Today’s Pulp Friday is an absolute thing of beauty.
The Australian edition of John W Campbell’s The Thing From Another World, published by Malian Press in Sydney, in 1952. The wonderful cover is by the prolific local artist, Stan Pitt, who illustrated comics and pulp paperback covers for a number of Australian pulp publishers over a lengthy career that stretched form 1942 to the 1970s.
This edition is particularly interesting because it is the first to anywhere in the world to reference the 1951 film, The Thing From Another World, directed by Howard Hawks. I originally saw it when it was posted by a chap called Morgan Wallace on the Vintage Paperback and Pulp site on Facebook.
Investigating Campbell on the Internet, I discovered a host of terrific images associated with this particular work.
The story was originally known by the title Who Goes There?, and first appeared in the August 1938 edition of Astounding Magazine under Campbell’s pen name, Don A Stuart.
It was published in hard cover as part of a collection of Campbell’s short fiction by Shasta Books in 1948. And then appeared in various editions, with various titles, leading up to the last one below, Bantam paperback tie-in to the 1982 film version by John Carpenter, The Thing.
I would love to know more about the publisher of the 1952 Australian edition, Malian Press. So, if any of you have information, please leave a comment.
Stanley Pitt was a wonderful Australian comic book artist. I had the privilege of speaking with him in my role as Arts Librarian at the State Library of Victoria in 1997 when we mounted a comic book exhibition called “Batman, Catman and a Kid Called Ginger”. His artwork was really beautiful (shades of Alec Raymond I think), and he was really delighted that his work was being highlighted in our exhibition. I still think that his work is exceptional, on any level, and it’s great to see this wonderfully evocative paperback cover, many thanks.
This artwork is amazing! I think if they published some of these covers as prints or posters they would sell very well. They look fabulous and imaginative. Despite what some snobby types might say, a great cover is good advertising for a book.