Despite my management blunders, the Society survived and grew rapidly during the early 1970s. In 1973, for example, we added 3,000 more members, giving us a total of 15,000 by the beginning of 1974.
Due to membership growth, our revenues kept increasing, and we always managed to pay our bills, though we were often dangerously late. What kept us going — and growing — were largely the improvements we made in THE FUTURIST. As our Board member Glenn Seaborg had advised, we tried hard to keep up its quality and to improve it as much as we could.
THE FUTURIST had begun regular publication in 1967 as a 16-page newsletter, but by the end of 1968 it had grown to 14 pages plus a glossy cover. At that point, we began calling it a magazine. By December 1970, THE FUTURIST had reached 40 pages plus a cover with a blue border. Until then, it had nothing but black-and-white covers.
In the years that followed, we added more pages, but it was not until October 1975 that THE FUTURIST had a full-color cover — a painting by the eminent artist Robert McCall of a city suspended in outer space. Our volunteer art director, Roy Mason, had persuaded McCall to let us reproduce his stunning painting without charge.
To close the deal I went down to the National Air and Space Museum (which had not yet officially opened) to see McCall. I found him standing on scaffolding while completing the magnificent multistory painting that now greets visitors when they enter the museum. This vision of McCall on the scaffolding reminded me of Michelangelo painting the ceiling of the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel, so when we later did an article about McCall as an excuse for reproducing more of his inspiring work in THE FUTURIST I described him as “the Michelangelo of the Space Age.”