Comments on: Scifi magazine covers, 1930-today

Scifi magazine covers, 1930-today

mediareport — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 23:23:30 -0800

A year-by-year archive, from 1930 to the present, of every poignant, creepy, tacky, tragic, goofy, beautiful and, yes, kinda slutty cover of the magazine that started out as Astounding Stories of Super Science and became Analog, with lots of changes in between. [via the horse's neck]

By: troybob

troybob — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 23:36:45 -0800

wow, paging ace and gary! fun stuff here

By: troybob

troybob — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 23:42:02 -0800

hahaha...The Conservative! indeed!

By: mediareport

mediareport — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 23:58:29 -0800

I think this one's my favorite. 1958 cyberpunk gods unite!

By: L. Fitzgerald Sjoberg

L. Fitzgerald Sjoberg — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 23:59:02 -0800

I don't know what it says about me that I clicked on "slutty," "goofy," and "tacky." In that order.

By: interrobang

interrobang — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 00:01:50 -0800

Hey, "The Miracle Workers"! I own that issue. Thanks for the post, mediareport!

By: Twang

Twang — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 00:02:47 -0800

These are a lot of fun. I'd like to see them out in a book full-size.

By: troybob

troybob — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 00:12:22 -0800

quite a few 'brokeback nebula' kinda moments in here... and horse's neck kinda cool as well

By: Popular Ethics

Popular Ethics — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 00:25:58 -0800

That's funny. I thought "Kinda" was beautiful, and "Beautiful" was slutty. Shows me.

By: j-dub

j-dub — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 00:30:57 -0800

Can we get a total clicks breakdown on the percentage of front-page readers who clicked: [ ] poignant [ ] creepy [ ] tacky [ ] tragic [ ] goofy [ ] beautiful [ ] kinda slutty I have a hunch it'll teach us all we ever need to know about psychology. Or marketing. Or something.

By: infini

infini — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 00:31:00 -0800

*sighs with happiness and settles in to browse*

By: jam_pony

jam_pony — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 00:35:41 -0800

Check the author's name at top left on this one. He never stopped writing SF, but he started making a lot more money from it.

By: honest knave

honest knave — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 00:44:38 -0800

Check out the author's name at the bottom of that one. "Manly Wade Wellman". Wow. And he has a Website.

By: mediareport

mediareport — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 00:51:24 -0800

A lot of the covers from 1954-59 have a weird design element added in the upper left corner that appears to have nothing to do with the rest of the image. It's neat once you notice it.

By: troybob

troybob — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 00:58:48 -0800

...yeah, the screwdriver is pretty funny...

By: troybob

troybob — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 01:01:51 -0800

...and for 'the man on the bottom' it's a piston!

By: pracowity

pracowity — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 02:59:15 -0800

About this asspounding anal-log cover: I like the "inappropriate" at the bottom (did I say bottom?) right.

By: Cyrano

Cyrano — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 05:50:19 -0800

I don't know what it says about me that I clicked on "slutty," "goofy," and "tacky." In that order. Like a moth on a zipline to a flame with a homing beacon on it, I went to slutty. And I was expecting more. Probably says something too.

By: octothorpe

octothorpe — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 06:02:56 -0800

There was a used book store at home that had tons of the forties and fifties issues when I was a teen-ager and I should have snatched them up then. I did buy this Heinlein and a Frank Herbert and this one and a few others (and some Galaxy's) but I kick myself that I didn't buy more.

By: barjo

barjo — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 06:45:55 -0800

Hey! It's Queen's News of the World!

By: mykescipark

mykescipark — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 06:49:50 -0800

About this asspounding anal-log cover Good grief, where are you seeing ass-pounding in this cover? It's just a drawing of a (particularly hot) guy, posing with a heart in his hand. (And why not?)

By: languagehat

languagehat — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 06:53:37 -0800

Great stuff. I have a lot of ASFs from the forties (see list here), mostly in pretty bad shape but still fun to flip through; the bulk of my issues from the '50s and '60s seem to have gotten lost over the years and moves, alas. I clicked on "slutty" first, and was shocked—shocked!—to see such an image on such a notoriously prudish magazine. On which, an anecdote: Campbell was an extremely puritanical editor, and ruthlesly excised any reference, no matter how obscure or oblique, to The Facts of Life. One SF writer decided to test Campbell, by mentioning in a short story, as if it were a science-fiction-y futuristic detail, that one of the characters had just acquired a ball-bearing mousetrap. A few pages later, it is mentioned that the mousetrap is in fact a tom-cat. This is believed to be the only reference to s that ever appeared in Astounding Stories during Campbell's editorship.

By: BeerFilter

BeerFilter — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 07:04:00 -0800

I clicked Slutty, then Kinda, then worked back from there, FWIW.

By: Bookhouse

Bookhouse — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 07:46:19 -0800

I am going to cherish the name Manly Wade Wellman for the rest of my days. Hell, I might try to chase down one of his books just to have it on the shelf. (oh, and slutty, creepy, then goofy.)

By: QIbHom

QIbHom — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 07:54:54 -0800

My partner started reading Sci Fi as a teen ager because of the BEM and torn bodice covers on SF mags. Her love of both SF and women has survived the decades. Great story, Languagehat.

By: arcticwoman

arcticwoman — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 09:37:11 -0800

I clicked on them in the precise order that mediareport gave them to us. I'm good at following directions.

By: Talanvor

Talanvor — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 10:53:50 -0800

I dunno, I went with slutty then kinda, and thought the guy was drawn better than the girl. Then I saw the weird bug/african mask one and was happy with that.

By: gorgor_balabala

gorgor_balabala — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 11:08:15 -0800

Did no one else click Kinda first??!

By: Talanvor

Talanvor — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 11:24:16 -0800

Oops, yes, yes I did go with Kinda first. For some reason I thought the guy was tied to slutty more, ha!

By: Target Practice

Target Practice — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 11:56:00 -0800

Myself, I'm just looking for the Asimov covers. Nice find, mediareport.

By: Target Practice

Target Practice — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 12:11:30 -0800

Here we go. Surprisingly few of his stories got the cover. His really early ones I didn't expect, of course, but... Nightfall Bridle and Saddle The Big and the Little Dead Hand The Mule Now You See It... ...And Now You Don't The Currents of Space, Part 1 Sucker Bait The Naked Sun, Part 1 Profession All but three of these are Foundation stories or serials.

By: mediareport

mediareport — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 12:11:49 -0800

Found it! Browsing covers on the list of other mags, I found my personal holy grail of sci-fi mag covers. I saw it a year or two ago and thought it was a total wish-fulfillment hoot. And here's another slutty one, from the almost-as-cool archive of Fantasy and Science Fiction covers, and another one from Galaxy (for all you voyeurs).

By: mediareport

mediareport — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 12:14:40 -0800

I'm just looking for the Asimov covers. Try the Galaxy archive, he published a lot for them.

By: Target Practice

Target Practice — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 12:15:41 -0800

Yeah, I know. But he published a lot more in Astounding. Most of them didn't get the cover, though, it seems.

By: jbum

jbum — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 21:42:20 -0800

Here's an alternate way to browse the same covers: http://www.coverpop.com/pop/visco/

By: octobersurprise

octobersurprise — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 06:05:58 -0800

Rogers' cover for Lawrence O'Donnell's (Henry Kuttner's and Catherine L. Moore's) Fury is one of my all-time favorites. And Frank Kelly Freas' martian is probably the best alien ever. (Interesting Freas trivia: "Freas was commissioned to paint ... more than 500 saints' portraits for the Franciscans executed simultaneously with his portraits of Alfred E. Neuman ("What? Me Worry?") for Mad.")