Brian Earl Brown used to have on his Web site a page devoted to “Earle Bergey and the Wonderful Brass Bra,” with several examples of science-fiction pulp covers by Bergey.
Bergey specialized in painting gorgeous space girls (barely) clad in boots, briefs and, as Brian described them, brass brassieres — apparently the standard outfit for spacefaring females in the ’40s and ’50s.
The first pulp cover in his Bergey gallery was the September 1948 number of Startling Stories, which featured “What Mad Universe” by Fredric Brown. (Click the image at left to see a larger version of Bergey’s cover.)
Well into that story, Fredric Brown addresses the issue of the “brass bra” outfit:
Betty said, “Come in, K-Keith Winton.”
He didn’t even notice at first that she’d called him by his right name. She still wore the costume she’d worn at her desk that morning at the Borden offices. Yes, there were green trunks to go with the green bra. They were very brief trunks, very well shaped. Green leather boots came halfway up shapely calves. Between the boots and the trunks, the bare golden flesh of dimpled knees and rounded thighs.
She stepped back and, scarcely daring to breathe, Keith went into the room. He closed the door behind him and stood leaning against it, staring at Betty, not quite believing.
The room was dim, the shades already pulled down. The light came from a pair of candles in a candelabrum on the table behind Betty. Her face was shadowed, but the soft light behind her made a golden aura of her blond hair and silhouetted her slim, beautiful body. An artist could not have posed her better.
Then about a page later, Fredric Brown picks up the topic again with Keith speaking to Betty:
“I can’t seem to believe in anything here, really, except – No, I don’t even believe in you – in that costume. What is it? Do you wear it all the time?”
“Of course.”
“Why? I mean, other women here –”
She looked at him in bewilderment. “Not all of them, of course. Only a very few in fact. Only the space girls.”
“Space girls?”
“Of course. Girls who work, or have worked, on spaceships. Or ones who are fiancees of space men. Being Dopelle’s fiancee would entitle me to wear it, even if I hadn’t done exploring in space, on leaves of absence from Borden.”
“But why?’ He floundered. ”I mean, is it so hot in a spaceship that such an – an abbreviated costume is necessary? Or what?”
“I don’t know what you mean. Of course it isn’t hot in spaceships. Mostly we wear heated plastic coveralls.”
“Transparent plastic?”
“Naturally. Mr. Winton, what are you getting at?”
He ran a hand through his hair. “I wish I knew. The costumes. Transparent plastic – Like the covers on Surprising Stories.”
“Why, of course. Why would cover pictures like that be put on Surprising Stories unless we really wore such costumes?”
He tried to think of an answer to that; there wasn’t any.
I just finished reading “What Mad Universe” and highly recommend it for pulp fans. Not only is it a fun — and sometimes funny — read, the main character is an editor at a pulp magazine company, so you get a bit of an inside look at the pulp business in the 1940s.
– William
This is one of the first pulps that I ever owned and I’ve read the novel several times. Laurie Powers on her website Laurie’s Wild West, has a series called My Favorite Pulps and this issue was one of my choices. I once had the chance to buy two Bergey paintings from Gerry de la Ree but we couldn’t complete the deal.
One must remember that I am pretty sure that Fred Brown had his tongue firmly in cheek when he wrote those descriptions of Betty. I always felt that the Bergey covers were to attract the adolescent male.
I love those covers but feel they give Startling and Thrilling Wonder from that time a bad rap as the stories contained in those issues contained some pretty fine writing by Arthur C. Clarke, Henry Kuttner, Edmond Hamilton (with one of my all time favorites “City at World’s End”), Ray Bradbury, Philip Jose Farmer, Poul Anderson, Fred Brown and so many more. I really feel the stories hold up a lot better than many in Astounding in the same time period. I am a big Fan of Astounding but have never quite forgiven John W. Campbell for getting the whole Dianetics ball rolling.
It’s very clear that Fredric Brown is poking fun at the whole “space girls” and Bug-Eyed Monsters pulp cover thing. In the alternative universe that the lead character finds himself in, all of the cover girls and BEMs are even more beautiful and horrible than on the real-universe covers. And the alternate-universe science fiction pulps aren’t considered science fiction but “adventure” pulps since space girls and BEMs actually exist there.
I think the story holds up very well 60 years later, just as you say, better than others.