Monday, May 23, 2011

Paperback 415: Galaxy (January, 1956)

Paperback 415: Galaxy, January 1956

Authors include: Alan E. Nourse, James E. Gunn, Lester del Rey, Robert Abernathy, Robert Sheckley, and Richard R. Smith

Cover artist: Ed Emshwiller

Yours for: $8

Galaxy.Jan56

Best things about this cover:
  • A cover painting of astonishing detail, complexity, and charm. Hang out with it for a few minutes—it's really something.
  • The sweat on Santa's brow does not look like sweat. The only comments I have border on the sacrilegious, so I'm gonna move on.
  • Is he doing calculus?
  • LOVE the way "EMSH" embeds his signature in his paintings (today, he's the author of the awesomely titled "How to Manage Reindeer in Space")
  • I want that coffee pot So Bad...
  • I know the dude has four arms, but he'd still never need more than two to hold a coffee cup, ergo that coffee cup is ridiculous.

GalaxyJan56bc

Best things about this back cover:

  • I just like that the "Science-hyphen-Fiction Book Club" has a "Dept. GX-1" — that's got government front / conspiracy theory written all over it.

Page 123~ (from "The Ties of Earth" by James H. Schmitz)
It sounded like an esoteric classification of varying degrees of human psi potential — an ascendant individual "new mind" threatening the entrenched and experienced but more limited older group, which compensated for its limitation by bringing functioning members of the "new mind" under its control or repressing or diverting their developing abilities.
That's what I like to call "teaching."

GalaxyJan56.intEMSH

[More by EMSH...]

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

9 comments:

Head Elf said...

Hey, if you had 4 hands you'd probably have 'sweat like droplets' all over the place too, 'cause what the hell else are you going to do with the spares?

Michael5000 said...

I have a signed first edition of "How to Manage Reindeer in Space" that I'd be willing to part with for... let's see... $175?

Todd Mason said...

GX-1...Doubleday wanted to know which issue (January) of GALAXY (GX) the ad came from...hence the uncrackable code...

Deb said...

Oh Todd, you spoil the conspiracy magic for the rest of us!

Random White Guy said...

Yes, my first impression when I saw the cover was also "I want that coffee pot!"

Jamie Rosen said...

Was there ever a better artist/author couple than Ed and Carol Emshwiller?

Sara said...

Didn't EMSH have another adorable 4-armed Santa cover you've featured on here?

Surabaya_Johnny said...

Sara- yep, it was this one, Galaxy December 1959.

Anonymous said...

Add me to the list of people who will buy your first shipment of the coffee pots.