I was excited to pick up two nice old magazines with Ray Bradbury stories.

The first is the Fall 1948 Planet Stories, containing “Mars Is Heaven!,” which of course was collected in the 1949 The Martian Chronicles as “The Third Expedition.”  Interestingly, whereas the book gives the date of this mission as the then-magical 2000, in the original pulp it is a very near 1960.

The other magazine is the 28 June 1952 issue of Collier’s.  This huge periodical has the first publication of Bradbury’s now-classic “A Sound of Thunder,” with a lovely colorful illustration by Frederick Siebel...though I confess that the depiction of the rifles falls a tad flat to my taste.

In any event, speaking of huge, when I say acquired this magazine, I don’t mean that I was able to purchase that single issue, as I did for, say, the 30 August 1947 “Flight to the Future” article by Robert A. Heinlein and Caleb B. Laning.  No, no—nothing quite so simple.  Due to the vagaries of the online market, what was available just then was the entire volume 129 of the magazine, meaning every issue from April and May and June of 1952, bound in a great big 2-inch-thick hardcover, as was done for libraries back then.  Wow.  This creates some slight puzzles in the shelving in my own library, but that tome sure is a neat slice of mid-century American history.

​Oh, finally—  Remember how the familiar version of the story, as printed in The Golden Apples of the Sun, ends with Travis, the guide, clicking off the safety of his rifle, followed by, ahem, a sound of thunder?  Well, apparently this was too edgy for Collier​’s, so when the agonized Eckles asks if somehow they can go back fix things, the story here ends with the scared and angry Travis simply shaking his head.  Ouch...  Oh, well—the magazine was still a wonderful pickup!

Wow, I guess it has been just short of an entire year since posting...  Not cool.  Still, I at least have been linking my Goodreads reviews religiously the whole time, so...well, that's at least something, isn't it?

​In any event, recently I happened to pick up the February 1953 Thrilling Wonder Stories with Jack Coggins cover art of the mining or exploration of Saturn's rings that I always enjoyed when seeing it in Brian Ash's The Visual Encyclopedia of Science Fiction when I was a kid.  It is handsome and evocative of the flavor of '50s SF, so I have posted it to my Other SF Art - Pulp Magazines page.

Now, I actually have a few more pulp-type items of interest on the way as well.  Hopefully after posting I can bestir myself to update the blog as well...

Enjoy!

​Rafeeq

In the last couple months I have been fortunate enough to pick up about a dozen more pieces of Heinlein for my collection.  Most, though not all, are paperback reprints of books I already have, of course, but with different cover artwork.

I got 3 or 4 more copies of The Menace from Earth, for example, and 3 more of The Green Hills of Earth, all of which of course are shown on the Collections/Anthologies page of my Heinlein Cover Art galleries.  As seen here, I finally was able to find an old 1951 Shasta first hardcover printing of The Green Hills of Earth with cover art by Hubert Rogers, who had illustrated many Heinlein stories in pulp magazines.  The price wasn't too bad, and I was very glad to get it.

I also came across a kinda funky reprint of Beyond This Horizon, which originally was from the April and May 1942 issues of Astounding Science-Fiction, and now is in the Winter 1952 issue of the magazine titled Two Complete Science-Adventure Novels.  This latter is--as are the earlier Astounding, naturally--on my Pulp Magazines page.  I'm also waiting for an early hardcover British printing of the 1949 Red Planet I had not seen before; having come all the way from Australia, it spent over a week getting cleared in Customs, and I believe it should be arriving shortly.

Perhaps the most peculiar thing I found, though, was The Lucky Bag 1929​...which is the yearbook of the U.S. Naval Academy, specifically for the year Heinlein graduated.  Although the future author himself doesn't yet appear to have any work appearing in this weighty, oversized tome bound in fancy tooled leather, he does receive, like all the other graduates, a page dedicated entirely to his portrait and a mildly comedic biographical blurb.  This great big book really was quite a find, and I am so happy to have it on my shelf at last.  Scans of the cover, of some of the introductory patriotic naval artwork by Henry Reuterdahl, and of course of the Heinlein page itself are viewable on my On Heinlein page.

Robert A. Heinlein was a fairly versatile writer.  He wrote science fiction; he wrote fantasy.  He wrote short stories; he wrote novels, both for the Scribner's young-adult market and for adults.  He wrote technical reports during the war; he wrote articles for magazines and entries for encyclopedias.

And he wrote a couple of stories about a girl named "Puddin'," which he bylined "R.A. Heinlein" and then peddled to Calling All Girls, also known as Senior Prom after late 1949.  The 1950 "Cliff and the Calories" was reprinted in Expanded Universe back in 1980, but the one I finally got now, "Poor Daddy," wasn't reissued until the posthumous Requiem.  I found "Cliff and the Calories" a few months ago, and it was...a tad pricey.  A few days ago I discovered, and today received, the August 1949 Calling All Girls with "Poor Daddy" for quite a reasonable sum.

The thing is, Calling All Girls is no National Geographic or Time or even Boys' Life.  It's a weird and hard-to-come-by thing, at least if you're hunting a particular issue rather than just wanting to score any random one to sample for a history or sociology project.  I should know--I've had my eye out for these two for literally years.  But now they're here, and I don't need to look for this crazy magazine anymore!

In any event, this one is filed, of course, in my Heinlein Cover Art galleries at Pulp Magazines.

Enjoy,

Rafeeq

In the past half-dozen months I happened to run across another couple of old pseudonymous Heinlein pulps that seem to be a lot harder to find than the more common stuff like "'If This Goes On--'" and "Requiem" and "By His Bootstraps" in Astounding Science-Fiction.  What I picked up now were "Beyond Doubt" in the April 1941 issue of Astonishing Stories and "They Do It with Mirrors" from the May 1947 issue of Popular Detective.

Both of these were pseudonymous, of course--yet not of the common Anson MacDonald byline most of us are familiar with as Heinlein's second-tier name of the early 1940s.  No, "Beyond Doubt" is a Lyle Monroe--a name Heinlein used on only three other stories, it seems--and "They Do It with Mirrors" is by Simon York, a name I don't think he used anywhere else.

Now, "They Do It with Mirrors" was reprinted in the 1980 Expanded Universe, so although I haven't read story in close to 40 years, when I want a reread, I'll probably do so in that newer book.  "Beyond Doubt," though, has never been reprinted, except, I suppose, in the big leather-bound, acid-free, limited-run 46-volume Virginia Edition.  I guess I could read it in the Virginia Edition, but the Astonishing Stories was in pretty decent condition for an 80-year-old pulp magazine, so I simply read it there with some care.  Very satisfying like that.  And that's how, come to think of it, many months earlier still, I did with the elusive "My Object All Sublime" in the February 1942 Future Combined with Science Fiction.

In any event, these recent funky finds now are photographed, and posted to the "Pulp Magazines" page of my "Heinlein Cover Art" galleries.  Oh--  And in the pic here, by the way, note that this interior art is by the famed Hannes Bok.

Enjoy!

Rafeeq

Well, looks like I haven't blogged in, ahem, a while...but I actually have been doing a fair bit.  First, contrary to last year's statement about posting my Goodreads reviews here, I just decided to link 'em from the "Goodreads Reviews" page of my "Literary Criticism and Reviews" area.    I have put in quite a few over the last several months, including reviews on all titles in Edgar Rice Burroughs's eleven-book Barsoom series.

I found the original publication of Heinlein's "The Man Who Traveled in Elephants," which was titled "Elephant Circuit" when it first came out in the October 1957 Saturn Science Fiction and Fantasy.  I had read the story probably only once, a more than 30 years ago, so I re-read it in the original pulp, which was nice.  The cover art--apparently for a story called "California is Doomed!"--is crazily garish and now is posted on my "Pulp Magazines" page.

I also picked up early 1950s book reprints of Heinlein's semi-rarely-discussed "Water Is for Washing," one a hardcover with nifty cover art of a man and also a woman, both rifle-armed, moving through palm trees, and one a paperback with some rather interesting and casual ethnographic teaser blurbs on the back.  Now, I confess that the story's original publication in the November 1947 Argosy was something I had been looking for for a long time to no avail...and suddenly it turned up in a completely random venue.  Excellent.  The charming Peter Stevens double-page interior is here, but of course a fuller shot of it, along with the cover art and more, can be found at the good ol' "Pulp Magazines" page.

Enjoy!

Rafeeq

As July draweth to a close, I suddenly realize that the last month and a half has been pretty busy in terms of updates to my Heinlein cover art galleries.  In addition to new-to-me editions of books like Waldo and Magic, Inc., Orphans of the Sky, The Man Who Sold the Moon, Time for the Stars, and Podkayne of Mars, I also have come across quite a bit of things from magazines.

I picked up reprints of “Water is for Washing,” for example, a Heinlein review of a Willy Ley text in the July 1944 Astounding, an article in the 28 May 1949 Saturday Review of Literature that discusses Heinlein pretty prominently, “Tenderfoot in Space” serialized in Boys’ Life in 1958, a reprint of “Gentlemen, Be Seated,” “The Black Pits of Luna” in its original 1948 Saturday Evening Post, and “No Bands Playing” from the December 1973 Vertex.

And beyond these...  Well, at last I also acquired some rather rarely found things as well: “Cliff and the Calories” from the August 1950 Senior Prom, where in this girls’ magazine he is bylined only as “R. Heinlein”; “The Long Watch” in the December 1949 issue of the American Legion Magazine; and the extraordinarily elusive “My Object All Sublime,” published under the Lyle Monroe byline in the February 1942 issue of the peculiarly titled Future Combined with Science Fiction.  “My Object All Sublime,” by the way, is one of the early “stinkeroos” that was never, ever, ever reprinted until the big $1,500 leather-bound Virginia Edition of Heinlein’s complete works, and it was great to read it in the original nearly 80-year-old pulp.

Of all the aforementioned, I’m not sure whether  “Cliff and the Calories” or “My Object All Sublime” is rarest, but “The Long Watch,” originally released as “Rebellion on the Moon,” is perhaps my favorite.  This rousing and yet poignant tale of an upright young officer who receives a fatal dose of radiation while disobeying a direct order and thus preventing his superior from using deterrent rockets to stage a putsch that would enslave the world, with the youngster then sitting there calmly smoking his last cigarette before the chattering Geiger counter, thinking of his wife, and of his baby girl being able to grow up in freedom, while the patriots of American history gather close in the final moments of his watch, always literally gives me goosebumps.  This is the one I will picture now.

Rafeeq

Before Ray Bradbury published Fahrenheit 451 as a novel in 1953, it originally appeared in a novella only about half that size in Galaxy​ in 1951.  I had known this for a good 40 years, having read Bradbury's account of the process...but only recently did I find a copy that wasn't prohibitively expensive.

Naturally, I bought it.

I scanned the beautiful Chesley Bonestell cover, an unrelated but gorgeous piece of art.  I scanned the interior art for "The Fireman" as well.  All now are posted to the "Other SF Art -- Pulp Magazines" page of my web.

And then I read the Bradbury.

How does it compare with the fuller Fahrenheit 451?  Well, "The Fireman" is much smaller and faster, not nearly as polished, and the reader is always thinking, "Oh, but where's--?" or "Is he gonna say--?"  The piece is a fascinating historical artifact, but quite a rough draft for those of us used to the novel.

Montag's first name is Leonard--no Guy Fawkes-ism yet.  Faber has a first name, too.  Beatty is Leahy.  Yet despite the 2052 date in the first page, unlike in the novel, the setting is more reminiscent of the time of writing, with no full-wall televisions yet, just actual TV sets and radios and even crap-magazines.  There's no green bullet from Faber, so we just plain old don't see him again until after the showdown.  Interestingly, Beatty's lecture over Montag's sickbed is just a teeny bit more specific on the "minority pressure" aspect than in the novel.

Once Montag reveals the books to Millie, he gets her--amazingly, to our minds now--to agree to daily readings, with him trying to teach her.  Montag actually is a tad bloodthirsty in a couple of places where thinking about the revolution, less diffident than in the more slowly unfolding novel.  And the Hound--  Why, the Mechanical Hound doesn't appear until almost the end!  There are no creepy firehouse growlings, therefore, no offhand mention of suicide by Hound, no electronic snuffling under Montag's door.  And it's called the Electric Dog, fer God's sake...  Wow.

Still, the novella is definitely worth the read.  And at least here you may enjoy the visual art as well!

​Rafeeq

​In the past couple of months I’ve picked up a number of nifty pieces for my “Heinlein Cover Art” galleries.
 
At the wonderful Dawn Treader bookshop of Ann Arbor I got a quaint Steele Savage cover for Red Planet—a painting that unfortunately does not catch the three-leggedness of Heinlein’s Martians as Darrell K. Sweet of course does—and a few more things.  On ye olde internet I also at last found the March 1959 F&SF with “ --‘All You Zombies’.”

In addition, I was able to pick up even rarer things like the April 1941 Astonishing Stories with “Beyond Doubt,” the May 1940 Super Science Stories with “Let There Be Light” (pictured here), the November 1941 Super Science Stories with “Lost Legacy,” the March 1942 Astonishing Stories with “Pied Piper”…and a few more paperbacks I can’t quite recall.  I also finally got my own copy of the June 1952 Popular Mechanics showcasing Heinlein’s then-futuristic house.
 
Oh, yes—and I posted some gorgeous Frank Frazetta art from Edgar R. Burroughs’ Barsoom novels in my “Paperbacks, Etc.” gallery.
 
Enjoy!
 
Rafeeq

Recently a friend of mine was in Germany, and she kindly picked me up a neat German-language copy of Sixth Column.  Danke, mein fraulein!

Originally the tale was serialized in Astounding Science-Fiction, in January, February, and March of 1941 under the Anson MacDonald byline, of course, and scans of the Hubert Rogers cover art and Schneeman interiors can be seen in the Pulp Magazines page of my Heinlein Cover Art galleries.

Afterward the piece was published in book form in 1949, under this title and also as The Day After Tomorrow.  In any event, the cover art for this version of the book, like the others, is posted in my Earlier Adult Works page.

Enjoy!

​Rafeeq