Lost Transmissions

by Desirina Boskovich

  Mead once quipped, “I’ve called science fiction ‘reality ahead of schedule.’” *

  Fortress on the Rocks (1998) by Paul Lehr. Acrylic painting, 24” × 20”.

  ART—AND—DESIGN

  The author’s name is always right up front—splashed across the cover of the magazine, or typeset in bold down the spine of the book. The illustrator’s name, meanwhile, is often relegated to the fine print, buried deep in the credits. Accordingly, visual artists are seldom as celebrated or treasured by fans, and their names are much sooner forgotten.

  And yet, SFF’s artists and illustrators have made immeasurable contributions to the genre. Consider the pulp artists who churned out vision after vision of the high-tech future, the lurking monsters, and the alien bizarre; the cover artists whose iconic imagery on novels is forever intertwined with our memories of those stories; the fine art painters whose dreamy visions manage to evoke a place we could never describe in words—and inspire the next generation of storytellers who are determined, at least, to try.

  In this chapter, we explore the contributions of a few of SFF’s many highly original and accomplished visual artists, and the roles they played in setting our imaginations alight.

  Weird Tales Regular, Pulp Illustrator Virgil Finlay

  One of the greatest illustrators in the history of speculative fiction is Virgil Finlay (1914–1971). Finlay had a unique and highly detailed pen-and-ink technique, and was extraordinary productive—he completed around 2,600 drawings and paintings throughout his thirty-five-year career. Nevertheless, as the pulp era his work dominated has faded in memory, so has Finlay’s reputation and name. Though today’s illustrators remain inspired by his techniques, fans may have forgotten the man who invented them.

  Weird Tales, March 1939. Cover art by Virgil Finlay.

  Finlay’s artistic legacy is inextricably bound up with the big pulp magazines of his day, particularly one of the most influential of all time: Weird Tales. He sold his first illustration to Weird Tales in 1935 when he was only twenty-one years old. He would eventually contribute around twenty cover illustrations and 220 interior illustrations for the legendary publication.

  Of course, his appearances were not limited to Weird Tales. Eventually he would be published in just about every major genre magazine, including Famous Fantastic Mysteries, Amazing Stories, Fantastic Story Quarterly, Galaxy, and many others. His subject matter reflected the typical preoccupations of pulp magazines: bug-eyed aliens; eldritch monsters; weird landscapes; and spaceships, space farers, and space maidens.

  He also appeared in The American Weekly, a tabloid-esque Sunday newspaper supplement, which employed him as both a staff artist and a freelancer between 1938 and 1951. Early in his career, he was even commissioned by Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright to complete twenty-five illustrations for a chapbook edition of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream—a little side project. Sad to say, this venture was not commercially successful at the time. Today, it is a collector’s item.

  Untitled, original interior magazine illustration by Virgil Finlay. Ink on paper, 15.5” × 12.5”.

  Finlay artworks remain highly recognizable due to the unusual illustrative approach he developed. He did his drawings on scratchboard, which has a dark coating that can be scratched and scraped away in fine lines with a sharp blade. This allowed him to place white lines and areas against a dark background. Then, using a super fine-point lithographic pen, he’d apply dark lines, cross-hatching, and stippling to the light areas. Stippling is quite time-consuming; it involves applying many, many tiny dots to create delicate shading. To maintain an even and consistent look, Finlay would clean the tip of his pen after applying each dot.

  This combination of techniques enabled him to create incredibly detailed drawings, which set an astonishing new visual standard for the coarse-papered pulps of the era. In his introduction to The Collectors’ Book of Virgil Finlay, editor, critic, and art collector Robert Weinberg writes: “Finlay wasn’t merely great. He was the greatest. His heroines were the most beautiful; his heroes were the most heroic; and his monsters and villains were the most frightening.”

  In time, Finlay expanded into other styles, also using gouache, oils, and even water-color to create full color paintings and illustrations. But he remains best known for the pioneering visions of his black-and-white work in pen-and-ink. *

  Richard M. Powers cover art for the 1977 Fawcett Gold Medal edition of John D. MacDonald’s 1951 novel Wine of the Dreamers.

  STEPHEN SONNEVELD

  The Surrealist Stylings of Richard M. Powers

  As is the plight of many artists, commercial work was a necessary evil in the career of Richard M. Powers (1921–1996), whose true aspiration was to have his pieces recognized in art galleries. Powers would achieve that goal, with return showings at New York’s Rehn Gallery, and works now in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Yet it was the images he produced for widely-circulated SF novels that would see Powers recognized as one of the most influential artists of the era.

  It was a sign of the times in which Powers lived that SF was not considered a respected genre. Reportedly, the artist himself was no fan. Ironically, his artwork, which graced the covers of texts by Arthur C. Clarke, Kurt Vonnegut, and Philip K. Dick, was part of the collective moment that brought SF to age, and to recognition.

  Like his surrealist influences, Powers was trained in classical styles at schools in his home-town of Chicago, and later, New York. His early work on mysteries, westerns, and SF books reflected that competence. When Ian Ballantine founded his imprint in 1955 to push SF beyond its pulp roots, Powers was brought on to create covers. He soon became the de facto art director as well. Powers unleashed his imagination onto the canvas, evolving his work from the standard representation of robots, spaceships, alien goddesses, etc., into surreal landscapes and abstract compositions that reflected the emotion and themes of the books. Powers even hand drew the lettering when needed, experimented with collage and mixed media, and sometimes changed the orientation from portrait to landscape if he felt that layout engaged the audience better. Not only was this surrealism-over-representation style aped by other SF artists and publishing houses (many of which hired Powers directly), the trend influenced other aspects of commercial art throughout the era, from album covers to advertising.

  In a way, Powers’s career is similar to an SF story: a man caught between two worlds—the one he desires, and the one that sustains him. In the final chapter, his bold contributions helped secure SF’s reputation as a respected art form in the twentieth century. *

  The Dreamy Atmospheres of Painter Paul Lehr

  Paul Lehr (1930–1998) was one of the most prolific SFF illustrators of the 1950s–1970s, creating cover art for hundreds of books. His art also appeared in Time, Fortune, Playboy, Reader’s Digest, OMNI, and Analog. Working with oils, acrylics, and gouache on masonite or wood panel, Lehr developed a highly recognizable style: dreamy, surreal, and atmospheric. Drawing on a vividly saturated color palette, Lehr often depicted vast landscapes marked by massive, mysterious objects.

  In Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists of the Twentieth Century: A Biographical Dictionary, Jane Frank describes Lehr as “one of the very few artists who are able to evoke the science fiction genre without depicting the specific scenes from the books they illustrate.” Lehr’s paintings often feel like a dreamscape; hinting at deeper mysteries, evoking the uncanny and the sublime. “It’s that amazing storytelling aspect of his work that has made Lehr a legend in the sci-fi community,” writes Riley Reese for Futurism. “Lehr’s unique spin on dreamy, surreal, and often somewhat mystical takes on alien worlds became almost synonymous with Bantam Books in the mid-to-late 1960s.”

  Lehr himself advocated a naturalist perspective for the SFF illustrator, suggesting that aspiring artists study the strange beauty of our own often uncanny planet in their quests to capture the alien in others. “We have the imagery of science fiction all around
us in our own world . . .” he wrote. “With the kitchen light on during a summer evening, look out through the screened window . . . myriads of insects of all shapes, sizes, and colors, with designs undreamed of—creatures that boggle the imagination. Trees and stumps, forming strange and mysterious shapes. Reflections in water—stones and cratered rocks—it is all there. If we are to become successful in projecting images of other worlds, alien creatures, and the concept of time, we must study our own surroundings first.”

  One of Lehr’s paintings now belongs to the permanent collection of the National Air and Space Museum in the Smithsonian Institution. This painting, which first appeared in the Saturday Evening Post in 1959, depicted the first Moon landing—ten years before it happened. *

  Cosmic Assembly (circa 1990s) by Paul Lehr. Acrylic painting, 27.5” × 34”.

  Hardy launched the Bhen series with a 1975 cover for F&SF that depicted the friendly green alien encountering the Viking 1 soon after its landing on Mars. Forty years later, this 2015 F&SF cover shows Bhen making his mark near the European Space Agency’s ExoMars rover, projected to land in 2020.

  Space and Science-Fiction Artist David A. Hardy

  As of 2018, David Hardy (b. 1936) is the oldest living science fiction artist, with a career spanning an astonishing sixty-four years—he illustrated his first book in 1954, a nonfiction work by Patrick Moore titled Suns, Myths and Men. Hardy got his start as a space artist, creating technically skilled depictions of space exploration and astronomical marvels. In 1970, he began producing science fiction work as well, introducing fictional and fantastical elements. But, he cautions, it’s very important to distinguish between space art and SFF art. “Sci-fi art is based in the imagination,” he explained to the Guardian. “With space art, you need knowledge of chemistry, physics, astronomy, and volcanology.”

  Along with hundreds of SF book and magazine covers, Hardy has worked for science magazines such as Astronomy, Sky & Telescope, Astronomy Now, and Popular Astronomy—and books by Arthur C. Clarke and Carl Sagan. He also edited an illustrated history of space art titled Visions of Space: Artists Journey Through the Cosmos (1989).

  One of Hardy’s trademark elements is a green alien named Behn, aka “Space Gumby,” whom he first developed in his work for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. A frequent visitor to Hardy’s space-scapes, Behn brings an element of playful, tongue-in-cheek humor to the grandeur of outer space.

  Hardy’s fans include legendary rock star Brian May, former guitarist for Queen—and an accomplished astronomer in his own right, completing his PhD in 2007. (His thesis was titled “A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud.”) May said of Hardy: “He creates his own special kind of virtual reality—through his astounding vision and technique we glimpse landscapes in worlds where man has never set foot.”

  Hardy is a recipient of the Sir Arthur Clarke Award (2005) and the Frederick Ordway Award (2015). He’s even had an asteroid named after him: david hardy (1989 SB). *

  Psychedelic Master Bob Pepper

  Bob Pepper (b. 1938) is largely responsible for New Wave science fiction’s embrace of an aesthetic described as “1960s Technicolor”—stylized and psychedelic, an ice cream acid trip. One of his best-known works is not actually in the science fiction genre, but an iconic and influential album cover straight out of the Summer of Love: Forever Changes (1967) from the band Love.

  Bob Pepper provided the striking cover art for this 1969 Ballantine Books edition of The Silver Stallion by James Branch Cabell, which was first published in 1926. The Silver Stallion is a classic of the sword-and-sorcery tradition, blending fantasy, history, humor, and magic as French nobles vie for power. It’s currently out of print.

  On the fantasy side, Pepper was a highly prolific illustrator of books from Ballantine, working on a popular series of fantasy reprints for noted editor Lin Carter. Carter chose underrated gems, popular classics, and personal favorites to revive in this series that ran from 1969 to 1974. Many of these editions remain highly sought after—perhaps in part because of their outstanding cover art.

  Pepper brought this same aesthetic to science fiction, creating a number of highly distinctive covers for DAW editions of Philip K. Dick’s novels, including A Scanner Darkly, Ubik, and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?.

  In the 1980s, he also illustrated two popular fantasy tabletop games: Dragonmaster and The Dark Tower. Dragonmaster featured a deck of playing cards similar to the tarot, and these cards remain popular collectibles. *

  A New Realism: Contemporary Cover Artist Michael Whelan

  Michael Whelan (b. 1950) was the first living artist to be inducted into The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, who termed him “one of the most important contemporary science fiction and fantasy artists.” They cited his influential role in establishing a new realism for cover illustrations, in contrast to the surrealist style that dominated in the 1950s and 1960s. “His art, though, is far more intricate and naturalistic—despite the otherworldly subjects—than that of his pulp era predecessors,” they wrote. His style is often referred to as imaginative realism.

  Michael Whelan created the memorable cover art for Piers Anthony’s On a Pale Horse (1983), the first installment in his Incarnations of Immortality series. This edition was published by Del Rey Books.

  Some of Whelan’s best known paintings include cover art for Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series (Del Rey), particularly The White Dragon (1978), Michael Moorcock’s Elric books (DAW), Robert Heinlein’s The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, and Stephen King’s The Dark Tower. To date, he’s won fifteen Hugo Awards, three World Fantasy Awards, and twelve Chesley Awards. *

  LEV GROSSMAN

  On Fantasy Maps

  In 1665, a German Jesuit and polymath named Athanasius Kircher published an eclectic scientific treatise called Mundus Subterraneus. It included, along with a natural history of dragons and a diagram of the Earth’s many unknown interior chambers, a convincingly detailed map of “Insulae Atlantidis”—the island of Atlantis.

  What strikes you about it most is the confidence. There’s nothing vague or sketchy about Kircher’s Atlantis, it’s highly specific. Situated square in the middle of the Atlantic, and colored a creamy yellow, it’s shaped like an upside-down Africa, with six wiggly rivers and two east-west mountain ranges. It’s like Kircher’s been there personally—this isn’t terra incognita, it’s thoroughly cognita. However firmly one grasps the fact of Atlantis’s nonexistence, Kircher’s map still triggers an instinctive longing, an invitation au voyage that whispers: Quit your job, throw it all over, and go to Atlantis right now!

  It’s a magic trick of sorts: maps look like evidence. They imply the existence of the terrain they represent. (Though the practical traveler should note that Kircher put south at the top of his map. In fact many medieval cartographers put east at the top, because Jesus.)

  Some books are published with maps; some books cast a spell so strong that they demand to be mapped after the fact. A hundred years after Dante published his Divine Comedy people were already drawing maps of the Inferno. The England of the Canterbury Tales and Pride and Prejudice and the Mississippi of Huckleberry Finn have all been mapped.

  It didn’t matter that these places didn’t exist, what mattered was how much people wanted them to. Fictional maps are a visual trace of the ridiculous, undignified passion that we pour into worlds that we know aren’t real. They seem to confirm the ridiculous faith we place in novels—to see one is to say, silently and only to yourself, See? I knew it was real!

  Map of Hell (circa 1485) by Sandro Botticelli, from an illustrated manuscript of Dante’s Divine Comedy commissioned by Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici.

  It’s hard to say for sure how fully aware Kircher was that his map of Atlantis was fictional, but it’s fair to say that Jonathan Swift knew that Lilliput and its implacable enemy Blefuscu didn’t exist when, sixty years later, he inserted a map of them into the first edition of Gulliver’s Travels.
It’s a typical Swiftian joke: The novel in English had only just been invented, and fiction and nonfiction weren’t completely disentangled yet (there was significant debate only a few years earlier as to whether Robinson Crusoe really happened or not). Swift was offering a practical demonstration of how easily the tools of realism can be used to create something unreal.

  But the modern fantasy map really came into its own with the work of J.R.R. Tolkien. Maps like the one of the Hundred Acre Wood in Winnie-the-Pooh were drawn to look like the work of a child, but Tolkien’s maps claimed the full authority of serious cartography. They were a testament to a new kind of worldbuilding, in which fictional settings aspired to the same kind of solidity and self-consistency that we were used to associating with reality. At first the maps were drawn by Christopher Tolkien, the author’s son, but for The Lord of the Rings Tolkien doubled down and hired a professional: Pauline Baynes, who before she was a celebrated illustrator was in fact a trained cartographer—she cut her teeth drawing naval charts for the Admiralty during World War II.

  Not all fantasy novels are mappable. Novels are, after all, made of words, and therefore largely exempt from the strict observation of the laws of time and space in a way that maps aren’t. Thomas Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, for example, has no inherent geographical logic whatsoever. The knights just light out into the forest, questing or hunting, and the landscape stretches and distorts, or maybe shifts itself tectonically, to get them where the plot needs them, bang on time. The same is true of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. To be mapped is to be trapped and flattened, dried out and fixed on the page. Some books won’t put up with it.