GALLERY OF FRANK R. PAUL's SCIENCE FICTION ARTWORK
artwork (c) Frank R. Paul estate
Cover art by Frank R. Paul for Winter 1931 Wonder Stories Quarterly, illustrating "The Mark of the Meteor" by Raymond King Cummings (1887-1957).
"Spaceships were taken up in a big way by the early sf pulp magazines, and their visual image was dramatically charged. Frank R. Paul and other contemporary illustrators showed a strong preference for bulbous machines like enormous bloated aeroplanes or rounded-off oceangoing liners with long rows of portholes. These were often shown with jets of flame or vapour gushing out behind, but this was as much to suggest speed as to indicate that the means of propulsion involved might be one or more rockets; similarly, the slow process whereby hulls became streamlined and elegant fins appeared corresponded less to any realization of the importance of rocket-power than to the development of sleeker automobiles in the real world." Brian Stableford, The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, 1993, ed. John Clute and Peter Nicholls, St. Martin's Press, New York, p. 1141.
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