Sunday, October 02, 2005

Science Fiction Adventures

Ed Gorman talks about reading a Robert Silverberg space opera in a digest-sized magazine called Science Fiction Adventures, edited by Larry Shaw. This was one of my favorites back in the Old Days, and one reason was the covers. So I scanned some of them and posted them here. Be sure to click on them and enlarge them for a much better look.

At a lot of conventions I've been on panels about the fact that young people don't seem to be reading much SF these days. My theory about this is simple. They're not reading SF because there are no more magazines like Science Fiction Adventures. Today's SF mags are aimed at a more "mature" audience. The stories are no doubt more "literary" than the ones of my youth, but they don't have the same kind of appeal. (And you sure don't see covers like the ones on SFA any more.) It's no wonder that kids coming to SF now are more likely to come by way of gaming, TV, or movies. And it's no wonder that tie-in novels are more popular than the kind of SF that gets praised in reviews and printed in the magazines.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Those covers look gret, Bill. Limited as he was--more a draftsman than an artist--I still prefer a lot of Emsh to anybody other than Virgil Finlay or (for black and whites) the uttery forgotten Paul Orban.

Unknown said...

Emsh was always a favorite of mine, and I suppose that the model for most of those covers is his wife, Carol Emshwiller, also a fine SF writer. Some of the Emsh Ace Double covers are also among my favorites.

Anonymous said...

Carol Emshwiller was the model for many of his covers, including those you posted. She was also on several Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine covers including January 1957 and on paperback covers (such as the Frank Long side of Ace Double D-242. Richard Moore