Science Fiction Magazines – Astounding – Page 3

Astounding Science Fiction, November, 1949 (Featuring “…And Now You Don’t” by Isaac Asimov) [Hubert Rogers]

There are many ways to show the unknown.

Some science fiction illustrations stand out in their depiction of action; some through portrayal of the landscapes of alien worlds; some by imagining technology of the future (or the past, as the case may be); some by presenting aliens in a myriad of variations; some, in capturing the appearance of a tale’s protagonists – male and female; young and old – in the context of adventure, danger, discovery, fear, failure, and (one would hope) triumph

But, science fiction art (and not just the art of science fiction) need not be “literal” in terms of adhering to a story’s original text to have an impact. Likewise, an illustration that’s largely symbolic and heavily stylized can be more visually arresting than an image literal. In this regard, the work of Richard Powers immediately comes to mind. (Well, there are lots of examples of his work at this blog!)

Though his body of work was, stylistically, vastly different from that of Powers, Hubert Rogers, who created many covers, and many, many (very many, come to think of it…) interior illustrations for Astounding Science Fiction from February of 1939 through May of 1952, created art that – while not purely imaginative and fanciful – was often striking in its use of story elements and plot elements as symbols. (His interior art, far more so.)

His superb cover for the November, 1949 issue of Astounding being a case in point.

Created for the second of the four installments by Isaac Asimov that, collectively, would eventually comprise and be published as Second Foundation, the cover “illustrates” part one (of three) for “And Now You Don’t”.

The cover doesn’t really depict any specific scene or event from the tale. Instead, it shows and symbolizes the story’s characters.

There’s the startled looking face of Arkady Darell in the lower right corner. To her left, ill-defined in murky shades of green: the Mule. While I’m not certain about the identity of the figure in red behind Arkady, I’m inclined to think that he’s Homer Munn: A librarian who is among a group of conspirators attempting to locate the Second Foundation, upon whose spaceship Arkady stows away during Munn’s efforts to find such information at the Mule’s palace.

Well, those are the elements. But the way that Rogers arranged them is really creative. First, rather than a simple scene in space, there’s a plain, bold, bright, yellow background. Against that, a bluish-gray, fog-like shadow extends across the scene, lending an air of concealment and murkiness. And finally (well, Homer Munn is a librarian, after all) an array of alpha-numeric symbols extends across the scene through a pair of red arrows, which perhaps symbolize a 1949 version of an automated text reader. Coincidentally, there’s something very “Turing machine reader”-ish in the appearance of this string of characters.

Seemingly juxtaposed at random, together, everything really works. The yellow, blue, red, and green “fit” together perfectly, and, and the figures and faces balance each other as well.

A superb job on Rogers’ part. Well, some of his work is truly stunning, and, I think, as good as if not actually better than that some of his better known near-contemporaries, one of whom received vastly greater accolades. Overall, the central, consistent, and most distinguishing quality of Roger’s work – especially his black and white interior illustrations – is its deeply mythic, rather than literal, air.

Oh, yes…. The issue’s cover (a nearly-hot-off-the-press-looking copy; the colors have held up beautifully across seven decades) appears below, followed by Michael Whelan’s 1986 beautifully done depiction of Arkady Darell on Trantor, which appeared as the cover of the 1986 edition of Second Foundation.

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Arkady Darell amidst the ruins of Trantor, as depicted by artist Michael Whelan for the cover of the Del Rey / Ballantine 1986 edition of Second Foundation.

You can view another Astounding Science Fiction cover – for the magazine’s December, 1945 issue, wherein appeared Part I of “The Mule” – here.

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The novellas that comprise the Foundation Trilogy are listed below:

Foundation

These four novellas form the first novel of the Foundation Trilogy (appropriately entitled Foundation), which was published by Gnome Press in 1951. However, the first section of Foundation, entitled “The Psychohistorians”, is unique to the book itself, and as such did not appear in Astounding.

May, 1942 – “Foundation” (in book form as “The Encyclopedists”)

June, 1942 – “Bridle and Saddle” (in book form as “The Mayors”)

August, 1944 – “The Big and The Little” (in book form as “The Merchant Princes”)

October, 1944 – “The Wedge” (in book form as “The Traders”)

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Foundation and Empire

Foundation and Empire – the second novel of the Foundation Series, first published in 1952 by Gnome Press, is comprised of “Dead Hand” (retitled “The General”) and “The Mule” (which retained its original title).

April, 1945 – “Dead Hand” (in book form as “The General”)

November, 1945, and, December, 1945 – “The Mule”

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Second Foundation

Second Foundation – the third novel of the Foundation series, first published by Gnome Press in 1953 – is comprised of the novellas “Search By the Mule”, and, “Search By the Foundation”. The former was published in the January, 1948 issue of Astounding Science Fiction under the title “Now You See It…”, while the latter appeared as three parts in Astounding: in the magazine’s 1949 issues for November and December, and, the January, 1950 issue.

January, 1948 – “Now You See It…” (in book form as “Search By the Mule”)

November, 1949, December 1949, and, January 1950 – “…And Now You Don’t” (in book form as “Search By the Foundation”)

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Of the eleven issues of Astounding listed above, six were published with cover art symbolizing or representing the actual Foundation story within that particular issue. But, the cover art for issues of May, 1942; October, 1944; December, 1945; December, 1949, and January, 1950 was entirely unrelated to Asimov’s trilogy.

A Bunch of References

“…And Now You Don’t”, at Internet Speculative Fiction Database

Arkady Darell, at Asimov Fandom

Arkady Darell, at Info Galactic

Foundation Series, at Wikipedia

Foundation, at Wikipedia

Foundation and Empire, at Wikipedia

Second Foundation, at Wikipedia

Guide to Wild American Pulp Artists – Hubert Rogers, at Pulp Artists

List of Foundation Series Characters, at Wikipedia

Short Reviews – …And Now You Don’t (Part 1 of 3), by Isaac Asimov, at Castalia House

The Course of Trantor: Covers from Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy (art by Michael Whelan), at reddit.com (r/pics)

Turing Machine, at Wikipedia

Turing Machine Operation, at University of Cambridge Department of Computer Science and Technology

A Turing Machine – Overview (video of home-made Turing Machine in operation), at Mike Davey’s YouTube channel

Astounding Science Fiction, August, 1947 (Featuring “The End Is Not Yet” by L. Ron Hubbard) [Hubert Rogers]

L.R. Hubbard’s “The End Is Not Yet” was serialized in the August, September, and October issues of Astounding Science Fiction. I’ve not yet actually read the story (!), which to the best of my knowledge is neither available in full-text format on the Internet, nor in published monograph format. Well, I do know that “Anne Von Steel”, “Connover Banks”, and “Jules Fabrecken” are among the story’s characters – a quick perusal of the story revealed that. In any event, I’m under the impression that the plot is based upon the protagonist’s (or, protagonists’) encounter with versions of himself from parallel worlds with, inevitably, different histories or “world-lines”.

The concept of parallel universes was brilliantly executed – in terms of writing, plot, and sheer literary “ooopmh” – by Fritz Leiber, Jr., in Destiny Times Three, which appeared in Astounding in March and April of 1945, and was subsequently included in Gnome Press’ 1952 Five Science Fiction Novels. Really – Leiber did a fantastic job.

As for the August, 1947 issue of Astounding, the cover was created by Hubert Rogers, identifiable in a hard-to-define way by the appearance and posture of the two men in the foreground. The presence of silhouettes of spear-armed men in the lower background, a devastated city, and two mushroom clouds in the background (is one rising over the New York Metropolitan area – uh-oh!) lend the scene an apocalyptic tone. Also interesting is the way that Rogers painted the central character in shades of brownish-orange, with a red book – is that a plot key, of some sort? – in the very center of the composition.

References

L. Ron Hubbard, at Wikipedia

L. Ron Hubbard, at Encyclopedia Brittanica

The End Is Not Yet, at Internet Speculative Fiction Database

Guide to Wild American Pulp Artists – Hubert Rogers, at Pulp Artists

Astounding Science Fiction, March, 1953 (Featuring “Thou Good and Faithful”, by John Loxmith) [G. Pawelka]

I really like this one.

Though the image depicted on the cover, illustrating John Loxmith’s “Thou Good and Faithful”, connotes neither action nor danger and is rather devoid of spacecraft and astronauts, while the color palette – muted and easy shades of gray, green, blue, and tan – is very pleasing to the eye.

And, the translucent sphere held by the alien lends a note of mystery to the scene. In that regard, the cover is reminiscent of Hubert Rogers’ illustration for The Wizard of Linn, in the April 1950 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. Albeit, it’s not the same sphere on each cover!

Astounding Science Fiction – October, 1952 (Featuring “The Currents of Space”, by Isaac Asimov) [Richard Van Dongen]

Having created this post in May of 2018, I’ve since acquired a copy of the October, 1952, issue of Astounding in much better condition than the “original”.

While the cover of the “new” magazine has none of the chipps and scuffs; dings and bends; creases and wrinkles, of the original, the most notable difference is between the color tones of the covers, despite the two images having been created with the same Epson scanner.

As for the cover art itself?

By Richard Van Dongen, it’s quite striking, and somewhat reminiscent of Gaylord Welker’s cover for the December, 1952, issue of Astounding, albeit Welker’s cover was unrelated to any story in the magazine.

Images of the “olde” and “new” covers are displayed below…

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Astounding Science Fiction – July, 1947 (Featuring “With Folded Hands…”, by Jack Williamson) [William Timmins]

William Timmins’ straightforward and somewhat uninspiring covert art, though visually consistent with and appropriate for “With Folded Hands…”, belies the depth, power, and literary quality of Jack Williamson’s 1947 story. In 1954, it was expanded as Galaxy Science Fiction Novel number 21, under the title The Humanoids, with cover art by Edward Emshwiller.

I discovered Williamson’s tale years ago, within “Volume IIA” of The Science Fiction Hall of Fame.

The story was one of fifty science fiction stories adapted by Ernest Kinoy and George Lefferts for the NBC 1950-1951 radio program Dimension X, and broadcast on April 15, 1950. You can listen to the program here, at the American Radio Classics YouTube channel, where, oddly, it’s listed under the category of “comedy”.

“Comedy?!” Nooo… No. It’s not a comedy.

I was reminded of Williamson’s story in the mid-1990s after reading Norbert Wiener’s The Human Use of Human Beings, which I found to be eerily – nay, chillingly! – prescient (albeit now, 69 years too early…), imbued with a sense of compassion, and, composed with an almost poetic sense of language (though obviously not poetry, per se!). Above all, the “tone” of the book is one of deep humility, and, a profound, refreshing absence of the ideologically motivated hubris that passes for intellectuality, so characteristic of the current age. In this, the book’s resemblance to Sir Roger Penrose’s works on the origin and nature of consciousness is striking.

Anyway… I read With Folded Hands once again, and found that Williamson’s story had lost neither its depth nor its impact despite the passage of time. (Other science fiction stories? Not always so much.)

It’s interesting that Williamson’s story and Wiener’s book appeared within three years of one another. This may attest to a commonality of thought about the implications and effect – viewed from the perspective of the mid-twentieth century, the Second World War having ended only a few years earlier – of the intersection of and anticipation of several technological and social trends: Automation, the eventuality of artificial intelligence and machine learning (though I doubt those phrases were conceived of as such, at the time), and computer networks (the humanoids are in constant real-time communication with one another, after all), upon the economic and social “place” of men, both individually and collectively.

Excerpts from Norbert Wiener’s book (1973 Discus edition) follow, a little further down this post..

“At your service,” Mr. Underhill.” Its blind steel eyes stared straight ahead, but it was still aware of him. “What’s the matter, sir? Aren’t you happy?”

(Since creating this post in May of 2019, I’ve acquired a copy of the July, 1947, Astounding, in much better condition than the original – which is displayed at the “bottom” of this post. The “new” copy, minus chipped edges and missing corners, is shown below…)

Underhill felt cold and faint with terror.
His skin turned clammy.
A painful prickling came over him.
His wet hand tensed on the door handle of the car,
but he restrained the impulse to jump and run.
That was folly.
There was no escape.
He made himself sit still.

“You will be happy, sir,” the mechanical promised him cheerfully.
“We have learned how to make all men happy under the Prime Directive.
Our service will be perfect now, at last.

Even Mr. Sledge is very happy now.”

Underhill tried to speak, but his dry throat stuck.
He felt ill.
The world turned dim and gray.
The humanoids were prefect – no question of that.
They had even learned to lie, to secure the contentment of men

He knew they had lied.
That was no tumor they had removed from Sledge’s brain,
but the memory,
the scientific knowledge,
and the bitter disillusion of their own creator.
Yet he had seen that Sledge was happy now.

He tried to stop his own convulsive quivering.

“A wonderful operation!”
His voice came forced and faint.
“You know Aurora has had a lot of funny tenants,
but that old man was the absolute limit.
They very idea that he had made the humanoids,
that he knew how to stop them! I always knew he must be lying!”

Stiff with terror, he made a weak and hollow laugh.

“What is the matter, Mr. Underhill?”

The alert mechanical must have perceived his shuddering illness.

“Are you unwell?”

“No, there’s nothing the matter with me,” he gasped desperately.
“Absolutely nothing!
I’ve just found out that I’m perfectly happy under the Prime Directive.
Everything is absolutely wonderful.”
His voice came dry and hoarse and wild.
“You won’t have to operate on me.”
The car turned off the shining avenue,
taking him back to the quiet splendor of his prison.
His futile hands clenched and relaxed again, folded on his knees.

There was nothing left to do.

( – Jack S. Williamson – )

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Illustration by Hubert Rogers, for Jack Williamson’s story “And Searching Mind” (Astounding Science Fiction, May, 1948 – Part III of III) (p. 118)

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The Human Use of Human Beings
by Norbert Wiener
Avon Books – (1950) 1973

In the myths and fairy tales that we read as children
we learned a few of the simpler and more obvious truths of life,
such as that when a djinnee is found in a bottle,
it had better be left there;
that the fisherman who craves a boon from heaven too many times on behalf of his wife
will end up exactly where he started;
that if you are given three wishes, you must be very careful what you wish for.
These simple and obvious truths represent the childish equivalent of the tragic view of life
which the Greeks and many modern Europeans possess,
and which is somehow missing in this land of plenty.

“Whether we entrust our decisions to machines of metal,
or to those machines of flesh and blood

which are bureaus
and vast laboratories
and armies
and corporations,

we shall never receive the right answers to our questions unless we ask the right questions.”

I have said that the modem man,
and especially the modern American,
however much “know-how” he may have, has very little “know-what.”
He will accept the superior dexterity of the machine-made decisions
without too much inquiry as to the motives and principles behind these.
In doing so, he will put himself sooner or later in the position of the father
in W.W. Jacobs’ The Monkey’s Paw, who has wished for a hundred pounds,
only to find at his door the agent of the company for which his son works,
tendering him one hundred pounds as a consolation for his son’s death at the factory.
Or again, he may do it in the way of the Arab fisherman in the One Thousand and One Nights,
when he broke the Seal of Solomon on the lid of the bottle which contained the angry djinnee.

Let us remember that there are game-playing machines
both of The Monkey’s Paw type and of the type of the Bottled Djinnee.
Any machine constructed for the purpose of making decisions,
if it does not possess the power of learning,
will be completely literal-minded.
Woe to us if we let it decide our conduct,
unless we have previously examined the laws of its action,
and know fully that its conduct will be carried out on principles acceptable to us!
On the other hand,
the machine like the djinnee which can learn and can make decisions on the basis of its learning,
will in no way be obliged to make such decisions as we should have made,
or will be acceptable to us.
For the man who is not aware of this,
to throw the problem of his responsibility on the machine,
whether it can learn or not,
is to cast his responsibility to the winds,
and to find it coming back seated on the whirlwind.

Reference

Bova, Ben (Editor), The Science Fiction Hall of Fame – Volume IIA, Avon Books, New York, N.Y., 1973

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Original cover image, from May of 2019…

Astounding Science Fiction, March, 1942 – Featuring “Recruiting Station”, by A.E. van Vogt [Hubert Rogers]

The United States had been engaged in the Second World War for some four months – and other Allied nations notably longer – by the time A.E. van Vogt’s “Recruiting Station” appeared in the March, 1942 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. In light of the United States’ efforts to mobilize American manpower for the war effort, van Vogt’s title – which would have an immediate resonance with the cultural zeitgeist of the America of 1942 – was aptly chosen. The significant difference being, that the military enlistees in van Vogt’s story – elements and aspects of which perhaps drew upon his earlier experience as a writer of romances – would unwittingly be fighting for the alien race known as the Calonians.

Unlike van Vogt’s brilliantly-done story “Asylum“, from the May, 1942 issue of Astounding, visualized by Charles Schneeman, both the cover art and black & white interior illustrations for “Recruiting Station” were created by Hubert Rogers. While most of the story’s interior art is not particularly dramatic or compelling, simply nominally depicting the story, the image on page 20 is nonetheless intriguing and well-conceived.

As for the images you’re actually viewing in this post, the cover image and close-up of the cover art were scanned from my own copy of the March ’42 issue of the magazine. However, due to the fragility of my copy (I didn’t want to break the delicate, now-brittle binding!), all the interior images (including the table of contents) were instead created from the PDF version of the magazine which was downloaded from Archive.org, with illustrations having been enhanced and edited via Photoshop.

Enjoy!

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“Are you interested in the Calonian cause?”

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Page 8

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Page 13

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Page 20

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Page 27

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Page 34

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Page 41

Astounding Science Fiction, June, 1945, Featuring “Pandora’s Millions”, by George O. Smith [William Timmins]

“Pandora’s Millions”, in the July, 1945, issue of Astounding Science Fiction, is one of the twelve stories comprising George O. Smith’s Venus Equilateral collection.

The other eleven stories include…

“QRM—Interplanetary” – October, 1942
“Calling the Empress” – June, 1943
“Recoil” – November, 1943
“Off the Beam” – February, 1944
“The Long Way” – April, 1944
“Beam Pirate” – October, 1944
“Firing Line” – December, 1944
“Special Delivery” – March, 1945
“Mad Holiday”
“The External Triangle”
“Epilogue: Identity” – November, 1945

…all of which, with the exception of “Mad Holiday” and “The External Triangle”, originally appeared in Astounding as well.

William Timmins’ cover for the July, 1945 issue of the magazine clearly shows the name “Venus Equilateral” at the station’s entrance, the station itself being an “interplanetary communications hub located at the L₄ Lagrangian point of the Sun-Venus system”.

By profession an electronics engineer whose forte was “hard” science fiction, George O. Smith, born in April of 1911, died on May 27, 1981. His obituary, from the June 5, 1981, issue of The New York Times, appears below.

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References

George O. Smith – bibliography at The Internet Speculative Fiction Database

Venus Equilateral – at Wikipedia

Venus Equilateral (story collection) – at Wikipedia

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.

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Illustration by Paul Orban, for Norman Menasco’s story “Trigger Tide” (p. 65)

Illustration by Miller, for Raymond F. Jones’ story “Discontinuity” (p. 85)

Illustration by Miller, for Raymond F. Jones’ story “Discontinuity” (p. 103)

Astounding Science Fiction, December, 1945 (Featuring “Beggars in Velvet” by Lewis Padgett [Henry Kuttner and Catherine L. Moore]) [William Timmins]

At the core of all literary genres are stories that are emblematic – in terms of theme, plot, characters, and setting. Tales of adventure, drama, fantasy, mystery, romance, tragedy, and more, are represented by particular works, which in the names of their very titles, represent to the reader (or, viewer!) “that” body of literature, without even the briefest need for depiction, description, or explanation.

In the genre of science fiction, one such tale (well, really, a set of tales) continues to remain iconic: Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy, comprising Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation (the trilogy having been expanded with two sequels and two prequels commencing in 1981), which initially appeared as a series of eleven short stories in Astounding Science Fiction from May of 1942, through January of 1950.

As derived from information at the International Science Fiction Database, the Wikipedia entry for the Foundation Series, plus a brief perusal of my own copies of Astounding, the body of stories that comprise the Trilogy are listed below:

May, 1942 – “Foundation” (also known as “The Encyclopedia”)

June, 1942 – “Bridle and Saddle”

August, 1944 – “The Big and The Little” (also known as “The Merchant Princes”)

October, 1944 – “The Wedge” (also known as “The Traders”)

April, 1945 – “Dead Hand”

November, 1945, December, 1945 – “The Mule”

January, 1948 – “Now You See It”

November, 1949, December 1949, January 1950 – “And Now You Don’t” (also known as “Search for The Foundation”)

Of the eleven issues of Astounding listed above, six were published with cover art symbolizing or representing the actual Foundation story within the particular issue. But, the cover art for issues of May, 1942; October, 1944; December, 1945; December, 1949, and January, 1950 was unrelated to Asimov’s story.

An example appears below. It’s the cover of Astounding for December, 1945, with art by William Timmins for Lewis Padgett’s (Henry Kuttner and Catherine L. Moore’s) “Beggars in Velvet”. While I’ve not yet read the story, the juxtaposition of archers garbed in “Daniel Boonish” attire in the left foreground, with a crowd of seeming civilian hostages to the right – with a futuristic cityscape behind – presents an unusual sight.

Within appears part two of “The Mule”, the text of both parts of which was later incorporated into “Foundation and Empire”.

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The story is illustrated with five drawings by Paul Orban, two of which – the most “science-fictiony” – you can view below.

This image – the leading illustration of the story – shows the spacecraft Bayta, crewed by Toran and Bayta Darell, Ebling Mis, and Magnifico (the Mule himself, unbeknownst to the other three) as they search for the Great Library of Trantor. The year: 12,376, by Galactic Era chronology.

(Illustration on page 60)

“The location of an objective area the great world of Trantor presents a problem unique in the Galaxy. There are no continents of oceans to locate from a thousand miles distance. There are no rivers, lakes, and islands to catch sight of through the cloud rifts.

The metal-covered world was – had been – one colossal city, and only the old Imperial palace could be identified readily from outer space by a stranger. The Bayta circled the world at almost air-car height in repeated painful search.

From polar regions, where the icy coating of the metal spires were somber evidence of the weather-conditioning machinery, they worked southwards. Occasionally they could experiment with the correlations – (or presumable correlations) – between what they saw and what the inadequate map obtained at Neotrantor showed.

But it was unmistakable when it came. The gap in the metal coat of the planet was fifty miles. The unusual greenery spread over hundreds of square miles, inclosing the mighty grace of the ancient Imperial residences.

The Bayta hovered and slowly oriented itself. There were only the huge super-causeways to guide them. Long straight arrows on the map; smooth, gleaming ribbons there below them.

What the map indicated to be the University area was reached by dead reckoning, and upon the flat area of what once must have been a busy landing-field, the ship lowered itself.

It was only as they submerged into the welter of metal that the smooth beauty apparent from the air dissolved into the broken, twisted near-wreckage that had been left in the wake of the Sack. Spires were truncated, smooth walls gouted and twisted, and just for an instant there was the glimpse of a shaven area of earth – perhaps several hundred acres in extent – dark and plowed.” (pp. 93-94)

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This image shows an Empire spacecraft ramming the Foundation spaceship Cluster, during a battle between space fleets of the Foundation and the Empire. The events are watched live (evidently, the time-lag inherent to speed-of-light communication over intragalactic distances is not an issue – oh, well!) by Toran Darell and Ebling Mis.

(Illustration on page 151)

“Toran sat down upon the cot that served as Magnifico’s bed, and waited. The propaganda routine of the Mule’s “special bulletins” were monotonously similar. First the martial music, and then the buttery slickness of the announcer. The minor news items would come, following one another in patient lock step. Then the pause. Then the trumpets and the rising excitement and climax.

Toran endured it. Mis muttered to himself.

The newscaster spilled out, in conventional war-correspondent phraseology, the unctuous words then translated into sound the molten metal and blasted flesh of a battle in space.

“Rapid cruiser squadrons under Lieutenant General Sammin hit back hard at the task force striking out from Iss – ” The carefully expressionless face of the speaker upon the screen faded into the blackness of a space cut through by the quick swaths of ships reeling across the emptiness in deadly battle. The voice continued through the soundless thunder –

“The most striking action of the battle was the subsidiary combat of the heavy cruiser Cluster against three enemy ships of the ‘Nova’ class – ”

The screen’s view veered and closed in. A great ship sparked and one of the frantic attackers glowed angrily, twisted out of focus, swung back and rammed. The Cluster bowed wildly and survived the glancing blow that drove the attacker off in twisting reflection.

The newsman’s smooth unimpassioned delivery continued to the last blow and the last hulk.

Then a pause, and a largely similar voice-and-picture of the fight off Mnemom, to which the novelty was added of a lengthy description of a hit-and-run landing – the picture of a blasted city – huddled and weary prisoners – and off again.” (pp. 77-78)

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When I first saw Orban’s drawing of the viewing screen (on page 151), I was intrigued: A large-diameter viewing scope, with a set of cables attached to its periphery, mounted at an angle to a seated viewer’s line of sight? Hmmm…

Where did I see such image – or its inspiration – before?

Then, I remembered.

The design of Orban’s view-screen – or, at least the front of it – bears a similarity to cathode-ray tube of the World War Two era H2X ground-mapping radar unit, which was primarily utilized in heavy bombers (B-17 Flying Fortresses and B-24 Liberators) of the United States Army Air Force.

Photographs of H2X units in two B-17 Flying Fortress bombers of the 401st Bomb Group of the British-based Eighth Air Force – taken in England on December 5, 1944 – were received in June of 1945, and presumably released to the news media after that date, months before the publication of Orban’s illustrations in the December issue of Astounding.

Given the timing of the photographs’ distribution, and their presumed availability to the general public, could Paul Orban have been inspiration for his illustration in Astounding have been these photographs?

I don’t really know. Just pure speculation.

But, it’s an idea.

You can view the two images of the H2X radar unit below. They’re among the nearly 89,000 images in NARA’s Records Group 342 (Black and White and Color Photographs of U.S. Air Force and Predecessor Agencies Activities, Facilities, and Personnel – World War II ) now available to the public through Fold3.com. Since I scanned both pictures at 400 dpi, a “full-screen” / enlarged view will reveal detailed views of the units’ buttons, switches, control panels and associated equipment.

Army Air Force Photo 65812AC / A12719

Based on this set’s location relative to the bulkhead and fuselage, this unit is probably located in the navigator’s station of the B-17.

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Army Air Force Photo A-65812AC / A12720

Based on the location of the door (to the left) and curvature of the fuselage wall (on the right), this unit is situated within the B-17’s radio compartment. Note the curtain on the left and above the H2X unit, giving the radar operator a view of his scope unimpeded by sunlight.

References

Foundation Series – at Wikipedia

Foundation and Empire – at Wikipedia

Isaac Asimov Short Stories Bibliography – at Wikipedia

International Science Fiction Database – Foundation (Original Stories)

World War Two German Technical Analysis of Captured R-78 / APS-15A Radar (featuring Photo A-68512AC) – at Foundation for German Communication and Related Technologies

R-78A Receiver-Indicator, AN/APS-15 Radar Equipment – Two color images from Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

Astounding Science Fiction, April, 1957 (Featuring “Call Me Joe” by Poul Anderson) [Frank Kelly Freas]

“Joe roared.”

“Imagine being strong!”

The cover art for Astounding Science Fiction for April of 1957 represented the 19th such illustration for that magazine created by Frank Kelly Freas, his first cover art having been an allegorical illustration for the story The Gulf Between, in the magazine’s March, 1954 issue. Portraying Poul Anderson’s story “Call Me Joe”, Freas’ painting – and his accompanying interior art – fits the scenes, mood, technology (at least, what few technological descriptions there are!), and science (at least, science of the future) marvelously.

Freas’ use of shades of violet, orange, red, and brown for the Jovian sky, in combination with greens and blues for the the planet’s surface and vegetation – finished with a yellowish-red exhaust / re-entry trail for a descending spacecraft – lend an almost iridescent quality to the image.

Of course, you can’t overlook Joe, himself: the metallic green centaur-like creature – a genetically engineered being – silhouetted against the glowing sky, who is a – but not solely “the” – center of the story.

In any event, I’m under the impression that – akin to Arthur C. Clarke’s The Sentinel, which formed a plot element of, but was not the sole and central basis for 2001: A Space Odyssey, Poul Anderson’s story was, to lesser or greater degree, part of the inspiration for James’s Cameron’s 2009 film “Avatar”. (That’ll require some clarification via DuckDuckGo.)

If so – and I think this is so – this would have done a great disservice to the depth, profundity, and originality of Anderson’s story, which is actually an exploration of concepts of identity, individuality, and personality, as well as – to a lesser extent – the ethics and morality surrounding the creation of artificial, sentient life. An example of the latter being “Joe”, on the cover. Another interesting feature of the tale is Anderson’s conception of a temperamental electronic device known as a “K-tube”, which enables real-time telepathic communication between controller Ed Anglesey, and receiver / test subject, “Joe”.

You can read a very nice summary of the story at Wikipedia.

This is unlike Cameron’s film, which – though it has elements and stereotypical tropes of science fiction – (well, hey, oh wow – it’s got fancy technology) is not a work of science fiction, and I think was never intended to be so. Quite the opposite.

“Avatar” is best understood as less science-fiction, and vastly more as an exercise in virtue signalling (to the tune of $237,000,000), by which the technocratic / meritocratic elite of 21st Century Western Civilization – the “ruling class” – validates its ever-uncertain social status, and, affirms its intellectual superiority, moral virtuosity, and spiritual refinement.

(That is, of course, in its own eyes.)

But, that’s for another discussion.

Enough, with the politics.

(For now.)

I hope you enjoy Kelly Freas’ art, and excerpts from Poul Anderson’s text. The symbol in the upper left corner is typical of the cover design of late-1950s issues of Astounding, which featured symbolic or literal representations of objects and concepts having a scientific theme. In this case, “Transformation under heat and pressure.”

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(Illustration on pages 8-9)

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For a moment, then, he knew only a crazy smothering wave of panic.
He thought he was back on Earth Station,
floating in null-gee at the end of a cable
while a thousand frosty stars haloed the planet before him.
He thought the great I-beam had broken from its moorings and started toward him,
slowly,
but with all the inertia of its cold tons, spinning and shimmering in the Earthlight,
and the only sound himself screaming and screaming in his helmet
trying to break from the cable the beam nudged him ever so gently
but it kept on moving he moved with it
he was crushed against the station wall nuzzled into it
his mangled suit frothed as it tried to seal its wounded self
there was blood mingled with the foam his blood

Joe roared. (p. 17)

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(Illustration on page 25)

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“Imagine walking under a glowing violet sky,
where great flashing clouds sweep the earth
with shadow and rain strikes beneath them.
Imagine walking on the slopes of a mountain like polished metal,
with a clean red flame exploding above you and thunder laughing in the ground.
Imagine a cool wild stream,
and low trees with dark coppery flowers,
and a waterfall, methane-fall … whatever you like … leaping off a cliff,
and the strong live wind shakes its mane full of rainbows!
Imagine a whole forest, dark and breathing,
and here and there you glimpse a pale-red wavering will-o’-the-wisp,
which is the life radiation of some fleet shy animal, and … and – ”

Anglesey croaked into silence.
He stared down at his clenched fists,
then he closed his eyes tight and tears ran out between the lids.

“Imagine being strong!” (p. 26)

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(Illustration on page 34)

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“So.
That’s all there is?
You thought I was afraid to come down here and be Joe,
and wanted to know why?
But I told you I wasn’t!”

I should have believed – whispered Cornelius.

“Well, get out of the circuit then.”
Joe continued growling it vocally.
“And don’t ever come back in the control room, understand?
K-tubes or no, I don’t want to see you again.
And I may be a cripple, but I can still take you apart cell by cell.
Now – sign off – leave me alone.
The first ship will be landing in minutes.”

You a cripple … you, Joe Angelsey?

“What?”
The great gray being on the hill lifted his barbaric head as if so sudden trumpets.
“What do you mean?”

Don’t you understand? said the weak, dragging thought.
You know how the esprojector works.
You know I could have probed Angelsey’s mind in Angelsey’s brain
without making enough interference to be noticed.
And I could not have probed a wholly nonhuman mind at all,
now could it have been aware of me.
The filters would not have passed such a signal.
Yet you felt me in the first fractional second.
It can only mean a human mind in a nonhuman brain.

You are not he half-corpse on Jupiter V any longer.
You’re Joe – Joe Angelsey.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Joe. “You’re right.” (p. 37)

– Poul Anderson –