Friday 24 May 2013

TOPS IN SCIENCE FICTION, SEPTEMBER (FALL) 1953

Cover artwork by Frank Kelly Freas.

FANTASTIC ADVENTURES, OCTOBER 1952

Cover artwork by Walter Popp.

FANTASTIC ADVENTURES, FEBRUARY 1946

Cover artwork by Walter Parke.

Wednesday 22 May 2013

NATIONAL LAMPOON'S DOON

Grafton paperback, 1985. Cover painting by Bruce Pennington.

"In a very distant galaxy, far, far away, a plot is brewing as vast and elaborate as the Empire itself ... to bottle the wild pools of beer that grow only on Doon, take control of the native pretzel population and turn the plucky little orb into the lounge-bar of the universe! And only one man, the slender-shouldered Pall, can stop the galaxy-wide web of intrigue that is fermenting on the savage, sugar-swept landscape of Doon."

Grafton books, 1985. Rear cover.

"Arruckus - men call it Doon, the Dessert Planet. It is a sugar-covered wasteland entirely devoid of entrees, patrolled by a terrifying species of giant pretzel. This savage world is the setting for an apocalyptic drama. On the one side is the evil Baron Vladimir Hardchargin - ruthless, voracious, extremely fat. Opposing him: young Pall Agamemnides, the teenager who may (or may not) be the Messiah. Pall's only allies are the planet's nomadic tribes, the fiercely religious, sweatsuit-wearing Freedmenmen. These forces clash in a deadly contest over Doon's one precious resource, a substance found nowhere else in the Universe: the mind-altering liquid known as beer..."

THRILLING WONDER STORIES, SPRING 1954

Cover artwork by Walter Popp.

THRILLING WONDER STORIES, FEBRUARY 1953

Cover artwork by Jack Coggins.

THRILLING WONDER STORIES OCTOBER 1948

Cover artwork by Earle Bergey.

Unbelievably, it is by complete accident that these latest posts have been an Earle Bergey cover art marathon, I'm literally grabbing a handful of magazine scans and uploading them. That said, the comedic caption potential on this cover is incredible.

THRILLING WONDER STORIES OCTOBER 1947

Cover artwork by Earle Bergey.

THRILLING WONDER STORIES FEBRUARY 1943

Cover artwork by Earle Bergey.

Monday 13 May 2013

VIRGIL FINLAY

This is a bunch of scans I made a few years ago of artwork by Virgil Finlay from The Visual Encyclopedia Of Science Fiction, but for one reason or another didn't include them in that post.

Interior illustration for Wallace West's Captive Audience, Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1953.

Interior illustration for A. E. van Vogt's Slan,  Fantastic Story Magazine, Summer 1952.

Interior for Atomic by Henry Kuttner, Thrilling Wonder Stories, August 1947.

Illustration for The Time Machine by H. G. Wells, Famous Fantastic Mysteries, 1950.

VISIONS OF THE FUTURE: AN EXCITING AND NOVEL SELECTION OF SCIENCE FICTION ART OF TODAY


It's books like this that make me wish I had an A3 scanner. Actually, I do own one, but it's old (Windows 95/98) and only has a SCSI cable, which I don't think any of my PCs have had since 2005. Anyway... this is a large format paperback book published in 1976 featuring content previously featured either in New English Library's Science Fiction Monthly (an A3 sized poster magazine that run from the mid to late 1970s), or the covers of NEL's line of SF paperbacks. Artists featured include Brent Armstrong, Jim Burns, Gary Chalk, Gareth Colman, Lucinda Cowell, Gordon C. Davies, Roger Dean, Emlyn Duffy, Ray Feibush, Chris Foss, C. Foster, Bob Fowke, Bob Haberfield, David Hardy, G. W. Harrison, Colin Hay, David Higgins, P. Jepson, Josh Kirby, Bob Layzell, Mike Little, Brigid Marlin, Ian Miller, Kristine Nason, Michael Payne, David Pelham, Bruce Pennington, Time White and Chris Yates. There is a little biographical info on each, ranging from a line (date of birth, country) to whole pages. There's also an introduction by A. E. van Vogt.

The back cover, featuring the work of Karel Thole, who is not in the book, unfortunately. 
Rear-cover guff: 
"These imaginative visions of the future have all been culled from the pages of Science Fiction Monthly, Britain's top-selling sf colour magazine. They represent the work of established illustrators like David Pelham, Roger Dean, Bruce Pennington, David Hardy and Chris Yates and also the best of the new sf artists who have been featured over the past two years. Their range of interpretation and expression is quite exceptional - from the mysteriously innocent idylls of Bob Fowke, through the meticulously detailed space hardware of Chris Foss to the bizarre worlds of Ray Feibush. Like all good artists, they challenge us to think twice about our assumptions - whether the world of two hundred (or two million) years from now will be the technological heaven the scientists have promised, or whether it will be a nightmarish landscape in which we and our values have been hopelessly lost to the superiority of other civilizations 'out there'. As A.E. van Vogt says in his introduction, these pictures represent 'a new and remarkable. . .contribution to the slowly shifting balance of the human psyche as it once more tries to confront reality.' Through the airbrush and the photo-collage these artists tell us about ourselves and our place in the universe. At the same time they give us much of the fun of sf it has come down from the world of pulp fiction - bug-eyed monsters, rayguns, gigantic space battleships and fantastic planets. Their approach is wide-ranging and open, as it should be in tackling a world which looms nearer every day."

"Beyond Bedlam" by Jim Burns.

Painting for "Early Asimov 3" by Chris Foss.

Painting (detail) for Hughes Cooper's "Sexmax" by C. Foster.

"Purple Gas" by David Higgins.

"Invasion" (detail) by Bob Layzell.

"The Rat Catcher" by Ian Miller.

Painting (detail) by Bruce Pennington for M. John Harrison's "The Pastel City".

Saturday 11 May 2013

PARALLEL LINES: THE SCIENCE FICTION ILLUSTRATIONS OF PETER ELSON & CHRIS MOORE

This is a 'second pass', after doing some housekeeping I was perplexed as to why in my original post of this book three years ago I only scanned three or four images out of approx. 77. Paralell Lines was published in 1981 by Dragon's Dream and contains a foreword by Roger Dean; most of the included paintings feature space hardware, though there are a few exceptions.
"Hot Sleep" by Chris Moore.

"The Rings Of Saturn" by Peter Elson.

"The Word For World Is Forest" by Peter Elson.

"Far Out" by Chris Moore.

"The Proud Robot" by Chris Moore.

"My Name Is Legion" by Chris Moore.

"Reach For The Stars" by Peter Elson.

"The Naked Sun" by Chris Moore.

"A Heritage Of Stars" by Chris Moore.

"On Darkling Plain" by Chris Moore.

Cover for "The Best Of Isaac Asimov" by Peter Elson.