Ed Emshwiller's Four-Armed Santa Claus
For the first decade of Galaxy Science Fiction’s 30-year-run, Ed Emshwiller illustrated a total of eight Christmas-themed issues featuring the same character.
The version of Santa Claus on these 1950s-era covers had an appearance exactly in line with mid-century America's expectations, but for one big difference: He had four arms.
This Claus appears to work and live within an intergalactic environment in which many types of alien and robot lifeforms coexist in chaotic mashed-up melting pot harmony.
In the first cover, Santa is hanging out in a restaurant at the end of the universe with just one other alien species in addition to humans – interestingly, these aliens do have four arms each, which is about the closest anyone comes to appearing to be from the same family tree as Santa in this series.
Note Santa's classic drink of choice, milk, along with a space pipe.
Emshwiller missed the 1952 Christmas cover, so the 1953 marks the first return appearance of four-armed Santa.
He's still relaxing, but this time he's on his space station, enjoying some Christmas carols from a motley crew in a display of interspecies comradery.
Check out that rocket-shaped candle in the wreath and the array of labels inside the door. The oxygen tank to the left has "EMSH" on it – Emshwiller's signature.
We finally get to see Santa on the job next year. Looks like he delivers to Earth, or at least Earth's moon, supplementing his magical reindeer with rockets and spacesuits.
None of the midcentury family members have four arms, so this must be our reality – not sure why the two-armed Santa can't do it. Or has he always had four arms in the Emshwiller universe?
The now-traditional Christmas cover arrives in January of 1956, and this time we're seeing a new side of four-armed Santa: The prep stage. He's sweating, he's doing math, he's drinking coffee out of his rocket-themed kettle.
This cover has the most fun little storytelling details to spot. There's an endless line of computer banks holding data on the kids of the galaxy, grouped by solar system and split into "good" and "bad" sides.
There's a pile of letters on the left, no doubt labelled with the names of Emshwiller's friends, and a bunch of book titles to emphasize the enormity of Santa's workload (which even includes educating himself on intra-galactic manners with Mores of Mars and Behavior Patterns Through the Galaxy.
Emsh reserves his signature for the funniest one, How to Manage Reindeer in Space.
Next, we have the most heartwarming cover. Santa is at an alien mall, spreading holiday cheer.
I don't think it's a coincidence that this scene features the most diverse group of alien parents and kids yet, or that Emshwiller includes a little Black girl with a space belt – this is the January 1957 cover, so it was a just over a year after Rosa Parks began the Montgomery bus boycott, and only two months after the US Supreme Court affirmed Browder v. Gayle to effectively ban segregation on public transportation at the federal level.
Readers would have been following that news all year, which adds crucial context to Emshwiller's choice to feature his Santa celebrating human and intergalactic diversity.
Emshwiller's Santa lore deeps with next year's issue. The appearance of a squid-alien Santa implies that there's a vast league of Santa figures patrolling the unverse like the Green Lantern Corps.
But that's nothing compared to the revelation that Santa and his reindeer not longer require the spacesuits that they were using back in 1954! There's only one explanation: Back when Santa boned up on reindeer management in 1956, he realized their magic will protect them in the vacuum of space.
That, or Emshwiller isn't thinking too hard about continuity.
Next, we skip another year to reach December 1959, where Santa is decorating the tree while a couple mischievous alien kids spy on him. My only question is whether anyone can identify that white and tan contraption towards the upper left – alien fireplace hearth? Cryochamber?
Emshwiller's final Galaxy Christmas cover arrives on December 1960, featuring what I assume is a territory mix-up among the Intergalactic Santa Corps as well as our introduction to Robot Santa.
With that, we bid farewell to the four-armed Santa.
In fact, unless I missed a cover in this comprehensive collection, Galaxy magazine didn't feature any other Christmas themed covers until 1994, when Frank Kelly Freas debuted this one:
Kelly Freas had done the same smug alien in the same pose 40 years earlier, for this Astounding cover.
The big change for his 1994 cover? Four arms.
I can't confirm this, but I expect Kelly Freas is referencing Ed Emshwiller's 1950 Christmas cover run here. You might have two arms everywhere else, but when you show up in a Santa suit on a Galaxy cover, you gotta double that count.
Related Notes
About Bill Griffith - Zippy the Pinhead
Ed Emshwiller was a very interesting guy. One of the facts I found out while researching this post: One of his neighbors in Long Island in the 1950s was Bill Griffith, the kid who grew up to create the comic strip Zippy the Pinhead!
"He didn't point me to cartooning, but he pointed me into art in general and showed me a way of understanding how within one artist, there could exist this pop culture impulse and a fine art impulse."
Emshwiller even gave Bill and his dad cameos on the cover of Science Fiction Stories' September 1957 issue, when he needed a model.
Cold War Santa with Sarah Archer - You're Wrong About
I listened to a ridiculously relevant new episode of the You're Wrong About podcast the day after I drafted this post: It's about how Santa was percieved within the cold war-era US. They even used Emshwiller's 1954 Galaxy cover for their episode cover photo.
Apparently, the futuristic version of Santa was very popular across 50s and 60s – the NORAD Santa tracker debuted in 1955, for example. Emshwiller's background in sci-fi illustration helped him do some of the best sci-fi Santas, but he definitely wasn't alone.
Finally, here's another Santa sci-fi magazine cover this post reminded me of: Heavy Metal's December 1979 cover, by Richard Lon Cohen and Jon Townley.
Here, Santa has automated his reindeer and given his ride the name "ST. NIK" on the side.
Music rec: Christmas Underground's 2025 Christmas Mix
Next Time: 70s Influences in Fantasy Films