Scifi magazine covers, 1930-today

November 11, 2006 11:23 PM

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]
posted by mediareport (35 comments total)

wow, paging ace and gary!

fun stuff here
posted by troybob at 11:36 PM on November 11, 2006

hahaha...The Conservative! indeed!
posted by troybob at 11:42 PM on November 11, 2006

I think this one's my favorite. 1958 cyberpunk gods unite!
posted by mediareport at 11:58 PM on November 11, 2006

I don't know what it says about me that I clicked on "slutty," "goofy," and "tacky." In that order.
posted by L. Fitzgerald Sjoberg at 11:59 PM on November 11, 2006

Hey, "The Miracle Workers"! I own that issue. Thanks for the post, mediareport!
posted by interrobang at 12:01 AM on November 12, 2006

These are a lot of fun. I'd like to see them out in a book full-size.
posted by Twang at 12:02 AM on November 12, 2006

quite a few 'brokeback nebula' kinda moments in here...

and horse's neck kinda cool as well
posted by troybob at 12:12 AM on November 12, 2006

That's funny. I thought "Kinda" was beautiful, and "Beautiful" was slutty. Shows me.
posted by Popular Ethics at 12:25 AM on November 12, 2006

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.
posted by j-dub at 12:30 AM on November 12, 2006

*sighs with happiness and settles in to browse*
posted by infini at 12:31 AM on November 12, 2006

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.
posted by jam_pony at 12:35 AM on November 12, 2006

Check out the author's name at the bottom of that one. "Manly Wade Wellman". Wow. And he has a Website.
posted by honest knave at 12:44 AM on November 12, 2006

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.
posted by mediareport at 12:51 AM on November 12, 2006

...yeah, the screwdriver is pretty funny...
posted by troybob at 12:58 AM on November 12, 2006

...and for 'the man on the bottom' it's a piston!
posted by troybob at 1:01 AM on November 12, 2006

About this asspounding anal-log cover: I like the "inappropriate" at the bottom (did I say bottom?) right.
posted by pracowity at 2:59 AM on November 12, 2006

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.
posted by Cyrano at 5:50 AM on November 12, 2006

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.
posted by octothorpe at 6:02 AM on November 12, 2006

Hey! It's Queen's News of the World!
posted by barjo at 6:45 AM on November 12, 2006

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?)
posted by mykescipark at 6:49 AM on November 12, 2006

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.
posted by languagehat at 6:53 AM on November 12, 2006 [1 favorite]

I clicked Slutty, then Kinda, then worked back from there, FWIW.
posted by BeerFilter at 7:04 AM on November 12, 2006

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.)
posted by Bookhouse at 7:46 AM on November 12, 2006

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.
posted by QIbHom at 7:54 AM on November 12, 2006

I clicked on them in the precise order that mediareport gave them to us. I'm good at following directions.
posted by arcticwoman at 9:37 AM on November 12, 2006

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.
posted by Talanvor at 10:53 AM on November 12, 2006

Did no one else click Kinda first??!
posted by gorgor_balabala at 11:08 AM on November 12, 2006

Oops, yes, yes I did go with Kinda first. For some reason I thought the guy was tied to slutty more, ha!
posted by Talanvor at 11:24 AM on November 12, 2006

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

Nice find, mediareport.
posted by Target Practice at 11:56 AM on November 12, 2006

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.
posted by Target Practice at 12:11 PM on November 12, 2006

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).
posted by mediareport at 12:11 PM on November 12, 2006

I'm just looking for the Asimov covers.

Try the Galaxy archive, he published a lot for them.
posted by mediareport at 12:14 PM on November 12, 2006

Yeah, I know. But he published a lot more in Astounding. Most of them didn't get the cover, though, it seems.
posted by Target Practice at 12:15 PM on November 12, 2006

Here's an alternate way to browse the same covers:

http://www.coverpop.com/pop/visco/
posted by jbum at 9:42 PM on November 12, 2006

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.")
posted by octobersurprise at 6:05 AM on November 13, 2006