Michael Swanwick's Blog, page 6

Chesley Bonestell's Lost Industrial Lithographs #7 of 32

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 .Intake Canal and Coffer Dam

 

Look at the size of this project! The human figures quietly bring out the massive scale of it.

And for those who came in late . . .

In 1918, Chesley Bonestell was commissioned to create a series of lithographs chronicling the construction of the government cyanamide nitrates plant in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. It would be many years before he began painting the astronomicals that made him famous, but he already had tremendous technique.

The lithographs disappeared from public view not long thereafter.

Recently, my wife, Marianne Porter, and I bought what we think is a complete set of 32 at an auction. We had electronic files made of them, which we'll be posting here, one every weekday until they're all online. Then we'll make a torrent containing the complete collection in high density form, for whomever wants them.

All the images are in public domain. You don't have to ask anybody for permission to download them and you may employ them however you wish.

 

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Chesley Bonestell's Lost Industrial Lithographs #6 of 32

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The Drainage Canal

 The same scene as yesterday, but a different artistic take on it.

What is extraordinary about the nitrates plant is that the entire project, from start to finish, took less than a year. Chesley Bonestell was there for the beginning and he was there at the end. People knew how to build things fast back then. Also--as you'll soon see--huge.

And for those who came in late . . .

In 1918, Chesley Bonestell was commissioned to create a series of lithographs chronicling the construction of the government cyanamide nitrates plant in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. It would be many years before he began painting the astronomicals that made him famous, but he already had tremendous technique.

The lithographs disappeared from public view not long thereafter.

Recently, my wife, Marianne Porter, and I bought what we think is a complete set of 32 at an auction. We had electronic files made of them, which we'll be posting here, one every weekday until they're all online. Then we'll make a torrent containing the complete collection in high density form, for whomever wants them.

All the images are in public domain. You don't have to ask anybody for permission to download them and you may employ them however you wish.

 

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Chesley Bonestell's Lost Industrial Lithographs #5 of 32

 The Drainage Canal

As a kneejerk, pro-ecology liberal, I'm supposed to be appalled by big industrial builds, especially when they're for the munitions industry. But this is majestic. Look at the beauty Bonestell found in those curves!

And for those who came in late . . .

In 1918, Chesley Bonestell was commissioned to create a series of lithographs chronicling the construction of the government cyanamide nitrates plant in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. It would be many years before he began painting the astronomicals that made him famous, but he already had tremendous technique.

The lithographs disappeared from public view not long thereafter.

Recently, my wife, Marianne Porter, and I bought what we think is a complete set of 32 at an auction. We had electronic files made of them, which we'll be posting here, one every weekday until they're all online. Then we'll make a torrent containing the complete collection in high density form, for whomever wants them.

All the images are in public domain. You don't have to ask anybody for permission to download them and you may employ them however you wish.

 

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Chesley Bonestell's Lost Industrial Lithographs #4 of 32

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Site Looking from River Road

While we cannot prove it and, indeed, have no evidence it is so, Marianne and I are both convinced that one of the equestrians must surely be John Fetherston, the project head/chief engineer for the nitrates plant. 

After retirement, Fetherston and his wife lived in Packwood House in Lewisburg, parts of which dated back to the eighteenth century. Edith filled the house with antiques bought at auction. She "enjoyed arranging her objects in charming and whimsical combinations." After her death, in accordance to her will, a trust was created and in 1976 the Packwood Museum opened, displaying her collection of ceramics, glass, textiles, furniture, paintings, Pennsylvania German decorative arts (in this part of the world it is almost obligatory for rich people to collect fraktur and redware), and Oriental art.

Two of Bonestell's lithographs were framed and so, presumably, available for view at the auction. So they were not technically "lost." But they were not seen by anybody who had any idea what they were.

Alas, this by all accounts charming museum closed in 2020, when the Covid Isolation drove down its attendance and it could no longer pay its own way. The building went to the local historical society and its possessions, in accord with Edith's will, went to her parish church. Which had no earthly use for the and so put them for sale in several auctions. One of which was held by Pook & Pook.

"I don't know what that is, but I hope you win them," the lady at the auction house told Marianne when Marianne said that the only thing she really wanted was the Bonestells.

We had two reasons for wanting them. First, because they're terrific. Second, because we knew that if an interior decorator got hold of them, they'd be slapped in chrome frames and sold into dentists' and doctors' offices to be ignored for a few decades and then thrown away.

Luckily for us, nobody with deep pockets knew what they were, and we were able to buy them for less than what they must surely be worth.

And because we were aware of what they were, we understood that we had an obligation to share them with the world.

And for those who came in late . . .

In 1918, Chesley Bonestell was commissioned to create a series of lithographs chronicling the construction of the government cyanamide nitrates plant in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. It would be many years before he began painting the astronomicals that made him famous, but he already had tremendous technique.

The lithographs disappeared from public view not long thereafter.

Recently, my wife, Marianne Porter, and I bought what we think is a complete set of 32 at an auction. We had electronic files made of them, which we'll be posting here, one every weekday until they're all online. Then we'll make a torrent containing the complete collection in high density form, for whomever wants them.

All the images are in public domain. You don't have to ask anybody for permission to download them and you may employ them however you wish.

 

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Chesley Bonestell's Lost Industrial Lithographs #3 of 32

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River Road Looking West from Plant  

Not long after the previous litho, the cotton fields and the people who toiled there are gone, and the plant is under construction.

The entire project, from beginning to end, took less than a year.

And for those who came in late . . .

In 1918, Chesley Bonestell was commissioned to create a series of lithographs chronicling the construction of the government cyanamide nitrates plant in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. It would be many years before he began painting the astronomicals that made him famous, but he already had tremendous technique.

The lithographs disappeared from public view not long thereafter.

Recently, my wife, Marianne Porter, and I bought what we think is a complete set of 32 at an auction. We had electronic files made of them, which we'll be posting here, one every weekday until they're all online. Then we'll make a torrent containing the complete collection in high density form, for whomever wants them.

All the images are in public domain. You don't have to ask anybody for permission to download them and you may employ them however you wish.

 

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Chesley Bonestell's Lost Industrial Lithographs #2 of 32

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 Site Looking from River Road

Whatever order Bonestell's lithographs originally had is now lost. But this bucolic scene (though not so to the workers in the field, obviously) of a cotton field untouched by construction, surely came first. It's a "before" picture. If you zoom in on the workers, you can tell that they were all Black and even make out the patterns of some of the clothing.

 

And for those who came in late . . .

In 1918, Chesley Bonestell was commissioned to create a series of lithographs chronicling the construction of the government cyanamide nitrates plant in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. It would be many years before he began painting the astronomicals that made him famous, but he already had tremendous technique.

The lithographs disappeared from public view not long thereafter.

Recently, my wife, Marianne Porter, and I bought what we think is a complete set of 32 at an auction. We had electronic files made of them, which we're posting here, one every weekday until they're all online. Then we'll make a torrent containing the complete collection in high density form, for whomever wants them.

All the images are in public domain. You don't have to ask anybody for permission to download them and you may employ them however you wish.

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Chesley Bonestell's Lost Industrial Lithographs #1 of 32

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In 1918, Chesley Bonestell was commissioned to create a series of lithographs chronicling the construction of the government cyanamide nitrates plant in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. It would be many years before he began painting the astronomicals that made him famous, but he already had tremendous technique.

The lithographs disappeared from public view not long thereafter.

Recently, my wife, Marianne Porter, and I bought what we think is a complete set of 32 at an auction. We had electronic files made of them, which we'll be posting here, one every weekday until they're all online. Then we'll make a torrent containing the complete collection in high density form, for whomever wants them.

All the images are in public domain. You don't have to ask anybody for permission to download them and you may employ them however you wish.

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Chesley Bonestell's Lost Lithographs

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"I don't know what they are, but I hope you get them."

 

That's what the lady at the auction house said when Marianne Porter told her that all Marianne wanted were the Chesley Bonestell lithographs. There were 32 of them in the lot, and it was clear nobody at Pook & Pook knew what they were.

 

Over a century ago, in 1918, when Bonestell was a young artist specializing in architectural renderings, he was commissioned to create a suite of lithographs documenting the creation of a nitrate plant in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. That he made them was a matter of record. But the lithographs themselves disappeared from public awareness. In Ron Miller and Frederick C. Durant III's The Art of Chesley Bonestell, the number of lithographs was speculated to have been ten.

 

This project was long before Bonestell began creating the astronomical paintings that would make him famous.  But his extraordinary artistic skill is on display in the array of techniques he employed. Some of which later informed the infrastructure of his visual documentation of future spaceflight technology.

 

Now Marianne and I are making those lithographs available to the public for free. Starting this Thursday, April 4, we will be posting one image every weekday on this blog.

When the entire series has been posted, a torrent will be created containing the complete collection in high-density format. All of the images are in the public domain.  Bonestell's astronomical art was not only beautiful in its own right but a major influence on early modern science fiction. Marianne and I are thrilled to be able to make these images available to whoever wants them.   Above: Marianne and me, examining our collection.

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Mars in 1995?

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Here's a curiosity--the cover story of the June 11, 1981 issue of Analog.  It wasn't fiction. "Mars in 1995!" by Bob Parkinson, with illustrations by David A. Hardy, was a sober explanation of how a manned mission to Mars would be feasible, only 14 years after that issue of the magazine came out. And though it didn't happen, many of the details of the imagined project showed up in subsequent robotic missions.

For me, the most interesting part of the article is a bit of background presented close to the beginning:

In 1970, at the height of its success with Apollo, NASA outlined its plans for a manned expedition to Mars before the end of the century. That was the pessimistic scenario--actually, they hoped that the first expedition would take place around 1987.

Alas, such plans required nuclear boosters, which for complicated reasons never came about. 

Perhaps this was just as well. We know a lot more about the long-term effects of living in space than we did in 1981, and it looks like such a voyage might require medical interventions that don't yet exist.

Still... The article is a glimpse back into a more optimistic era. Here's what Parkinson had to say about what the pessimists expected:

There are many in the space business who imagine that such an expedition belongs to the twenty-first century. By the mid-nineteen-nineties, they say, we may just be returning to the moon.

Thirty years later, we haven't yet done that either.

 

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John O'Hara . . . A Scandalously Neglected Master of the Short Story

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Recently, I picked up a copy of Collected Stories of John O'Hara, selected and edited by Frank MacShane, and what a good decision that was! It's far too easy to forget that at short story length, O'Hara was one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. I've been working my way through it a story at a time, leaving space in between to think about what I've read and marvel at the craft of it.

This is not a Complete or Best Of volume--it leaves out "The Bucket of Blood," which to my mind is right up there with "Imagine Kissing Pete"--but it is chockablock with astonishing work.  "The Hardware Man" takes the rivalry of two hardware store owners a hundred years ago and invests in their conflict the moral gravity of two of Shakespeare's kings. "Our Friend the Sea" skirts the edge of melodrama but the big reveal, I think, is the contrast between the man the protagonist thinks he is and the man he is shown to be, to himself though not the world at large. "The Pig" has a very successful lawyer who has just discovered that he has six months to live. He confides in his best friend, mostly because he needs somebody to listen, but also because he has a difficult choice to make--and the friend's story of a combat incident in WWII is so apt that it convinced me it was how I should act, should the need ever arise. All these are clearly written with love of the form. "We'll Have Fun," whose meaning and intent I'm still mulling, required more research into the care and medicining of horses than the story's financial return could possibly have justified. (It also has a lesbian woman pleasantly free from all the tropes and assumptions of the times.)

And there is one story, but I'll not tell you which one, that reads light and frothy until, in the final sentence, O'Hara pulls the rug out from under the reader to show what's been hidden in plain sight all along.

During his lifetime, John O'Hara was known for his scandalous novels. O tempora, o mores! They are not scandalous anymore. Worse, a number of them were obviously quickly-written software for movies. As a result, his reputation is now greatly diminished. It was also unfortunate that his father's death while he was in prep school impoverished his family, which put the college of his dreams out of reach and left him too-obviously aware of his lack of social status ever after. Hemingway famously growled that someone "should start a bloody fund to send up a collection to send John O'Hara to Yale."

Forget all that. Read his short fiction. There is not a ghost of a whisper of fantasy or science fiction in anything of his I've read. Ignore that too. Read his short fiction. A lot of his stories start out looking like they're going to be formulaic. A pox on that as well. Read his short fiction.

The man was a master. He deserves to be remembered.

Above: The Library of America collection of O'Hara's stories. The volume I've been reading from doesn't have his picture on the cover.

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