Tag Archives: Frank Kelly Freas

Dig some more skin-tight spacesuits

Some of the sexiest space construction getups ever from the brush of Frank Kelly Freas for the September 1953 issue of Planet Stories. It’s hard to find good versions of this cover. The one at the ISFDB is brighter and in better shape, but smaller, as usual.

The interior has artwork by yet another great, Wally Wood, illustrating Hayden Howard’s story “The Un-Reconstructed Woman.” The naked wild woman seems to have occupied a large place in Wood’s consciousness.

This issue is available to read and download at the Internet Archive.

Rejected why?

Planet Stories, which had a run from 1939 to 1955 usually didn’t skimp on the sexy for its covers either, and this one painted by pulp great Frank Kelly Freas (1922-2005) is no exception, what with its flaming redhead in her skin-tight cleavage-revealing armor being menaced by…something.

A piece of interior artwork, illustrating Gordon R. Dickson’s story “The Man the Worlds Rejected,” neatly seems to marry the space babe with the hot librarian.

Print that out on cardstock and you’d have a very nifty bookmark. The illustration is, sadly, uncredited.

This issue is available to be read and downloaded from the Internet Archive.

Underwater world

An interior illustration by Frank Kelly Freas for Erik Fennel’s story, “The Lost Tribes of Venus,” in the May 1954 edition of Planet Stories. The cover illustration, also attributed to Freas, is a masterpiece of barely-there swimsuit illustration:

I’ll bet the bluenoses really had to peer at that one to make sure some postal regulation wasn’t being violated (serves them right). You can download the image in large size.

This issue of Planet Stories is available to be read at and downloaded from the Internet Archive.

When Sex Met Space

Hat tip on this illustration to Not Pulp Covers and that site’s associated Twitter feed. The illustration is presented without attribution there, but a search of the Internet Speculative Fiction Database turns up that this is a page from the September 1953 edition of Planet Stories. The illustration is uncredited.

Planet Stories had a tendency to sexy covers. Galactic Central gives us one for this edition:

Gotta love those form-fitting spacesuits! This cover is also uncredited, although a number of sources believe that it is work by Frank Kelly Freas. Unfortunately the Internet Archive does not appear to have this particular edition in its holdings at this time.