Prime Press – Literary Art and Illustration

Known primarily for his collection of “Venus Equilateral” stories, Golden Age science-fiction writer George O. Smith’s body of work comprised nine novels, many short stories, and, a number of reviews. I’ve only read a few examples of his work, these comprising a few Venus Equilateral tales. To be honest, I found these stories – which I think fall into the continuum of “hard science fiction” – to be straightforward, middling, and serviceable; neither bad nor exceptional. I’m glad I read them, but have no impetus to revisit them for another reading (or two, or three) as for example the stories of A.E. van Vogt (the early van Vogt!), Philip K. Dick, Cordwainer Smith, or Catherine Moore.

Among Smith’s novels was Nomad, which originally appeared as a three-part series in the December, 1944, and January and February 1945 issues of Astounding Science Fiction. For the December issue, William Timmins’ somewhat bland cover art is cast in muted tones of green, gray, and red.

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Paul Orban’s interior illustrations do the story greater artistic justice. Here’s the opening illustration, on page 7. Note how the spacecraft has the general appearance of a submarine (a one-man submarine?!) – down to entry hatch, typical of many such illustrations from the period.

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This illustration of a disintegrating spaceship appears on page 27. The nautical design theme is evident here, also.

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The Nomad series was published in novel form by Prime Press in 1950, in a run of 2,500 copies. The cover illustration is by L. Robert Tschirsky, whose illustrations were featured on (and in) several works of science fiction, fantasy, and pseudoscience (Atlantis and all that) in the late 1940s.