JF Ptak Science Books  Post 1206

Sonos the Conqueror and Vooa the Unconquerable were two sorts of a sort, two flits in a fit, the products of the mumbley imagination of Guy Stanleigh.  Actually Stanleigh (not “Stan Lee”) was an interesting scifi artist if not a writer. Well, he was really nowhere near being a writer, if writing had anything to do with writing and not drawing.  His written word was the sort that vicious litcrit folks wait for in the bushes for on Friday nights so that they can catch and chew on them over the weekend before Monday’s deconstructionist deadline.   I’m surprised that after 72 years the letters on the pages of his work haven’t yet slipped off.  

[Both items are available for purchase at our blog bookstore.] His drawings though are an entirely different matter–they are accomplished in a naive way, and are big, and Botero-esque/bulbous, and unusual, and filled with a fair amount of imagination.

My favorites in his novelettes (Sonos the Conqueror and Vooa the Unconquerable, both of which stretch out to 16 pages, combined, which were undoubtedly vehicles for his artwork, if nothing else) were of a machine called the Atronic Ray energizer (“a concentrated collection of teh rays given off by the planets of the universe, a few of which (were) absorbed…circulating over the universe via inductive and repulsed forces….the primary or positive induced force emanating between and from an anode and biode…” Anyway, it was a terminus of fantastically great power that could either engender universal peace or destroy humanity. Life/death aside, its a pretty picture, and figure’s long and very sharp shadow relates a visceral feeling of hot energy.