Astounding -> Analog

[Al Jackson]

60 years ago this month Harry Harrison's Deathworld (first part) appeared in Astounding. A good novel, but I never read any of the sequels.....
Of note this is the last issue of Astounding to be named Astounding! Campbell started the fade in of Analog Feb. of 1960. Campbell never liked the name 'Astounding' he thought it sounded like 'Flabbergasting' science fiction...have to say I agree with him ... tho Analog is still a bit bland... old timers still refer to it as ASF.

The cover is by artist Henry Richard van Dongen . Van Dongen , did a few other covers for other magazines around 1950, and then seemed to do only Astounding/Analog covers until the mid 1970s. In the 1950's he did alternate with Freas and Emsh... Van Dongen was sometimes listed as 'art director' at ASF , but must of had a day job, since that could not have paid a living wage! Technically a fine artist , he adhered to John Campbell'
s vision of domesticated space opera, however compared to Freas and Emsh his human figures could look uninspired and he did not have the flair for costume and production design Emsh and Freas had, it all looked workman like. Van Dongen did not seem to appear on the covers other SF magazines for most of the 50s and 60s, not sure he was ever nominated for a Hugo. For this Jan. 1960 issue of Astounding the flora and creature look outstanding the human figure sort of pedestrian.

 

[Extollager]

Flabbergasting Science Fiction -- I like it!

 

[Extollager]

I think this is one of van Dongen's paintings, for a fine Poul Anderson novel better known as The Enemy Stars.

 

[Al Jackson]

I think this is one of van Dongen's paintings, for a fine Poul Anderson novel better known as The Enemy Stars.

It is. Kind of a 'muddy' illustration for the story. That novel (serialized in ASF) was a quite clever concept by Anderson.

Here is a better cover by van Dongen for Theodore Cogswell's story The Specter General. This story was right in John Campbell's wheelhouse.
The 427th Light Maintenance Battalion of the Imperial Space Marines are sent to set up a maintenance station for a Galactic Empire (on an uninhabited planet ) the Empire collapses , but they keep up their proficiency as starship mechanics... until contacted again, 500 years later! The
story is kind of back-page space opera with verisimilitude that Campbell loved. It is street smart dirt under the fingernails SF that is not Star Trek or Star Wars like... Campbell had a ton of this in his magazine in the 1950s .
(I notice this 1952... I only started reading this kind of SF one year later... tho it's kind had evolved in the 1940s)

 

[hitmouse]

I have the Deathworld Astounding along with a whole shelf of what I think was a British edition of the magazine. I didnt realise it was the last edition before the name change.