but I don’t think the tale’s actually been adapted for film or television. Was the plot of Hubbard’s story inspired by vaguely remembered winds of mythology, or, discussions with other writers of fantasy and science-fiction? Perhaps both.

A summary of the plot, taken verbatim from the dust jacket of the 1948 edition, follows:

DEATH’S DEPUTY
by L. Ron Hubbard

This story is terrifyingly real because the basic concept is known fact. The term “accident prone” is a familiar one. It applies to those certain men and women who are ever-present when danger and death strikes but have an uncanny immunity themselves. During the Middle Ages they were believed possessed of “the evil eye”. Sailors called them “jonahs”. Modern society sometimes refers to them as jinxes. DEATH’S DEPUTY is the story of such a man: a man possessed of the evil eye, a Jonah, a jinx, an accident-prone – this was Clayton McLean.

After McLean’s life is twice saved by a strange power he becomes its unwilling instrument of destruction, bringing misery and death to his fellow beings. Some happiness comes to McLean through his deep love for Laura, and for a short period after their marriage he is content. But his presence continues to mean havoc for innocent people. Embittered and harassed by his experiences McLean attempts suicide – but the gods protect those who serve them.

The currents of sorrow and love, death and fortune, wisdom and bewilderment, combine to make DEATH’S DEPUTY a novel of stunning impact.

Here’s the cover of the February, 1940 issue of Unknown, featuring art by Edd Cartier, who also completed the three illustrations that accompanied Hubbard’s text. (You can view this cover in a different context, in my post about Virgil Finlay: “Virgil Finlay – Dean of Science Fiction Artists”, by Sam Moskowitz, in Worlds of Tomorrow – November, 1965“.

Here are three of Cartier’s six illustrations for the story, all immediately recognizable by his distinctive style, which combines attention to detail, precise and pertinent exaggeration, and elements of mystery and myth. Note that in the last of the three images (from page 30) the face of Death’s “messenger” is shielded from view…

A giant finger – or was it smoke? –
twitched at the tangled lines.
A giant arm –
a swirl of smoke from the flaming plane? –
eased him till the freed parachute snapped open.

(page 16)

He sat on the bench with his useless leg before him,
and his own fears and futility howled in his ears –

(page 21)

“You will come,” the messenger mumbled in his brain.
“Your master has called – “

(page 30)

((Compare to cover of The Acolyte.))

And otherwise…

“Death’s Deputy”, at…

… Wikipedia

… GoodReads

Fantasy Publishing Company Inc., at …

… Wikipedia

Unknown – October, 1939 (Featuring “Sinister Barrier”, by Eric Frank Russell) [Harold Winfield Scott]

First posted on February 12, 2018, I’ve updated this post with a new image of the cover of the October, 1939 (first) issue of Unknown, which shows Harold Winfield Scott’s art to great effect. (Original cover image as at bottom of post.)

All illustrations by Edd Cartier…

Page 9

Page 39

Page 61

Page 71

Page 86

Page 90

Page 93

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(Original lead image in post: Cover from “Black Gate – Adventures in Fantasy Literature” – Post by Matthew Wuertz of July 5, 2015.)

February 12, 2018 323

Sinister Barrier, by Eric Frank Russell – 1948 (1939) [Edd Cartier]

In February of 2018, I created a post showing Edd Cartier’s interior art associated with Eric Frank Russell’s Sinister Barrier, which appeared in the first (October, 1939) issue of Unknown, featuring great allegorical cover art by Harold Winfield Scott. Not having a physical copy of the magazine, I did this via a CBR copy accessed via the Pulp Magazine Archive.

A few months ago, I symbolically “revisited” Russell’s story through a visit to the New York Public Library (the one with the two lions – Patience and Fortitude – out front), and was able to examine a near-mint physical – not merely pixel! – copy of Fantasy Press’s 1948 edition of the book. As I did with Jack Williamson’s Darker Than You Think, I copied this edition’s interior art – again by Edd Cartier – by means of a (relatively) antique but entirely effective digital SLR. The resulting images – edited somewhat with Photoshop Elements – are show below. Enjoy. (And, watch out for those gnasty Vitons! Y’never know where they’ll turn up next!)

The Fantasy Press edition features an illustration by A.J. (Andrew Julian) Donnell, which appears in simplified form for every chapter heading.

Oh, as for the novel itself, as a literary work? Long curious about the story, particularly in light of Unknown’s cover art, I read it just a few years ago, in the form of the 1966 Paperback Library edition. (See the “bottom” of this post.) It’ll suffice to say that though the book’s plot is interesting – enough – as the basis for a literary work, it was not the most impactful read, and I do not at all plan to revisit it, unlike the works of authors such as Cordwainer Smith, C.L. Moore, and Philip K. Dick, which never grow repetitive regardless of reading. Certainly the action moved swiftly and the flow of events accelerated through the story. Certainly Russell was a competent enough wordsmith to craft a well-structured story. Certainly he was able to generate a dark and forbidding “feel”; a near-paranoid atmosphere (curiously akin to the open chapters of The Three-Body Problem, where occurs an ominous and perplexing flurry of unexplained suicides of prominent scientists); an initially hopeless “mood” in his book, which suited the challenge of first identifying, then evading, and then fighting, and finally conquering, the Viton menace. But, the absence of any real complexity to his characters, coupled with really weird (truly weird, man!) literary habits (such as substituting the word “optics” for “eyes” – what? why?!) left the story with a feeling a flatness.

Entertaining and diverting – yes; weighty and enthralling enough for another read – no.

Nonetheless, the art’s great!

“An iridescent blue closed upon him and formed a satanic nimbus behind his head.”

(Frontispiece)

“An awful pillar that reached to the very floors of heaven…”

(Page 63)

“Others crept or-slunk through the alleys and the shadows…”

(Page 139)

“A thousand hands seemed to be reaching for him at once.”

(Page 232)

Every chapter commences with an image akin to the front cover, showing Vitons hovering over a helpless, crouching figure. Here’s the header image for Chapter 11.

Published in 1950 by World Editions, Inc., Sinister Barrier was the first of Galaxy’s forty-six Science Fiction Novels. Cover by David Stone.

The first Paperback Library imprint having been May, 1964, here’s the company’s December, 1966 edition of Sinister Barrier. Though the book’s cover artist remains unnamed in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (the cover’s absent of signature or initials), if one plays the “…it looks like…” game, the painting resembles the work of Ed Valigursky. (Just an idea.)

Rear cover. Straightforward prose.

TIME – 21ST CENTURY
PLACE – AMERICA
CRISIS – A WORLD GONE MAD
PRESIDENT’S WARNING –

DESTROY THE VITON MENACE
OR EARTH HAS
ONLY 80 HOURS TO LIVE!

Bill Graham was among the scientists and
government leaders left who heard the
President’s message. He shuddered at the
thought of the last Viton rampage of
kidnapping, ghastly murder and madness.

Hidden somewhere in the vastness of the
Galaxy, the hideous blobs of Viton, that fed
on men’s fears and emotions, planned a
last-ditch attack to destroy the universe.

Only Bill Graham had a one-in-a-million
chance to stop them. But the Vitons were
so deadly that even to think about them
risked instant annihilation.

Darker Than You Think, by Jack Williamson – (1948) [A.J. Donnell]

“Faster, Will!”
April’s smooth legs clung to his racing body.
She leaned forward, her breasts against his striped coat.
He stretched out his stride, rejoicing in his boundless power.
He exulted in the clean chill of the air, the warm burden of the girl.
This was life.
April Bell had awakened him out of a cold, walking death.
Remembering his body, that frail and ugly husk he had left sleeping in his room,
he shuddered as he ran.
“Faster!” urged the girl. “We must catch them on Sardis Hill.”

I’ve not yet read Darker Than You Think, but in time I well may, for it seems that my literary tastes are gently but steadily changing. To my own surprise, it seems that I’ve acquired an appreciation for fantasy by having read Poul Anderson’s wonderfully told two-part tale, “Three Hearts and Three Lions”, from the September and October ’53 issues of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and, the collection of Robert Chambers’ tales, The King in Yellow…

Darker Than You Think? The novel has received high praise in terms of plot and pacing. It’s a fantasy, but not purely fantasy. It has elements of science fiction, but it’s not entirely science fiction. Instead, it spans the tenuous and uncertain borderland between both genres, combining elements of both, with a foundation in myth and the supernatural: legends of lycanthropy. Of course, for me, the very fact that novel was penned by Jack Williamson casts it within a glowing – well, a potentially glowing! – light beforehand.

So, I suppose that in time, I shall see.

Thus for the novel’s literary “image”. What about illustrations within the novel, or, to be accurate, “on” and in its first book-form incarnation by Fantasy Press in 1948?

There are only two: The front cover, by A.J. (Andrew Julian) Donnell, and the frontispiece, by Edd Cartier. Each artist depicts, in his own fashion, characters central to the novel (at least I think so, not actually having yet read the story!): April Bell “au natural”, and, Will Barbee, transformed.

Due to the novel’s significance in terms of Jack Williamson’s oeuvre, and, the history of Fantasy Press’, even the most cursory Internet search will yield umpteen images of these two illustrations, at all imaginable levels of quality. You know… Resolution, focus, color reproduction, and just-plain-old-keeping-the-image-framed-properly.

Here’s the cover…

I thought it was time that I take a look and copy the frontispiece for myself. To that end, I recently accessed a copy of the novel – unsurprisingly, in absolutely superb condition – at the New York Public Library (you know, the one on 42nd Street and 5th Avenue with the two lions – Patience and Fortitude – out front), and copied Edd Cartier’s illustration. However, unlike the overwhelming majority of images at this blog, my copy wasn’t made with a flatbed scanner, but by means of a digital SLR. (Yes, I have one.) The resulting image lent itself to digital editing – a mild degree, using Photoshop Elements – just as readily as any “conventional” scanned illustration.

Here it is; that’s some big tiger…

“You must be strong, Will, to take such a shape!” (page 162)

______________________________

And, for your consideration, here’s the blurb from the dust-jacket…

DARKER THAN YOU THINK
By JACK WILLIAMSON

WHEN the Mondrick expedition returns from the Gobi Desert with an iron-bound chest and a haunting burden of dread, it brings with it proof of a warfare that has continued for unnumbered centuries – warfare hitherto buried deep in the subconscious of the human race.

Mankind, according to Dr. Mondrick, is a hybrid breed. The blood of Homo sapiens is diluted with a darker stream. In your veins, and in ours, so the Mondrick theory claims, ebbs and flows an evil tide. Perhaps you, the individual reader, are only one part in a thousand inhuman, or one in ten thousand. But you aren’t all human… Few men are aware of their own alien strain. We know more about the distant stars than we do of our own tragic plight. But every man now living has inherited some of the black taint of Homo lycanthropus. And there are throwbacks! Or so, at least, Dr. Mondrick suggests.

Will Barbee, reporter, covering the return of the Mondrick expedition for his newspaper, meets gorgeous April Bell who claims to be a report for a rival sheet. He gets a story stranger by far than he expects – and becomes involved in a desperate drams of dark human conflict and darker victory.

In “Darker Than You Think”, Jack Williamson has written a story which is peculiarly disturbing, for despite its fantasy it is convincing; and it accounts for a great many things that otherwise are difficult to explain – and for some things that otherwise can scarcely be explained at all. The primitive belief in witchcraft is absolutely universal. It exists in communities, from Europe to Tasmania, which have no cultural connection whatever. “Darker Than You Think” offers the most convincing explanation of witchcraft ever set forth.

In this strange study of our own troubled times and our own secret lives, Williamson has skillfully blended such seemingly unrelated subjects as lycanthropy and witchcraft with parapsychology and psychokinesis. He has written a story which may well be unique, embracing a theory new to anthropology, and an interpretation of human behavior never anticipated by psychologists. But above all, he has produced an enthralling story.

And, who knows? The time, indeed, may already be later than you think, and man’s future darker! xxxxx

Having its first appearance in the December, 1940 issue of Unknown, Williamson’s novel was accompanied by nine illustrations in the pulp’s American edition, but in the British edition, only one, the latter being the same ominous-looking-cloaked-skeleton which opens the tale in the American version. By Edd Cartier, these illustrations are all to the same high standard of imagination and technical quality typical of his work

But, only two really stand out in terms of symbolism and mythic power: April and tiger Will, and, April riding a bat-bird-like-something-or-other. Downloaded from the Pulp Magazine Archive and then edited slightly, here they are, below:

Unknown (page 43)

__________
____________________
______________________________
____________________
__________

Unknown (page 84)

“The Tyger”, by William Blake

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies,
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare sieze [sic] the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp!

When the stars threw down their spears
And water’d heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Here’s Collier Books’ 1989 imprint of Darker Than You Think, which features cover art by Jill Bauman. Through a coincidence most curious – if not magical – I discovered this near-pristine copy in a used bookstore (yes, those still exist). I read it in about three days (off and on, not continuously!), and it sparked the creation of this post.

Bauman’s cover art is very effective in casting the creatures central to the story in silhouette, with April Bell implied at right, rather than depicting them in full detail. A lack of definition lets one’s imagination run a little, um, er, uh, wilder?! – shall we say?

Of the darkness?…

“Darker Than You Think”, Unknown, December, 1940, via…

… Pulp Magazine Archive

American Edition (contains all illustrations)

British Edition (lead illustration only)

… Wikipedia

… GoodReads

… Fantasy Literature

… Internet Speculative Fiction Database

… WorldCat

Shapeshifters, at…

… The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

“The Tyger”, by William Blake, at…

… Wikipedia

William Blake (himself!), at…

… Wikipedia

A.J. (Andrew Julian) Donnell, at…

… Internet Speculative Fiction Database

Astounding Science Fiction, October, 1950 (Featuring “The Hand of Zei”, by L. Sprague de Camp) [Edd Cartier]

Though he created many wonderful interior illustrations for Astounding Science Fiction, let alone a tremendous body of work in general, I believe that the magazine’s issue of October, 1950 – above – marked Edd Cartier’s only cover for that publication. Fittingly, he created the over twenty illustrations that accompanied “The Hand of Zei”, which was serialized in Astounding from October, 1950, through January, 1951.