Robots and Murder
- ROBOTS AND MURDER - A black ink and gray color pencil drawing on an 11 x 14 size vellum paper. It appears on the cover of "Science Fiction Review, No.32".
This is the only drawing over my entire career that was rejected by an editor. George Scithers was the rascal's name, and at that time, he was editing "Isaac Asimov's SF Magazine". He had asked me to do an illustration for an article to be titled, "Robots and Murder".
Years ago I read Asimov's novel, "The Caves of Steel," wherein a robot detective and his human detective partner solve a crime that had appeared to be impossible; a robot programmed to protect humans from harm, had murdered a human being. I did not remember the details of the story but I decided to use those two Asimov characters and put them in an unusual "murder" scene, and that's the drawing you see here.
Scithers however, rejected the drawing because, he said, it was too specific, he wanted something more generic. He decided instead, to use a drawing by Jack Gaughan.
Some time later, Scithers phoned to talk about a cover painting he wanted me to do for his magazine, and midway he interrupted himself to say that he regretted not using this picture for that article and hoped I was not too upset about it. George Scithers was a fine gentleman and a very good editor, and though I was disappointed when he rejected the drawing, I was not "upset" about it, I respected his decision and told him so. And besides, I added, Richard Geis the editor of SFR recently paid me to use it as a cover for his fanzine, so I really have no cause to be upset.
During my career I also had one painting rejected. It was rejected by owner-editor, Donald Wollheim, of DAW books, but that's another story for another time.
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