Wall-E and Mel Hunter
If you haven’t seen Wall-E yet, you should drop whatever you’re doing and go see it right away because it’s freaking awesome. Tor art director Irene Gallo agrees, and points out some interesting parallels between the robot design in the movie and the iconic covers Mel Hunter did for F&SF.
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5 Responses to “Wall-E and Mel Hunter”
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Wall-E totally looks like the robot from “Short Circuit”… minus the cheesy 80’s style of course
That’s true, though he is in no other way like Johnny Five. And for that we should be forever grateful.
hello,
i have sent 3 emails to you regarding mel hunter’s robot series. especially issue no.72 may 1957. with the story written by chad oliver. the story title was called the wind blows free. all website information and estate of mel hunter has come back to me and said that your publishing house would have a history of this magazine but when received an email from you it said you dont have it. can you explain this?
thanks
Ms. St. Mart—
I checked our records and found:
1) On July 21, you contacted us and said, “i am having trouble finding the robot series illustrated by mel hunter
can you help?”
To which Andrew Grossman replied on July 22:
Mel Hunter’s robot covers do not illustrate any particular stories.
If you’re looking for those covers, you can find links to them here: http://www.sfcovers.net/Artists/bpage009.htm#bxhunm
2) You wrote back to Andrew and asked where you can get those magazines, to which Andrew replied on July 22:
Unfortunately, most of those issues are more than thirty years old and we no longer have copies for sale. You might try searching for them on eBay or on other internet sites.You can find greeting cards using Mel Hunter’s art here: https://secure.grantbooks.com/z-artists-robotcards.html
3) Two days later, you emailed us and asked, “can you please let me know if you have a copy of this book? if not can you let me know who owns it?”
I asked you to clarify if you’re looking for reprint rights to that image and you said, “yes, i would like to have a hi-res of the image from the wind blows free illustrated by mel hunter written by chad oliver. ”
So I gave you contact information for Mel Hunter’s estate. This was on July 24.
4) On the same day, you used our “Contact us” form to say, “i am lookig for a copy of the no72 may 1957 edition of chad olivers
storoy the wind blows free cover by mel hunter. would you have a
copy?”
5) Now you have made this post on our blog and since I still do not understand what you want, I am answering you in public to make a few points:
1) Mel Hunter’s cover does not illustrate Chad Oliver’s story. It does not illustrate any story. It is simply the cover illustration for the July 1957 issue. Requesting Chad Oliver’s story is irrelevant.
2) If you are looking to license the rights to Mel Hunter’s image for that cover, you need to clear those rights with Mr. Hunter’s estate. It is not within our rights to allow you to reprint that image of the robot sitting beside an empty grave, reading the phone book.
3) However, if you are looking to license the rights to use the image of the entire July 1957 cover—including our logo and all type on the cover—then you need to contact us for permission. Is this what you are requesting?
4) We do not have copies of the issues with Mr. Hunter’s art on it available for sale. The only recent one (May 2003) is out of stock. The others are older than any back issues in our warehouse.
5) We DO have copies of OI ROBOT available for sale, and this book reprints the same art as was used on the July 1957 issue. You can see an image of it, and order copies of it, here: http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/backish.htm
If I have not answered your question(s), please explain more clearly what you would like.
Thank you.
Dear Gordon Van Gelder-I was hounded by the same person. She never identified herself and was quite rude and agitated, as she tried to get information about Mel’s Estate and a Robot painting that she said was called ‘The wind blows free.’ I informed her that there were none of the original Robot paintings here and that I could not help her. So far she has not continued. I just thought you might like to know.
Susan Smith-Hunter