I’ve always loved the cover drawing on the July 1941 issue of Cosmic Science Fiction. Mainly, because it seems like an early image of what weightlessness might be like. However, the scan of that magazine has a torn, marked-up cover that’s discolored with age. I wanted to see what a mint condition copy would look like. So, I asked an AI, Gemini, to fix it for me. The results are above.

I then swapped out the new cover for the old in the .cbr file I had of the magazine. When I open that magazine in YACReader, I see the new cover, and it feels like I have a mint copy of the magazine – until I turn the page and see:

That brings me back to reality. I could get Gemini to fix that page, too.

However, is that what I really want? With the original scan of the torn copy, I felt like I was reading a beat-up old magazine. One that looked 85 years old. That was a certain kind of experience. But if I reprocessed the magazine, the reading experience would be different. I would like to think it would feel like I was reading a new copy just off the newsstand. It wouldn’t be true, though.

A perfectly cleaned-up copy would be too clean. It makes reading nicer, but it doesn’t give the sense that I’m holding a copy of a real magazine. The beat-up copy is still a scan, artificial, but it gives the illusion of reading a real magazine.

Some magazine scanners produce something in between an AI copy and a straight scan. Using Photoshop, they process each scanned page, lifting the content off and placing it back on top of a pseudo-paper image that gives the illusion of clean, new paper. They also use Photoshop to fix tears, erase markings, and zest up the colors on the covers. Making these magazine scans very nice to read, the artificial paper gives the illusion of fresh pulp paper and makes reading easier on the eyes. It turns out that a pure white background or a muddy grayscale is hard to read. But I find color scans of old browned pages easy to read, too.

Here are samples of various scanning types:

Black and White scan – producing pure white paper.

Color scan:

Sample with artificial paper:

I wonder what people in the future would like? Do they want a photo image from an old magazine, or would they prefer something easier to read? Recently, I read a story by H. G. Wells in scans of old issues of Pall Mall Magazine from 1898. The reading experience wasn’t great. I wanted to see the real thing, and I bought those issues in a bound volume. (I did this because I got it cheap.) My copy was in pretty good shape, but it did look old. However, the reading experience was far superior to reading the scans. But if I’m honest, if the scan I read had been cleaned up and easy to read, I might never have felt the desire to see the original magazine.

People can buy a replica of the July 1941 issue of Cosmic Science Fiction on Amazon. I see it’s not a perfect copy in the reading sample. I’m tempted to buy one to see what the reading experience is like. I think holding a physical copy, even a replica, would give a much different reading experience.

That makes me think that readers in the future might want a cleaned-up copy suitable for printing. Wouldn’t it be neat to have a machine that printed and bound replicas of books and magazines?

Right now, scanners scan old magazines for the aging population who still love them and want to keep reading them. Most of the world has forgotten these titles. But the scanners are also archiving these magazines for future libraries and researchers. And that makes me wonder what they want.

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I’ve also been playing around with AI, having it make me 4K wallpapers for my computer from old science fiction magazine covers. The problem is that the paintings on the magazine covers are not usually the same aspect ratio as a 16:9 computer screen. I asked Gemini to create a new 4K image and fill out the painting using the same intent and style as the original artist.

Here’s an example:

I think Gemini did a good job, and it makes an impressive wallpaper, but is this fair to Fred Kirberger, the artist? Playing around with AI brings up a lot of issues.

I also used Gemini to sharpen the resolution of this painting by Hannes Bok. It makes a fantastic 4K wallpaper. Maybe I could have done the same thing myself if I had Photoshop skills. Sure, I’d love to own the original painting, but that will never happen. AI is letting me enjoy it every time I see my desktop.

I’m torn about using AI. I’m not sure we should support artificial intelligence. Using AI might make us mentally weaker. I could have reprocessed that cover myself using Photoshop. It would have forced me to learn new skills. Using Gemini is a kind of cheat, don’t you think? Of course, some people think using Photoshop is a cheat.

James Wallace Harris, 4/3/26