“You did me and my dragons REAL PROUD”

My father didn’t keep a lot of his papers, but, fortunately, one of the letters he preserved was written by author Anne McCaffrey on September 15, 1967 - and which her son has graciously permitted me to reproduce here.

At that time, Dad had just finished illustrating McCaffrey’s early Pern stories for Analog magazine: “Weyr Search” in the October 1967 issue, and “Dragonrider” - in two parts - in the December 1967 and January 1968 issues. Barring any hypothetical doodles by McCaffrey, these illustrations represent the very first depictions of Pern and its inhabitants - just as his pictures for Frank Herbert’s Analog-serialized stories were the first depictions of Dune.

As McCaffrey mentions in the letter, the day before writing, she had the chance to look at a few proofs and originals in the Analog offices in Manhattan, in the presence of editor John W. Campbell and his longtime assistant, Kay Tarrant. As she alludes, too, my father (and mother, as well) were then on safari, as it were, to wolf-and-moose-inhabited Isle Royale in Lake Superior, near the Canadian border, to research his illustrations for The Big Island by Julian May (Chicago: Follett Publishing Company, 1968). By 1967 Dad had begun drifting away from science fiction, partly because he was doing more children’s books and wildlife paintings, and partly because Reader’s Digest, for example, paid about four times as much for a cover than Analog did. Loyalty to Campbell, his mentor and champion, could only go so far with a mortgage and two small kids in tow. (And on behalf of my family and my childhood home, I apologize.)

As you can see, instead of modeling his dragons on your usual, scaly European or Asian types, Dad went with something much more dinosaur-like and (to my mind) “real”. In fact, his dragons are more convincing than his humans, but that wasn’t uncommon for him. Unfortunately, the original drawings and paintings were sold long ago, so the accompanying images were scanned from Analog’s yellowed, halftone pages. But their power still comes through.

So, here’s a scan of the letter itself, followed by an illustrated transcription. Enjoy!

369 Carpenter Avenue
Sea Cliff, N.Y. 11579

Sept. 15

Dear John Schoenherr,

You did me and my dragons real proud and I spent a half an hour drooling over the new black and whites and the cover, which I saw the proofs of which, yesterday in John’s office.

Then you go away and zoomar in on meeses on a distant island and I don’t get the chance to meet you and thank you in person at the Convention…which I had looked forward to doing, thinking surely you'd attend.

But man, those are mighty appealing dragons. Particularly, especially, and triumphantly, the one in which Lessa is enclosed in Mnementh’s talons. Oh, that, I die a little over. How HOW did you manage to convey that foolish bronze’s tender regard and lack of menace in black and white, no less. Superb. Honest, I nearly cried in front of John and Miss Tarrant...which at my age would be a little the other side of enough. But the sketch was so much, so very much what I had imagined in my mind for the scene, I’d swear you were a telepath yourself.

I’m impressed with all the sketches and the covers because I simply am flabbergasted YOU knew what I wanted. And we never met...er nothing. (I do hope we will, although JWC tells me Readers’ Digest and Nat.Geo have now appreciated your talents and hired you away from s-f...our loss, definitely, and their gain.)

As a matter of fact, everyone [after recovering from their initial...‘My God, those things are BIG] at the Milford Conference was commenting in loud and amazed tones on the illustrations by Schoenherr and how lucky I was to get you because you are a zoölogist and conscientious about your portrayals.

Oh, that sleeping dragon...the look on the face...I guess, it’s F’lar striding by...that is marvelous...because the are like that, you know. Yeah, you know.

And that marvelous one of Lessa and F’nor in flight to the Southern Continent...that’s great, too...or is that one when Lessa + F’lar are going “between?” Could be but I don’t think so.

I also am pleased you used the scene where Fandarel and his minions are de-threading with agenothree, with F’lar and Robinton in the background. I wanted to see what Fandarel looked like...also that gimmick I thunk up in desperation; and Robinton is a pet character of mine already so I’m very glad he’s in.

As a matter of fact, I am so very, very happy over the illustrations that I am, as you can see, babbling. I’m in orbit anyhow over rating not one but TWO ANALOG covers, and then to have my dragon kind translated so perfectly is joy upon delight.

JWC says you still own the sketches and that I should ask you if I may buy some, if you’re agreeable. I hope you are...you ought to be after I’ve worked on your sympathies for a full page...but I really am extremely thrilled and delighted and should so like to cover the scaling plaster in my ‘study’ with something to inspire me to greater Perns...which are in the offing, by the bye…one doesn’t after all, leave dragons hanging mid-air on a Thread and just leave them...particularly when editors are entranced with the idea and readers are responding.

I realize you are away so I won’t hold my breath til I hear from you. What John told me of your ecological study of the Island of Meese and Wolves is very interesting. May the snows hold off and the moose be distant (Oh, yes, I know about the habits of meese…my stepson was in the Army in Alaska and had an absolutely hysterical encounter (encounter, hell, offensive) with a moose on the highway. [Want to know what is as stubborn as a moose? A Hungarian!])

Also, I would very much still like to meet you and thank you for your superb dragons. When you return to civilization, I hope we can arrange a luncheon or dinner in town. My husband and your wife can talk about things others than science-fiction which bores my husband although he is very interested in Fine Art (which is why he isn’t interested in s-f). That’s sounds rather stuffy, doesn’t it? Well, looks that way on paper.

Oh, and I’m glad you had a close-up sketch of F’lar. You gave him a good strong face. I like F’lar even better... Also the readers will soon like him less, I fear me. Trouble with being a hero, I guess, if you're going to be a real one, you aren't all that popular.

I must stop.

My most sincere thanks,

Anne McCaffrey

50 Years of Dune

Frank Herbert is purported to have said that John Schoenherr was “the only man who has ever visited Dune.”*

Well, thanks to Schoenherr’s work log, we can pinpoint the exact date of his first trip. Fifty years ago today - on August 7, 1963 - he was commissioned to make a cover and 18 spot illustrations for Parts 1, 2, and 3 of “Dune World” which was to be serialized in Analog Science Fact and Science Fiction starting with the December 1963 issue.

Schoenherr’s expense ledger also shows that on August 7, he took the subway from Queens to the Analog offices in Manhattan (only 15 cents a ride, then). Although he stopped at the offices the following day, too, he was probably given the manuscript during the first of these two visits.

It’s impossible - with Schoenherr’s own records, at least - to figure out which pictures emerged when. Presumably he took notes and doodled as he read or immediately after, and images gradually took shape in no particular order. One page from his oversized sketchbook shows some fairly well-conceived portraits of Dr. Wellington Yueh, with his “square block of a head with purple lips and drooping mustache, the diamond tattoo of Imperial Conditioning on his forehead, the long black hair caught in the Suk School’s silver ring at the left shoulder.”

The final ink-on-scratchboard illustration of Yueh shows that Schoenherr stuck closely to his initial conception.

While sketching Yueh, Schoenherr also jotted down phrases to keep in mind when painting the planet Arrakis for the cover:

ARRAKIS -
VERY DEEP BLUE SKY -
MILKY SUNLIGHT -
GIVES SILVERY CASTE. [sic]
GRAY WINDBLOWN LEAVES
CLAW-LIKE BRANCHES
GRAY & BROWN

And another sketchbook contains an early incarnation of that world.

Fortunately, this was the brief phase in Analog’s history when the magazine’s format went from digest size to so-called “bedsheet” dimensions - and Schoenherr’s work was always helped by more expansive proportions.

Frank Herbert was pleased with the results. In The Road to Dune he is quoted as saying:

Frequently, I have to ask myself if the artist was actually illustrating the story his work accompanied. Not so with John Schoenherr. His December cover caught with tremendous power and beauty the “Dune mood” I struggled so hard to create. It’s one of the few such works of which I’d like to have the original.

According to Analog editor John W. Campbell (quoted in the same book), this cover was “Schoenherr’s sixth attempt, I believe. Getting the feeling of desolation, danger, dryness and action was not easy; he earned his pay on that one!”

Yes, a cool $250. And did Herbert wind up with the original? I’m not sure. But stay tuned for more souvenirs from these first trips to “Dune World”.


*I’m on the lookout for the precise source for this quote, though it appeared in James E. Gunn’s The New Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (Viking, 1988).

Amazing Bedfellows

In trying to piece together the early career of my father, John Schoenherr, I’ve been actively accumulating copies of the pulp magazines he illustrated, yet seldom saved. Amazing Stories was one of his early clients, along with others in the Ziff-Davis Publishing Company stable, like Fantastic Science Fiction, Dream World, and Sports Cars Illustrated.

According to his work log, job #28 was a 1 1/2 page illustration for “Monster on Stage 4” by Henry Slesar. He got the commission on May 7, 1957, and must have done it quickly, since he billed for it on May 16. Although it hinted at what was to come, his scratchboard technique was still pretty iffy at this point as he experimented with different ways of rendering form, tones, and texture. And I should note, too, that he based his creature on Edward Valigursky’s cover painting for the issue.

“Monster on Stage 4” was published in Amazing Stories for August 1957, which also contains Dad’s illustration for G. L. Vandenburg’s “Look-Alike Army.” Originally titled “Many Mr. Kanes,” this was job #21, which he got on March 4, 1957, and invoiced for on April 4. It paid $30 - his typical price, then, for a single page illustration - and although finished earlier than “Monster,” his technique feels more confident and refined in this one. Maybe he took more time to do it.

Just last month I bought a copy of the magazine and got to see these pictures - made by a then-21-year-old, unknown, and uncredited John Schoenherr - for the first time. And in leafing through it further, I was surprised to find the following letter from another then-unknown science fiction fan, who went on to even greater notoriety...

Yes, that Roger Ebert, who turned fifteen on June 18 that year.

**********

P.S. (of February 4, 2014) And here’s yet another Ebert letter, written later that year and published in the November 1957 issue of Amazing Stories...

Space Man, A Stand Up Comic

Another long-lost, early John Schoenherr illustration has come to light, thanks to the work log that I found a few weeks ago: it's the cover for issue #3 of the comic book Space Man, published by Dell in 1962.

It's job #225 in the log, which shows that Dell commissioned him on February 7, 1962, and paid him $200 on April 17. The original painting - wherever it is! - is most likely gouache on illustration board.

This one's closer to his usual fare than the Monster Parade covers, but it's still an oddball - at least compared to much of his other science fiction pictures. Its "retro" quality would make it at home on a pulp magazine or B-movie poster of the 1940s or 1950s. He sure could could lay it on thick, when need be.

If You Can't Face It - Faint

A few years into my dad's illustration career, he began to do spots for a "men's magazine" called MEN. Here's one - probably painted early in 1960 - from a regular feature called "Men and Medicine" by Ken Armstrong.

Pulp Fiction: Trapped

Like many young illustrators of his generation, John Schoenherr did whatever hack work he could find after leaving art school. So, while his science fiction and natural history output gradually gained steam, dozens of his early pieces wound up in obscure, lurid “men’s magazines”. Often uncredited or pseudonymous, these pictures were typical of the genre: violent, bloody, and bosomy. Such as this cover from Trapped Detective Story Magazine for October 1959.

Feature Publications’ Trapped lasted for all of 34 issues. Its partner in crime was Guilty Detective Story Magazine and, according to Galactic Central, “Both determined to show that the spirit of the 1940s detective pulp magazines was still alive and well in the 1950s, albeit in a digest format.”

Schoenherr’s files for this phase of his career are far from complete, so there must be more illustrations out there, waiting to be identified. His reference photos might provide some clues, however: it’s just a matter of matching poses to magazine pictures. The following set, for example, was taken on March 19, 1959, for the Trapped cover.

Rascal Ephemera

Here is an obscure piece of Rascal ephemera, which used Dad’s frontispiece illustration from the book. I think it was a promotional print, sent out by the publisher sometime in the late 1960s, as it came with a flier titled, “Honors for Sterling North’s RASCAL, Winner of the Dutton Animal Book Award, 1963.” It notes:

The fame of the Raccoon from Wisconsin has spread throughout the world to capture the hearts of young and old. RASCAL has been distributed by the Book-of-the-Month Club and by two other book clubs. It will soon be made into a Walt Disney film. A nationwide bestseller for six months, RASCAL numbers more than 115,000 copies in print.

It was also a flat-fee job that netted all of $1000 for Dad. But the “Raccoon from Wisconsin” helped put him on the children’s book map.

From Incident at Hawk’s Hill

I keep looking and looking, but I just can’t find the reference photo that Dad used in making this illustration for Allan W. Eckert’s Incident at Hawk’s Hill. He and I posed for it - and that’s pretty much me (or a scrawnier version of me) and although the father’s head isn’t Dad’s, the strong forearms definitely are.


UPDATE of April 12, 2011!

I found the photo - it was hiding in plain sight. And, yes, Dad’s arms are much like the dad’s in the illustration. Also, I am indeed plumper than the boy in the book. If only I had been raised by a badger on the Manitoban prairies!

On the left in the background is Dad’s jacket illustration for “The Jezebel Wolf” by F. N. Monjo.

Sherlock Holmes and John Schoenherr

Note: This post was significantly expanded on April 8, 2014

My father introduced me to Sherlock Holmes when I was 11. I’d already been watching the Basil Rathbone movies and drawing pictures of the character, so, technically, the introduction had been made years before, but it was then that ever-logical Dad suggested that I read the original stories so I'd know who Holmes and Watson really were.

Before long, I’d become an absolute fanatic and, besides collecting everything Sherlock Holmes-related I could get my hands on, I appropriated the original art for Dad’s sole Sherlockian illustration. He made it for Mack Reynolds’s science fiction story, “The Adventure of the Extraterrestrial,” which appeared in Analog magazine for July 1965. It was job #303 in his work-log, commissioned on March 29, 1964, and it was either one of the last jobs he did in his Long Island City studio, or one of the first ones his did in the small bedroom workspace in his new, old house in rural New Jersey. The ink-on-scratchboard drawing netted him $150.00. By the way, for copyright reasons, the aged Holmes seen in the picture was only referred to as “The Great Detective” in the text.

I always thought Dad’s Watson resembled his own father, though my Grandpa Schoenherr never had a walrus mustache like that (he did have his own copy of The Complete Sherlock Holmes, however). I remember, too, Dad pointing out that he’d deliberately updated Holmes’s unanswered-correspondence-tranfixing-jack-knife with a more modern switch-blade.

My father was definitely a Sherlock Holmes fan (though never a crazed one) and he attended scion society meetings with me before I could drive. He also enjoyed Arthur Conan Doyle’s Brigadier Gerard tales and it was a long-time wish of his to illustrate The Lost World - featuring Professor Challenger, who my father resembled somewhat. (Dad never got the chance - though this painting hints at what could have been - but, evidently, his one-time brother-in-law, Ray Sternbergh, painted the cover for the Pyramid Books edition of the novel.)

I should note that a few months before making this illustration, my father received the following letter from the Little Green Man Science Fiction Awards Society of Kansas City, Missouri.

Devoted Sherlockians will recognize one of the names on the letterhead. Here, too, is the April 1963 cover mentioned in the letter - and still more devoted Sherlockians should note that the author of the cover story, Winston P. Sanders, was the sometime-nom-de-plume of Poul Anderson.