Terror in Space
June, 1957
Like Medieval
bestiaries, science fiction magazines populated unknown worlds
with all manner of strange creatures. EMSH provided a cover
for this 1957 publication that reflects the xenophobia of the
times. We see only the horrible claw of the alien as it scratches
the delightfully form-fitting material of the girl's space
jumpsuit, but somehow this makes the monster all the more
terrifying.
Search
for Extraterrestrials with SETI
April, 1957
Keep Watching the Skies!
In every documented period of human history, strange objects
have
occasionally been seen in the sky. But when Kenneth Arnold reported
seeing unidentified flying objects in 1947, he hit a nerve of left-over
war paranoia and caused a social phenomenon. Described by Arnold as flying
through the sky with a motion that resembled a saucer skipping
across water, the objects themselves were soon christened
"flying saucers" by the media, and thousands of reports of
saucer shaped flying objects began to flood into police stations and news
offices. Sightings of such mysterious craft continued in waves throughout the
50's, when tales of alien invasion flickered across movie screens and filled the
pages of the SF pulps. This cover, done by EMSH, depicts alien
mother ships transferring a cargo of captured humans while smaller flying
saucers emerge for another specimen collecting expedition to planet Earth.
November,
1951
Closely connected with the theme of alien invasion,
fears of being taken over from within emerged in
many SF stories throughout the fifties. Geoff St.
Reynard's Usurper tale, beautifully illustrated here
by Malcolm Smith, stands with Heinlein's The
Puppet Masters and Jack Finney's classic Invasion
of the Body Snatchers, as a prominent manifestation
of popular paranoia.
