Cover by Richard Powers.
Beyond Fantasy Fiction was an American magazine edited by HL Gold that ran for only 10 issues, from July 1953 to January 1955. The title was intended to be a fantasy-oriented companion to Gold’s Galaxy Science Fiction, and with a similar design to its cover layouts. Beyond differed from Galaxy, however, by leaving its cover art consistently free of text, and it differed from other genre magazines by offering a range of art styles that were a little more adventurous than its contemporaries. Richard Powers could get away with semi-abstract weirdness on his book covers but the magazines forced him to be much more conventional. A few months before the first issue of Beyond, a very uncharacteristic painting by Powers appeared on the cover of Fantastic showing a naked woman being pawed by giant insects.
Cover by Richard Powers.
A couple of the other Beyond covers approach the diluted Surrealism that was still percolating through the US media in the 1950s, while the cover for July 1954 wouldn’t be out of place in a fashion magazine, at least until you notice all the witchy details. The cover by Arthur Krusz for May 1954 features the same combination of disjunctive perspectives you find in Hollywood dream sequences and Paul Julian’s designs for the 1953 animated version of The Tell-Tale Heart. If the magazine had lasted longer we might have seen more like this.
Cover by René Vidmer.
Cover by Rupert Conrad.
Cover by Scott Templar.