The book reviews in "Super Science Stories" were of a higher standard than elsewhere in the field. Historian Paul Carter regards "Astonishing" and "Super Science Stories" as the place where "book reviewing for the first time began to merit the term 'literary criticism, adding "it was in those magazines that the custom began of paying attention to science fiction on the stage and screen also". The artwork was initially amateurish, and although it improved over the years, even the better artists such as Virgil Finlay and Lawrence Stevens continued to produce clichéd depictions of half-dressed women threatened by robots or aliens. H. R. van Dongen, later a prolific cover artist for "Astounding", made his first science fiction art sale to "Super Science Stories" for the cover of the September 1950 issue.