thumb|right|Paul's cover for [[Amazing Stories, August 1927, illustrating The War of the Worlds]]

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

thumb|right|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

thumb|right|Early story illustration in Gernsback's Science and Invention (January 1922)

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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File:Science wonder stories 192908.jpg|Space station, August 1929

File:Science Wonder Stories Nov 1929 - flying saucer.jpg|Early depiction of a flying saucer, November 1929

File:Amazing Stories April 1926.jpg|First issue of Amazing Stories, April 1926

File:2605 Amazing Stories May 1926.jpg|Martian being for "The Crystal Egg" by H. G. Wells, May 1926

File:Amazing Stories September 1926.jpg|Creature from In the Abyss by H. G. Wells, September 1926

File:Amazing stories 192702.jpg|Prehistoric monsters from The Land That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs, February 1927

File:Amazing stories 192703.jpg|Space scene, 1927

File:Amazing Stories Volume 02 Number 06.jpg|Man-eating plant, September 1927

File:Amazing stories quarterly 1928spr.jpg|Spaceship scene, 1928

File:Amazing stories 192808.jpg|Flying suit, August 1928

File:Amazing stories quarterly 1928fal.jpg|Giant ants, 1928

File:Amazing stories 192902.jpg|Dinosaur hunted by aliens, February 1929

File:Amazing stories 192901.jpg|City destroyed by an ice sheet, January 1929

File:Amazing Stories Annual (1927).jpg|John Carter from Master Mind of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, 1927

File:Amazing Stories no. 31 (October 1928).jpg|Robot battling a lion, October 1928

File:Science wonder stories 192906 v1 n1.jpg|First issue of Science Wonder Stories, June 1929

File:Science Wonder Quarterly Fall 1929.jpg|Spaceship scene, 1929

File:Wonder stories quarterly 1930sum.jpg|Giant alien monster, 1930

File:Wonder stories quarterly 1931win.jpg|Spaceship hit by a meteor, 1931

File:Wonder stories 193302.jpg|Moon approaches Earth, February 1933

File:Wonder stories 193506.jpg|"Seeds from Space" plant beings, June 1935

File:Wonder stories 193509.jpg|Mechanical monster, September 1935

File:Life on Europa.jpg|Life on Europa, back cover of Amazing Stories, September 1940

File:Future Fiction November 1940.jpg|Giant fighting machines, November 1940

File:City on Neptune.png|City on Neptune, back cover of Amazing Stories, March 1941

File:Amazing Stories August 1946 back cover.png|Flying saucers on back cover of Amazing Stories in 1946

File:Science fiction plus 195303 v1 n1.jpg|Rocket suit, March 1953

File:Science fiction plus 195304.jpg|Thousand-year space ark, May 1953

File:Science fiction plus 195310.jpg|Interstellar spaceship, October 1953

File:Science fiction plus 195312.jpg|Robot city, December 1953

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References

  • Frank R. Paul Gallery
  • Sci-fi Scanner
  • Collections of Frank R. Paul