Frank Kelly Freas: The Astounding Fifties
(1971 - Databank Press) 
[-BELOW THE LINE-] The first edition of this book was spiral-bound and then the follow-up edition, from almost 20 years later, was glued, with a tape overlay (and reportedly with heavier grade of paper more suitable for removing, matting & framing). The binding of the second one would constitute a valid spine, as we view it, but neither edition of the book can make it up onto The List, because too many of the drawings are presented sideways. In the one-page introduction, the artist relates that for the better part of the 1950s he was producing interior illustrations for many stories that were appearing in ASTOUNDING magazine. He identifies a very clear break at the end of that period where he left the industry for a substantial sabbatical, and as we know, the magazine itself continued into the new decade under the new title of ANALOG with which it is still distributed today. This book collects together 84 drawings, each on its own page with nothing on its backside, but as intimated above, 52 of them require turning the book sideways to view them properly. The art is not captioned (except with a page-number), but a handful of pages act as a contents-list showing the pages, the titles of the stories that the illustrations accompanied, their authors, and the issues they originally appeared in. I'd guess that many of these images don't appear on their pages as large as you would like them. As of this writing, there are only four other collections of Freas' great artwork and while they don't focus first on his drawings, they have some, but I don't feel there are too many repeats from this volume, if any. If you really like his artwork, you are probably going to want this admittedly flawed book in your collection as well.
Related Books
Frank Kelly Freas - The Art Of Science Fiction
The Kelly Freas Collection (Heritage Auction Comics Catalogue supplement (2004 October - # 813-C))
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