Tag Archives: Galaxy Science Fiction

Asimov’s Ugly Little Boy

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I’m going to revise this blog, which has been dormant for a while, and what better way to start than with an Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) story on his birthday. Asimov is one of the classic authors whose work I want to either reread or read for the first time this year.

I read quite a bit of Asimov when I was in middle school and high school and have dipped into his work from time to time since then. I read the Foundation and robot stories, several of the collections (Nightfall, The Bicentennial Man, The Early Asimov, and I think Buy Jupiter) and a couple of the early novels. There’s still a good bit of his work I haven’t read. Plus, it’s been so long since I read most of the above, it will almost be like coming to those works new. Continue reading →

Fred Pohl’s “The Day the Icicle Works Closed”

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Today, November 26, marks the birth of Frederik Pohl (1919-2013). Pohl was one of the first writers I read when I began reading adult science fiction. The Best of Frederik Pohl was one of the first books I bought when I joined the Science Fiction Book Club, maybe the very first. Pohl had a dark and cynical veiwpoint, it was nothing compared to his friend and sometime collaborator, C. M. Kornbluth.

Today I read “The Day the Icicle Works Closed”. First published in the February 1960 issue of Galaxy, this is one of Pohl’s best stories. It was included in both The Best of Frederik Pohl and Platinum Pohl The Collected Best Stories, which is where I reread it for this post. Continue reading →

Merry Christmas

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Astounding ChristmasEmsh ChristmasGalaxy Christmasgalaxy Christmas Emsh

 

Merry Christmas to all, whatever race you belong to or planet you hail from.  I thought I would provide a few examples of Christmas as seen through the covers of some vintage science fiction magazines.

The Astounding is the January 1955 issue, with a cover by Frank Kelly Freas.  John W. Campbell Jr. published a number of Christmas covers during his tenure as editor.

Ed Emshwiller, who often signed his work Emsh, was the artist for the image in the upper right as well as the Galaxy cover from 1953.  The artist for the December 1960 Galaxy was Ross Rosenberger.  I’m not familiar with his work.  Galaxy ran a whole series of Christmas covers featuring the four-armed Santa in the 1950s.

I really like these covers because, like many sf magazine covers from the 1950s, they have a sense of whimsy about them.  In many ways they show contemporary scenes in a science fiction settings, such as the aliens spying on Santa and Santa receiving the alien carolers.

One of the memories I have about Christmas while in middle school and high school was the science fiction paperbacks I received as Christmas presents, many of them anthologies containing stories from these magazines.  The Christmas breaks were when I had plenty of time on my hands with no homework and could get a lot of reading done.

Have a Merry Christmas, everyone.

Different Christmas posts are up at Adventures Fantastic, Dispatches From the Lone Star Front, and Gumshoes, Gats, and Gams.