Spacemen magazine of the 1960s

Spacemen was a short-lived early-1960s magazine specifically about space-themed science fiction movies. Warren Publishing -- creators of the classic magazines Famous Monster of Filmland, Monster World, Creepy, and Eerie -- produced only 8 issues of the magazine, helmed by Forrest J. Ackerman. The cover art is glorious (cover above by Wally Wood!) and you can find torrents of the whole scanned run of the magazine. Swapsale has a gallery of the covers. Here's an article that Ray Bradbury contributed. And dig this terrific submission letter sent to Spacemen by Stephen King, age 14.

• [Lobster]

  Spacemen Magazine: even better than hot chicks from Space Egypt.

  • [Benjamin Terry]

    Beware the Robo-Mummies of Space Egypt!  It’s the smoking pipe that really makes the picture for me though.

    • [theophrastvs]

      “Ceci n’est pas une pipe”

    • [BijouxBoy]

      WITH a Beatles fringe.

• [Baroot66]

  Has anybody got a link to a torrent of the run?

  • [Stuart Ure]

    if you’re in the habit of using newsgroups to download – you can find it here…

    http://www.nzb-forum.com/e-books/13339-spacemen-magazine-complete-1961-1965-a.html

• [Travis Fredericks]

  Misogyny in 60s advertising: horrific. Misogyny in 60s sci-fi: glorious.

  • [Ambiguity]

    I’m not sure the word “misogyny” means what you think it does. I could see one arguing that the above-referenced cover is sexist, but it doesn’t seem particularly hateful to me.

    • [Paisley Blue]

      This quote might help clarify things:

      ” A misogynistic value system would favor women who put out and are easy to control. Misogynists would talk about women in a dehumanized way, i.e., nice legs, great ass, etc, as if women were nothing more than a collection of body parts. Dating and relationships would become a game of manipulation fraught with various seedy techniques and ploys designed to get women to have sex. Something else I noticed as I browsed the web is that although misogynists try to control women, they are ironically dependent on women for validation in front of other men and society. This dependence is disempowering and only adds to the anger and resentment misogynists feel towards women.”

      http://www.heartless-bitches.com/rants/niceguys/misogyny.shtml

      • [Ambiguity]

        I’m really not sure what the point of the quote is. To say that sexist behavior can come from misogynist feelings isn’t to say that all sexist behavior comes from hatred. Unless, of course, you define it that way for, say, ideological reasons.

        • [William]

          Indeed, if people did not think of other people in terms of what looks “nice”, chances are we’d all just sit around reading Spacemen and smoking a pipe.

          The painting is basically a possibly mysogynist painting (or at least, a sexy painting) of a man who is so completely not a mysogynist that he doesn’t even seem to be aware of the people around him, let alone have any interest in them.

        • [Donald Petersen]

          Well, you have a guy ignoring eight ostensibly sexy female humanoids who appear to be interested in attending to his every need.  Perhaps if he displayed more gratitude for his unbelievably great fortune for where his life has brought him, he might seem a touch less misogynistic.

          But perhaps the women are simply his eight sisters, who look on eagerly to see him light the pipe they stuffed with gunpowder while he was out retrieving the mail.

          Great Caesar’s Ghost, does one of them have hooves?!

        • [electrasteph]

          And a tail, too.

  • [Paisley Blue]

    Glad I’m not the only one who’s noticed Boing Boing’s tendency to give kudos to misogyny in old sci-fi, which especially grates given how much misogyny there still is in sci-fi and fantasy today.

    • [Antinous / Moderator]

      Haven’t you noticed that BB also posts old covers with half-naked men being tied down and eaten by crabs/monkeys/weasels?  Old SF/fantasy covers frequently feature physical objectification.  Should we just burn them?

      • [Listener43]

        Burn whom? the BB editors? I vote no.

      • [Paisley Blue]

        In general, I’d say that that the reason why your argument is disingenuous has been pretty well proved. Portrayals of nearly naked muscular men fighting, being dangerous, having adventures, and being heroes is not the same as portrayals of nearly naked women sexually posing for the viewer (presumed by the artist to be male).

        You can’t point at a picture of a man fighting a wild animal and a picture of a woman leaning over to display her cleavage to a man, and claim that they’re equivalent. One is a hero figure the viewer is meant to identify with. The other is a sexual object the viewer is meant to objectify.

        This particular issue has been explored and debunked at length, particularly in comic book fandom about why mini-skirts and butt/cleavage shots of female heroes are not the same as images of muscular Superman and Batman punching through walls.

        http://www.comicbookgrrrl.com/2011/07/24/women-in-comics-the-new-52-and-the-batgirl-of-san-diego/

        http://comicsvault.blogspot.com/2009/10/women-in-spandex.html

        http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/09/22/starfire-catwoman-sex-superheroine/

        Also, I would just say that identifying and acknowledging that old sci fi covers of magazines and books were predominantly misogynistic is not the same as calling for people to ‘burn them.’ Acknowledging that material is problematic – whether sexist, racist, homophobic, or problematic in some other area – is not the same as calling for its destruction.

        What is appropriate, I feel, is to acknowledge in 2011 that making fun of advertising from the 1960s for being sexist and calling that same type of sexist art in magazines ‘glorious’ is problematic. You can say that you dig retro art *and* that you acknowledge that it’s misogynistic. You can like problematic things.

        The point is the know that they’re problematic and acknowledge it, rather than to ignore or dismiss the issues simply because one likes something.

        • [Antinous / Moderator]

          I don’t disagree that they’re problematic. I had the same reaction when I saw it. But when you complain about “Boing Boing’s tendency to give kudos to misogyny in old sci-fi”, what’s your proposal? Pretend that it never existed?

        • [hypnosifl]

          I don’t think there’s anything inherently sexist about objectifying attractive bodies in art, the sexism arises if that sort of attitude colors all a man’s interactions with women rather than being context-dependent (there’s a good discussion of “objectification” here). In the 60s this universal objectification of women would have been going on with more men than today, but I don’t really think you can blame art like this for that, there’s just as much use of objectified sexy people in advertising today. And I think you’re right that typical pulp art featuring muscular men wasn’t functioning in the same way since it wasn’t really aimed at an audience that would find them sexually attractive, but it’s a different story with art that was aimed mostly at gay men, like the “beefcake” magazines.

        • [William]

          “One is a hero figure the viewer is meant to identify with. The other is a sexual object the viewer is meant to objectify.”

          While the first sentence is true, the second sentence is poppycock. Maybe the viewer is meant to fall in love with the woman. It is totally sexist to assume that when a man looks at a pretty woman he does not hope for a wonderful relationship.

        • [Halloween_Jack]

          And you’ve just distilled the essence of political correctness; the idea that BB has to acknowledge the “problematic” nature of the work, each and every time they show it, or else you’ll claim that it’s–how did you put it above?–a “tendency to give kudos to misogyny in old sci-fi.” That’s sad.

• [lknope]

  I like how that dude has a group of beautiful spacewomen standing around watching him smoke a pipe and read a magazine while he completely ignores them.  Makes total sense.

  I see one of them is a chartreuse sister, too.

  • [Sekino]

    The catch is that most space chicks are invisible.

    Dude: “I could have sworn I heard snickering just now…”

• [ackpht]

  Space-dude has it made.

• [Hagrid]

  The fact that 14-year-old Stephen King’s favourite section of this magazine was “Obituaries” is… chilling!

  • [Klaus Æ. Mogensen]

    Beat me to it!

• [Listener43]

  Please note that there should be no period after the J in Mr. Ackerman’s name – simply Forrest J Ackerman.  That is all.

• [coolvoodoo]

  I read these as a teenager when they first came out, and the underlying themes were the wonder of science, fear of the unknown, man’s place in the universe, and how these were addressed in the science fiction movies of the day.  All this wisdom imparted with as many puns as possible. FJA obviously enjoyed women, but the Spaceman mags were rarely racy or suggestive and certainly not denigrating to women. That cover was a one-off thing for a year -end compilation and if I remember correctly didn’t really relate to any story in the magazine. I certainly don’t remember seeing anything remotely misogynistic in the ads or articles in Spacemen.

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    There’s a bimbo on the cover of my book
    There’s a bimbo on the cover of my book
    She is blonde and she is sexy, she
    Is nowhere in the text, she
    Is the bimbo on the cover of my book
    — Maya Bohnhoff

    http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ContemptibleCover

    It’s not the writers who choose the covers.

• [johndberry]

  I read and collected these when they came out; Spacemen was a favorite of my kid self, even more than Famous Monsters. I sold off the latter many years ago, but I’ve still got a box of Spacemen and other old monster magazines in the garage. The “1965 Yearbook” would have been a rather late edition; most (all?) of the regular issues came out in 1961. (In the quip that Pete Graham coined, “The Golden Age of science fiction is eleven.”) 

• [devophill]

  DOBBS!!!! IN!!!! SPAAAACEEE!!!!!!

• [Godfree]

  Women of the future get to wear space-bikinis and watch Leisure Suit Larry read. Yay! *Claps and kicks up heels sarcastically*

• [jonlebkowsky]

  I was a big fan and subscriber, having also devoured every issue of “Famous Monsters.” Decades ago, my parents tossed all the issues of both that I was hoarding. I was more of a sci fi than fantasy/monster fan, and was bummed when “Spacemen” failed and evaporated.  BTW one magazine you omitted from the Warren pubs list was Harvey Kurtzman’s “Help!”

• [Halloween_Jack]

  One of the really remarkable things about the Stephen King submission letter (aside from the fact that King had started submitting his work for professional publication when he was twelve, showing some of the drive that has him still publishing work more than fifty years later) is that Ackerman still had the letter. Apparently, Ackerman kept literally everything.