An Amazing Cover

Amazing Stories, May, 1962

This cover, by George Schelling for the May, 1962 issue of Amazing Stories, is one of my all time favorite pieces of of sci-fi art. I’m not sure what I like so much about it. I suspect the composition is very nice. I also think that the colors and shading on the space station are beautiful. I love the sense of vastness in the space-scape background. And the crashing spaceship conveys a lot of energy. I mean, man, you can almost hear the impact and feel  craft’s speed, can’t you?

Probably the whole of the piece is greater than the sum of its parts, too.

The cover illustrates “The Stars My Brothers” by Edmond Hamilton, who along with E. E. Smith is credited by many with creating the space opera genre back in the thirties and forties. George Schelling, its painter, worked as a sci-fi…