Pulp sci-fi book covers, scanned daily

Via the BB Submitterator, Boing Boing reader calebkraft says, "I was given several large containers of pulp Sci-Fi publications from the 50s-70s. I've been scanning them and posting at least one a day to the pulp archive. The art is fantastic!"

No kidding. My favorite, among the ones posted so far, is above. Analog, September 1968, Vol. LXXXII, No. 1.

It looks like Analog had a decent budget for art. Their cover paintings are usually fairly detailed and high quality. I'm not really sure what is going on here, but the fantasy fan of me approves of giant marmots that play horn instruments.

More: pulparchive.com

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

MORE: Art and Design • Book • science fiction • Vintage Weird • Weird

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Targe

Great cover, and actually a great read! <3 The Tuvela (Which I read as “The Demon Breed”, I think)
Anonymous

Otters. They are otters. In a tree…
sunhawk

Those are clearly not marmots, they are otters ;)
- Gawain Lavers
  
  ++
  
  Mustelids â‰ Rodents
  
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otter
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marmot
  
  Still, it’s a shame they’re so clearly otters, since they’re shown as arboreal. These guys would have been a much better model:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marten
  
  And hey, split the difference on the name! Perhaps that’s what was meant?
Anonymous

I was just reading that story (or at least the version that ended up in one of the Schmitz anthologies from Baen.) The mutant otters look like they’re a bit out of scale (nine foot tall in the text) but everything else is much as you would expect things to be during the middle of an alien invasion on a tropical floating-forest island.
Anonymous

I do believe that is a blow gun and not a horn. But I guess it could be a toilet plunger as well.
Jesse Weinstein

Caleb — If you haven’t heard of it already, the ISFDB (Internet Speculative Fiction Database) has quite a bit of detail (including lots of cover scans) from Analog (and **lots** of others). I’ve started a discussion about your site: http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/ISFDB:Community_Portal#pulparchive.com
muteboy

I think that’s a blowpipe – these otters are not musical but deadly!

Fantastic stuff – who is this lucky person that was “given several large containers of pulp Sci-Fi publications from the 50s-70s”?
- calebkraft
  
  I’m the one who got them. Soooo many to look at, I haven’t read any yet!
DJBudSonic

I have a few copies of Analog and they are great. I agree w/muteboy I’ll bet they are blowguns – which would work underwater too? I’ve gotta see if they have this one at our local book repository to know the truth of it!
Dougall

They are ‘giant otters’ and are the working companions of the woman who is a Federation agent. This is the Analog version of the GREAT Schmitz book ‘The Demon Breed’. It’s set on a planet of inimical jungle plants with a small human settlement. Poisonous flowers, dart shooting plants, thoroughly nasty alien invaders (but three dimensional villains with actual motivations, emotions and second thoughts). The heroine is delightful. A powerful, competent female using the planet’s resources to battle the invaders.

One of my all time favorite authors. Read ‘Witches of Karres’ if you want a wonderful classic Science Fiction read. I loved all of his writing. Xeni, if you are listening, you owe it to yourself to read Schmitz.

By the way Calebkraft – I envy your good fortune. I grew up reading those very magazines, and loved them. I’m not sure that I would want to be given the same gift though, as I probably would not get anything done for the next six months!
Anonymous

As others have pointed out, these are clearly otters with blowpipes, though I am unclear as to how one would be certain that they are giant, and not simply accompanied by a miniature human.

Marmots need no horn instruments in any case, as they are natural whistlers.
technogeek

I truly hate to be a spoilsport, but…. Copyright?
Flying_Monkey

Great cover! There was a bit of a craze for ‘jungle / ‘vegetation gone crazy’ SF for a while in the 60s, what with some of Ballard’s disaster novels, and Brian Aldiss’s Hothouse… I suppose you could also include Thomas Disch’s The Genocides. Any others?
dollarama

Myth busted!
Eric

Do they crush their enemies on their tummys?
Resuna

I recognized the story just from glancing at the cover. “The Tuvela” was republished as “The Demon Breed”, and it’s available online from Baen Books as part of their “Federation of the Hub” collection…

http://www.webscription.net/10.1125/Baen/0671319841/0671319841__10.htm
Anonymous

It’s Wilford Brimley!
simonbarsinister

I am almost as much a fan of giant musical Otters as I am of the deadly but beautiful women in bikinis who travel with them!
Anonymous

Let’s not forget the artist! It’s the late, great Jack Schoenherr.

More here: http://johnschoenherr.blogspot.com/

and here

http://75.95.141.45:8080/schmitz/Tuvela.htm
TheMadLibrarian

It appears the spammers are working around the posting blocks again :(
MichaelWalsh

The art is by the late but great John Schoenherr. He eventually left the SF field and became quite well known as a nature artist.

The cover that grabbed me in my youth: http://modcult.org/read/2010/9/13/the-prophet-of-dune – now *that’s* a sandworm!

By the here’s a rough of the Tuvela cover: http://www.noreascon.org/retroart/images/Schoenherr,%20The%20Tuvela%20by%20James%20H.%20Schitz,%20cover%20rough.jpg
grimatongueworm

Angry, bodice-ripping primates, BAD.

Giant, vuvuzela-wielding otters, GOOD!
planettom

Nice beaver!
Anonymous

Man, that’s a Vuvuzela it’s got in its paw! Shoot it now before that thing catches on!
Anonymous

Now I know where South Park got thier empire of the sea otters episode from.
igpajo

See my first thought was he was a Beaver Plumber with a plunger.
- Chrs
  
  Plunging your tiny human toilets is all part of a day’s work, ma’am.
jonathanpeterson

My Dad subscribed to Amazing/Analog and Asimoff’s (and assorted Galaxy, IF, etc) for decades. I’ve got literally dozens of giant waterproof plastic boxes of those that I’ve thought of scanning, as well as hundreds of Ace doubles and other pulp fiction.

Some gorgeous, covers in there. But my assumption is that I’d put tons of work into sharing that stuff and end up getting hit with a C&D order and have to take it all offline.

shame.
- calebkraft
  
  Hey Jonathanpeterson, lets talk! I’d love to get those books… or scans of them at least.
  
  -caleb
Vanwall

Dougall – You are so right, Schmitz was an amazing author. The otters in “The Demon Breed” are integral protagonists and have wonderful personalities, very like what a talking, thinking otter would be like – especially the wild ones. The villians are wonderful creations, too, but the heroine, Nile, and the mutant otters some of the best creations in speculative fiction. One of his Agent of Vega novelettes, “The Second Night of Summer”, is one great read, like a whole world and everything in it distilled in seconds, so real and complete. And quite humorous, Schmitz had that aspect to almost every tale he wrote.
Vanwall

Here’s a link to “The Second Night of Summer”:

http://www.webscription.net/10.1125/Baen/0671318470/0671318470___3.htm
Philipp Lenssen

Here are the whole 800+ issues of Analog Science Fiction, also called Astounding Stories and other names in the beginning:

http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/astounding-stories
Touched by FSM

I was going to say that I didn’t recall this particular Redwall story, but now Dougall has me fired up to find the actual read…
Anonymous

God damn giant arboreal otters get all the babes.
Anonymous

definitely otters. But why is that woman climbing a tree in a bikini? that’s very impractical.
RuthlessRuben

Now that is the best one in the series so far, in my opinion. The 60ies were a pretty cool time after all, apparently.
Anonymous

my wife has been doing this for while, though not one a day, just when she can get to it. She’s been cleaning them up a bit as well, which can take some time!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/24883054@N06/sets/72157605524851150/
Drhaggis

I choose to believe that he’s holding a pimp cane. Otters got swagger.