Well its good to be back at the helm and hopefully I can keep the blog rolling while Woodsy is on shore leave for a little while! The last time he had an extended leave of absence, I dropped a meteor on Moonbase and blew up the blog, but I promise not to do anything quite so dramatic this time. To start off, i'd like to revisit one of my favourite science fiction artists and also one of my favourite writers. Arthur C Clarke first came to my notice in the launch issue of Speed and Power magazine, a weekly aimed at boys and chock full of jets, cars, trains and all things powerful and speedy! It was a treasure trove of information, back in the seventies and each week, it included a short sci-fi story from Clarke, illustrated usually by an amazing artist, who was never credited in the issue. It was only very recently, by virtue of the all powerful internet, that I discovered Michael Whittlesea.
His bold, colourful illustrations complmented Clarkes stories wonderfully and drew me in to read every one, which for me was very unusual, as I was never fond of reading and very much taken by the visuals. Whittlesea's style was unusual in that it introduced a chunky, assymetrical style of ship, very much similar to the work of Chris Foss, famous for his Foundation and Lensman series of book covers.
Whittlesea captures the truly alien life amongst the clouds in glorious colour, showing the manta's and vast gas-filled medusan creature in beautiful detail.
Welcome back to the helm, Bill. I do like this interesting and informative piece. I recognize some of the art, but I never took the time to consider who the talent behind it was... until I read this :)
ReplyDeleteThanks Tony. It bothered me for years who the artist was, but all the attention was directed at Clarke - rightly so - but i was so taken with the artwork, I kept most of the pages of the mag, long after the magazine was gone. Michael Whittlesea is oddly enough, a painter of some repute with a beautiful style: http://www.michael-whittlesea.co.uk/
ReplyDeleteThank's for starting the month with this piece as it's the first I have ever heard of Speed & Power Magazine. On checking I see that it started at the same time I left the UK to get married in NYC.
ReplyDeleteThe artwork is interesting in that it's more like a paperback cover than a weekly magazine's art. I always found Clarke's writing to be technical and dull but if I had seen this art/text combination I probably would have read it every week.
I think S&P chose stories with a slightly lighter and more dramatic tone, Terra. Certainly some of his later work is a little dry, even the famous tale 'Rendezvous with Rama' was a little staid at times. The other good thing about the magazine was Wilf Hardy's fabulous aircraft paintings, which graced the covers and interior spreads. there was often a good article or two about weird vehicles for the army or moon exploration too. Some of hardy and Whittlesea's art is shown on the Look and Learn archive here:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.lookandlearn.com/history-images/search.php?t=0&q=speed+and+power&n=33
Thank you again, this time for the link to the Look and Learn art site.
ReplyDeleteI would have read Speed & Power regularly seeing that art, it certainly seems a more 'male' version of a magazine than Look & Learn, more technology, and clearly living up to it's name.
Very much a product of its day, when sexual stereotypes weren't so flexible and boys were expected to be boys. You can still pick up issues on ebay very reasonably. I think ive got the two annuals in the loft somewhere too. The first issue came with a lovely big poster with jet aircraft of the world on it too!
ReplyDeleteI don't wish to detract from the attention to the amazing artwork, but I am very confused. I have read ALL of Arthur C. Clarke's fiction - all his short stories and all but one of his novels (I have tried twice to read The Deep Range and cannot get into it). I do not recall anywhere a tale called "Journey to Jupiter." I remember the tale "A Meeting with Medusa",one of Clarke's short stories, but it was self-contained.. So what was going on here exactly? Is this some kind of "lost story" not included in reprints elsewhere for legal reasons? Was this someone else writing under Clarke's name? How can "A Meeting with Medusa" be, as you out it, a discrete chapter from a larger work"?
ReplyDeleteIt confused me at first, but the stories are in fact chapters from the novella Meeting with Medusa. The magazine just meted them out as two or four page spreads in the wekly magazine, giving each one a separate - and confusing - title.
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