‘Amazing Stories’: The bizarre-o pulp science fiction artwork of Frank R. Paul
The hardest part about this post has been deciding which of Frank R. Paul’s mind-bending works of satisfyingly strange science fiction art NOT to feature here on Dangerous Minds. Virtually everything the man touched was oddly compelling. The creative genius behind some of the most delightful pulp magazine cover art in history and widely recognized as the “Father of Science Fiction Illustration,” Paul crafted hundreds of vibrant and wonderfully weird compositions to be used as illustrations for several pioneering science fiction periodicals including Fantastic Adventures, Wonder Stories, Science Fiction and Amazing Stories among many others.
Some of Paul’s work was collected in a 2013 book called Frank R. Paul: The Dean of Science Fiction Illustration from IDW Publishing. In the portion of the book on trailblazing science fiction publication, Amazing Stories, the chapter’s author, Frank Hill documents Paul’s storied working relationship with influential science fiction publisher Hugo Gernsback. According to Hill, Gersback began publishing Amazing Stories in 1926 after the success of his Science and Invention magazine at a time when there were only two other science fiction magazines available: Argosy and Weird Tales.
It’s pretty incredible what you could by for a quarter in those days. Here’s Hill’s description of the first issue of Amazing Stories:
Naturally, the cover and interior illustrations for this issue were supplied by Frank R. Paul, who had been in Gernsback’s employment since around 1914. The new magazine had a distinct look about it, containing ninety-six pages and printed on heavy paper with even heavier cover stock. The whole magazine weighed in at half a pound, measured over a half-inch thick, and contained stories by Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, among others.
With Frank R. Paul working as illustrator, Amazing Stories quickly became very successful according to Hill, reaching a distribution of 100,000 readers. Ray Bradbury once said: “Paul’s fantastic covers for Amazing Stories changed my life forever.”
Frank R. Paul was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2009.
I did the absolute best I could in matching the images below with the publications in which they originally appeared, and I hope that I wasn’t too egregiously off on any of these.
“Tetrahedra of Space,” November, 1931 Wonder Stories Cover
Air Wonder Stories Front Cover August, 1929
Wonder Stories Cover, February, 1933
Science Fiction Magazine Cover, December, 1939
Science Wonder Stories, September, 1929
Amazing Stories Back Cover, January, 1942
Amazing Stories Back Cover, April 1961
Science Fiction Plus Magazine Cover, December, 1953
Wonder Stories Cover, February 1932
Cover of the 13th World Science Fiction Convention, Cleveland, Ohio, September, 1955
City of the Future, 1940
Fantastic Adventures Back Cover, March, 1940
From Fantastic Adventures, September, 1939
“Micro Megas,” 1939
Science Wonder Stories Cover September, 1935
Amazing Stories Back Cover November, 1941
“As Mars Sees Us,” 1940
“Stories of the Stars – Aldebaran,” Fantastic Adventures Back Cover, December, 1945
Amazing Stories, Back Cover, October, 1945
Wonder Stories Quarterly Cover, Fall, 1931