I don't think I've ever run across an issue of SCIENCE FICTION QUARTERLY. This looks like a pretty good one. I like the dramatic cover by Kelly Freas, and there are some good writers inside: C.M. Kornbluth, Frank Belknap Long, L. Sprague de Camp, and a couple whose names are only vaguely familiar to me, Charles V. De Vet and Winston Marks. I don't own this issue, but if you want to check it out, it's available on the Internet Archive here. There are a lot of other issues of SCIENCE FICTION QUARTERLY posted there as well. I might have time to read some of them if anybody ever comes up with a thirty-hour day.
Hubert Rogers did some good covers for the issues of ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION that had Lensman stories by E.E. "Doc" Smith in them. This issue features the opening installment of the novel SECOND STAGE LENSMAN. Other authors of note in this issue are Eric Frank Russell (I've enjoyed everything I've read by him, I need to read more), L. Sprague de Camp, Malcolm Jameson, John Hawkins, and forgotten SF authors E.A. Grosser and Oliver Saari (forgotten by me, anyway, or more precisely, I don't recall ever hearing of them before). Even though when it comes to Forties science fiction my tastes run more toward STARTLING STORIES, THRILLING WONDER STORIES, and PLANET STORIES, there was a lot of classic work published in ASTOUNDING.
The artist for this cover is unattributed in the usual online sources. The presence of a space babe in a skimpy outfit makes me think immediately of Earle Bergey, but something about this one seems like it's not Bergey's work. If anyone has any more information, it will be much appreciated, as always. Whoever painted it, it's a great cover and I really like it. FANTASTIC STORY MAGAZINE was edited by Samuel Mines at this point in its run, and the contents are a mixture of new stories and reprints. The reprints in this issue are by David H. Keller (one of the early big names in science fiction), Wesley Arnold (don't know that name at all), and Gordon A. Giles (who was really Otto Binder). The new stories are by L. Sprague de Camp, Mack Reynolds, Robert Moore Williams, and H.B. Fyfe. That's not a bad line-up, although hardly a star-studded one. The whole issue is on the Internet Archive, if you want to check it out for yourself.
I think of Walter Popp as more of a paperback cover artist, but here's a pulp cover by him that I like. STARTLING STORIES was a pretty solid science fiction pulp. The best known authors in this issue are L. Sprague de Camp, Joel Townsley Rogers (who had a long, prolific career in the adventure pulps as well as SF), and Roger Dee. Also on hand are R.J. McGregor and Dave Dryfoos, names I don't recognize at all.
Ah, the wonderful cover art of Earle Bergey! I would have grabbed this issue of THRILLING WONDER STORIES off the newsstand if I'd been browsing the new pulps in 1949. And the line-up of authors inside certainly doesn't hurt: Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, James Blish, Murray Leinster, Cleve Cartmill, L. Sprague de Camp, Raymond F. Jones, and William Morrison. You can download a PDF of this issue here.
This is the second issue of Popular Publications' science fiction pulp, edited by Frederik Pohl. The cover is by an artist I'm not familiar with, Gabriel Mayorga. It seems a little too busy to me, but it's eye-catching, no doubt about that. And the line-up of authors inside is an all-star one: Robert A. Heinlein (writing as Lyle Monroe), Manly Wade Wellman (writing as Gabriel Barclay), James Blish, Raymond Z. Gallun, L. Sprague de Camp, Donald A. Wollheim, Ray Cummings, P. Schuyler Miller, Cyril Kornbluth (writing as S.D. Gottesman), and Willy Ley. Granted, some, if not all, of those stories were probably rejects from ASTOUNDING, but still, that's a pretty impressive group.
That cover is by Earle Bergey. (Was there ever any doubt?) I know his work was controversial at the time, but dang, I like his covers. This issue of THRILLING WONDER STORIES contains stories by Henry Kuttner, Bryce Walton, George O. Smith, L. Sprague de Camp, and Will F. Jenkins twice, once under his most famous pseudonym Murray Leinster and once as William Fitzgerald. My old mentor Sam Merwin Jr. was the editor. Good stuff.
