galacticjourney

[The precocious Mr. Boston continues to take time from his busy high school schedule to provide coverage of Cele Goldsmith's marquee digest: Amazing, the longest lived of the sff mags. I am deeply grateful to John for his eloquent reviews. I understand that he lives in particularly dull and uninspired part of the country, so I shouldn't wonder that he has time to escape to lands of fantasy...]


by John Boston

The April Amazing opens with a bang: the cover is a startling departure from the usual humdrum machinery. There’s a spacesuit in the foreground, but badly used, missing a glove and a boot, stuffed with straw, and held upright on a pole like a scarecrow, against a surreal background of reddish and yellow desert, a vast cloud of violet smoke, and a washed-out greenish sky. Strikingly imaginative symbolic work by artist Lloyd Birmingham? No, mostly illustrative: this tableau is from the first paragraph of Mark Clifton’s lead short story Hang Head, Vandal! But it is unusual and eye-catching, and Birmingham does get credit (if that’s the word) for the garish color scheme.



(see the rest at Galactic Journey!)