Frank R. Paul

Rudolph Franz Paul (; born Rudolph Franz Wilhelm Paul; April 18, 1884 – June 29, 1963) was an American illustrator of pulp magazines in the science fiction field.

A discovery of editor Hugo Gernsback, Paul was influential in defining the look of both cover art and interior illustrations in the nascent science fiction pulps of the 1920s.

The Science Fiction Hall of Fame inducted him in 2009. Austria-Hungary. His father was from Hungary and his mother from Czechoslovakia. He emigrated to the United States in 1906. He married Rudolpha Costa Rigelsen, a Belgian immigrant, in 1913, He studied art in Vienna, Paris, and New York City. He went to work for the Jersey Journal performing graphic design. Publisher Hugo Gernsback hired him in 1914 to illustrate The Electrical Experimenter, a science magazine.

Work Paul's work is characterized by dramatic compositions (often involving enormous machines, robots or spaceships), bright or even garish colors, and a limited ability to depict human faces, especially the female ones. His early architectural training is also evident in his work.

Paul illustrated the cover of Gernsback's own novel, Ralph 124C 41+: A Romance of the Year 2660 (The Stratford Company, 1925), originally a 1911–1912 serial.

Influence on the genre Surprisingly accurate depiction of Jupiter by Frank R. Paul on the November 1928 cover of Amazing Stories In many ways, Frank R. Paul's achievements and influence on the field through the decades cannot be overestimated. His work appeared on the cover of the first issue (April 1926) of Amazing Stories magazine, the first magazine dedicated to science fiction. He would paint all the covers for over three years. These visions of robots, spaceships, and aliens were presented to an America wherein most people did not even have a telephone. Indeed, they were the first science fiction images seen by Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Forrest J Ackerman, and others who would go on to great prominence in the field. Arthur C. Clarke wrote that the first science fiction magazine he encountered was the November 1928 edition of Amazing Stories, with a cover by Paul. He cites this as a crucial early incident that shifted his interest to science fiction. Clarke also comments on Paul's accurate depiction of Jupiter on that 1928 cover:

Paul's emphasis on concept, action and milieu over human figures was to continue to be a defining genre signal of SF art even when executed by successors with greater technical skill and more depth of artistic vision. The visual language of the majority of SF art centers, even today, are more sophisticated versions of Paul's central tropes.

The Frank R. Paul Award, named in his honor, was awarded by the Nashville Science Fiction Association from 1976 to 1996 to such distinguished artists as Frank Kelly Freas, Alex Schomburg and Victoria Poyser.

Firsts

Frank R. Paul can be credited with the first color painting of a space station (August 1929, Science Wonder Stories) published in the U.S. His cover for the November 1929 Science Wonder Stories was an early, if not the earliest, depiction of a flying saucer. This painting appeared almost two decades before the sightings of mysterious flying objects by Kenneth Arnold. So large was his stature that he was the only guest of honor at the first World Science Fiction Convention in 1939. He has been described as the first person to make a living drawing spaceships; this is a slight exaggeration, as much of his income was also derived from technical drawing. He was also the cover artist of Marvel Comics #1 (Oct. 1939), the first ever Marvel Comic and became well known for his work.

He was very innovative in the depiction of spaceships. Several of his illustrations were disc shaped and it has been speculated that he may have, accidentally, created the UFO craze when the first sighting of lights in the sky were described as disc shaped; this would have been the result of the psychological phenomenon known as mental set.

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