Tag Archives: Harold McCauley

Carbon here, carbon there

Cover of Amazing Stories for July 1943 by Harold W. McCauley.

The dame holding the gun on Harold W. McCauley’s cover for the July 1943 Amazing Stories is more suggestive of crime pulp than science fiction…until we notice what looks surprisingly like a tube girl in the background, suggestive of rather more exotic goings-on.

Virgil Finlay’s interior art is featured in this number, with an appropriately surreal illustration for Alexander Blade’s story “Carbon-Copy Killer.”

Virgil Finlay interior illustration for Alexander Blade's "Carbon-Copy Killer" in Amazing Stories, July 1943.
“Her image was black with death…”

This issue of Amazing Stories is available to read and download from the Internet Archive.

More Toffee

Because I can’t resist. Can you? By the second issue Toffee had gone a little bit sci-fi.

In addition to the cover painting Harold McCauley provided a humorous inside-the-cover sketch…

…and an unusual wealth of interior art to decorate Charles F. Myers Toffee stories. Greewood Publishing had a magazine to promote, by gum!

The last image is my own (imperfect) cross-page merge (using GIMP) of two pages that weren’t scanned exactly to scale.

This issue of Toffee’s adventures is available to read and download at the Internet Archive.

Hello Toffee!

The fantasy and sci-fi magazine Imaginative Tales had a run from 1954 to 1958, and while it was often fairly cheesecakey (“Devastating H-Bomb redhead ‘Toffee'” was an imagined character living inside the head of a fictional protagonist) it would go on to feature original fiction by Robert Bloch, Philip K. Dick, Robert Silverberg and Harlan Ellison. Not too shabby, if you ask me. Toffee was illustrated by pulp great Harold McCauley, who also drew some racy sketches for the back pages:

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

Flaming peril!

Menace was a prominent theme in the April, 1951 issue of Fantastic Adventures, especially on this cover by Harold McCauley. A version with more vivid colors (but smaller) can be found at the issue entry at the Internet Speculative Fiction database:

The menace continues with interior artwork by Henry Sharp (1912-2005), illustrating E.K. Jarvis’s story “A Matter of Principle.”

This issue of Fantastic Adventures is available to be read or downloaded from the Internet Archive.

Someone has bungled, cosmically

Just a bit more Harold McCauley pulp illustration. Boy are we going to be sorry when oxygen tanks gain sentience.

A robot blows up a city while enmeshing a dishy blond in its mecho-tentacles.

This painting graced the cover of the January 1956 issue of Imaginative Tales.

We are going to be sorry when oxygen tanks become sentient.

Both versions of the illustration are courtesy of this post at Pulp Covers. The entire issue can be downloaded from or read at the Internet Archive. It’s pretty pulpy: I counted I think four interior illustrations of helpless dames needing rescue from manly sci-fi heroes. But at least one illustration, sadly uncredited, does seem very Erotic Mad Science:

Interior illustration in Imaginative Tales, January 1956

It illustrates a story by Richard O. Lewis, “Practical Joke.” The promo copy:

Hypnotapes were a proven boon to industry, where difficult problems could be experienced and solved vicariously. But to marriage — sheer chaos!

Well all righty then!

Pulp Parade #266: Your gown is fabulous, but I’m still taking this ship

This is a cover painting for Amazing Stories, August 1942, by Harold McCauley. The cover:

The ISFDB entry for this issue is here. I found both the painting and the cover at Pulp Covers, which also gives us a bonus back cover.

Either something in that description is missing, or this was a concept come up with someone who really doesn’t understand physics. You can download and read this issue from the Internet Archive.