Virgil Finlay's Medusa Confronts Spacemen – Fantastic Universe Oct. 1957
A serpent-haired woman — unmistakably Medusa — raises her writhing mass of living snakes toward two silver-suited astronauts who stand frozen, expressionless, perhaps already turning to stone. The tension is mythological horror colliding with rocket-age science fiction: ancient monster meets modern spaceman on an alien world bathed in sickly green light. Virgil Finlay's signature linework lends the creature an unsettling organic menace against the rigid geometry of the suited figures.
Greek mythology smashed headfirst into the Space Age — Medusa squaring off against astronauts is exactly the kind of gloriously unhinged genre mashup that makes Golden Age pulp covers so irresistible. Finlay's signature is right there on the canvas and this one is firing on all cylinders!
“FANTASTIC UNIVERSE SCIENCE FICTION OCT. 35c 1CD SHADOW OF THE SWORD AN EXCITING NEW NOVEL by WYNNE WHITEFORD SURVIVAL IN SPACE — An Article by LESTER DEL REY CLARK ASHTON SMITH • STANLEY MULLEN • LEE CHAYTOR”
