Keith Laumer's Retief Meets Alien Diplomats – If Magazine July 1962
Welcome to one of the most charmingly grotesque diplomatic encounters in Golden Age science fiction cover art. This July 1962 cover of Worlds of If depicts a scene from Keith Laumer's beloved Retief novelette 'Aide Memoire,' featuring a lone human envoy flanked by two wildly alien creatures — one spindly and pin-headed, another a bloated, ceremonially robed frog-beast — rendered in a loose, almost satirical illustrative style that perfectly captures Laumer's comedic alien-diplomacy universe.
The artist commits fully to Laumer's absurdist diplomatic chaos, delivering two memorably bizarre alien designs with genuine wit and loose expressionistic bravado. The gap between the deadpan human diplomat and his grotesque interlocutors is played perfectly, making this more satirical cartoon than straight pulp but no less delightful for it.
“WORLDS OF if SCIENCE FICTION JULY 1962 • 35c • K THE CHEMICALLY PURE WARRIORS by Allen Kim Lang UNCLE SAM'S TIME MACHINE by Theodore Sturgeon AIDE MEMOIRE, A Retief Novelette by KEITH LAUMER”
