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The original cover to the right was the first sale to any magazine: Science Stories - one of Ray Palmer'spublications.  We learned a lot during this transaction, things like making one basic concept, center of interest, which didn't get all confused by a lot of distracting "equally focused" other objects. Here we have the crashed ship.  Originally the swirling green mass threatening the men rushing out of the ship, was a "see-through" monster man-like alien creature looming over them and the ship.  Palmer wanted something else, which ended up as the swirling mass that you now see.

He also wanted a bio of dad. Well, this turned out to me my first bit of professional writing, and my first "ghosting" and/or penname: Al Nuetzel.  What now follows is that short article:

    Some people don't realize that it's like living with a science fiction fan in your house. Whether you like it or not your quickly get educated to what bems are, and what stf means.
    But above all you can't help getting a little interested in this growing field of imaginative fiction If you are an artist, as I am, you find hundreds of wonder pictures coming to mind.
    Of course it wasn't my idea alone to do cover work: the fact that my son decided to have some original cover illustrations - without paying the price required to purchase them at stf conventions - had something to do with my first trying a hand at cover work.  His continual prodding galvanized my already interested brain into action.  Before long he was sending in sketches to the editors of this magazine.
    As a result of it all, I've now been asked to do an autobiography to be featured with a photograph, in this issue, so I might as well get with it.
    I was born in New Albany, Indiana.  As a young boy I played in the Louisville Orchestra, but it was in High School that I first got my taste for artwork, when working on the school annual, as art editor. I then went through the first stages of my career with architecture, cartooning and finer arts respectively.  But finally, realizing where the real money was, settled down to commercial art.
    At the present time I'm employed as one of the key artist , and idea meant the Pacific Title and Arts Studio, where 3D and Wide Screen are more than just headaches!  This is where almost all the major motion picture titles are made and filmed.
    In my earlier career I taught at the California Institute of Art, in Los Angeles, and have had my work displayed in the "Legion of Honor" and the "Maxwell Galleries" of San Francisco.
    At the present I live in Encino, California, in the famous San Fernando Valley, with my wife, son, and a dog named "Buttons."  Between working on cover ideas and motion picture titles I design and produce silk-screen prints as a hobby.  With some hundreds of these prints and just as many volumes of science-fantasy in my son's collection, we have been forced to contemplate on moving into the Hollywood Bowl.
    As you might have guessed by now, I'm the guy who did the cover on this issue of Science Stories; which \, by the way, I hope you have enjoyed as much as I did doing it.

Interestingly enough it was run as the cover for a story by Stu Byrne under the pen-name of John Bloodstone, whom I was quite a fan of (had my first fan letter published concerning a story of his, which I later had the joy of being able to convert into pocket book edition called: "Godman").  He became somewhat famous for an unpublished "Tarzan on Mars" novel.  Ray Palmer, a big promotional fella, did everything he could to promote the Stu Byrne/Burroughs connection - having Stu become the man to "take over" for the master.  Many things got in the way of that happening - so "Tarzan on Mars" became a cult classic which many have heard about but few have had a chance to actually read.  Though Ray Bradbury was quoted as having been highly impressed by the manuscript. Stu was considered by the powers to be at ERB, Inc as an unknown (and unmerited) writer trying to fly on the tail of ERB.  Nothing could have been more off-base!  The man actually was a very hard-core fan of Burroughs and dedicated to doing a realistic extension of the master's work.  Plus he'd have quite a few stories published in many of the magazines of that era. But, alas, things didn't happen the way Palmer wished, and the manuscript has remained unpublished even to this day. Instead the Burroughs company kept hiring commercial writers who knew next to nothing about Tarzan - other than the comic books and the movies (both of which had very little to do with the noble Lord of the jungle which had been created in "Tarzan of the Apes" back in 1912).

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