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From: Tony Nance <tnusenet17@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: [Revisit] SF Stories written for paintings
Date: Mon, 29 Jul 2024 10:13:30 -0400
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There was a somewhat recent question (thread?) here asking about SF 
stories written for already-existing paintings. Last night, I ran across 
a reference to such a story.

I’m slowly progressing through the Poul Anderson collection “Kinship 
with the Stars”. Poul gives a neat little introduction to each story, 
and one of the intros[1] says the following:

“Often in the old pulp days, an artist who had nothing else to do at the 
moment would turn out a painting, which he would then sell to a magazine 
editor for use as a cover. The editor would thereupon find a writer to 
produce a story incorporating the scene. Occasionally  the whole thing 
was so preposterous that just explaining it away generated a plot. 
However, the premise did not necessarily lead to bad work. In fact, the 
first story of mine to win a Hugo Award had such an origin.
…”

Digging around, it seems he is referring to “The Longest Voyage”, and I 
would (slightly less-confidently) guess the painting/cover is seen at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Longest_Voyage

Tony
[1] The intro for the story “The Critique of Impure Reason”.[2]
[2] Note that “The Critique … ” is not such a story, though it’s 
adjacent, since Poul goes on to say:
“At another time, being in a mood to write something short but without 
an idea that caught my fancy, I said to my wife “Tell me a cover”. She 
thought for a moment and replied “A man sitting at a desk, worked to 
death, while a robot lounges beside him smelling a rose”. Ah, ha!”[3]
[3] So his story “The Critique of Impure Reason” was written for an 
imaginary painting described by his wife.