A TIME OF CHANGES

Panther paperback, 1975. Cover illustration by Bruce Pennington.

THE CLAW OF THE CONCILATOR

Arrow paperback, 1982. Cover by Bruce Pennington.

Rear cover/synopsis.

THE PASTEL CITY

NEL paperback, 1971. Cover artwork by Bruce Pennington.

Rear cover.

THE TOWERS OF UTOPIA

Bantam books, 1975. Cover by Bruce Pennington.

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..."

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".

THE MASKS OF TIME

Star paperback, 1982 reprint. Cover painting by Bruce Pennington.

"He appeared suddenly and mysteriously, claiming to be a visitor from a thousand years in the future, but his evidence was not entirely convincing. 

Was he merely an ingenious fraud? 

As a popular cult figure the World Government could use him to counter the threat posed by the apocalyptists who were wreaking chaos while preaching the imminent destruction of the world. 

But was Vornan-19 himself an agent of another kind of chaos? 

If he were genuine, then he was living proof that the world would endure after the century's end. 

And could anyone in 1999 afford to ignore that possibility?"

THE MAN IN THE MAZE

Star paperback, 1982 reprint. Cover painting by Bruce Pennington.

"Muller had been sent to spy on the first alien race man had ever encountered. But they discovered him and cursed him with a terrible power that made his presence unbearable to his fellows, theirs to him. 

Now, alienated and embittered, he chooses to live out his life in an abandoned city on a long-dead planet. But men must enter Muller's murderous labyrinth and try to lure him out, for humanity still needs his unique talents."

THE STONE GOD AWAKENS

Granada / Panther SF paperback, 1979 reprint. Cover painting by
Bruce Pennington.

"MILLIONS OF YEARS AFTER MAN'S EXTINCTION - ONE MAN SURVIVES... 

Ulysses Singing Bear was a scientist back in 1985. But an experiment with matter molecules backfired - and he became 'petrified'. Millions of years later he 'awakens'. But the world has changed - drastically - and he finds he is worshipped as a god by people no longer human. Hoping to find a human female with whom to start his race again, he sets out. But there is an obstacle - The Tree, Wurutana arch enemy of the Stone God's people, the mightiest tree ever known, whose branches touch the heavens and whose roots clasp hell. Ullyssses-turned-god must conquer The Tree and the weird race it shelters, move heaven and hell - no easy task, even for a god..."

NULL-A THREE

Sphere SF paperback, 1985 reprint. Cover painting by
Bruce Pennington.

"WORLDS IN CRISIS 

Whoever it was that the Dzan had discovered in a space capsule floating perilously close to their battle fleet, it was certainly no ordinary mortal. 

It wasn't just that this Gosseyn - as he called himself - had apparently come from another galaxy. Nor that he'd been awoken from an ages-long state of suspended animation by their sudden intervention. 

What troubled the Dzan most was that Gosseyn was - by his own admission - the reincarnation of another human being, one who not only seemed to share the same brain as Gosseyn, but was clearly still very much alive. Once they'd accepted the existence of Gosseyn and his alter ego, they realised that here somehow might be the weapon they needed in their struggle with the alien Troogs - or the cause of their own imminent destruction..."

GOD EMPEROR OF DUNE

NEL paperback, reprint, May 1984. Illustration: Bruce Pennignton.

"More than three thousand years have passed since the events recorded in Dune and its sequels. Arrakis, once a barren desert planet, is now a green and hospitable world. Gone are the giant sandworms that once roamed its surface. 

One link only survives between the present and the epic past. Leto Atreides, grotesque son of the prophet Paul-Muad'Dib, virtualyl immortal and God Emperor of the galaxy. In the far past of his childhood his symbiosis with the larval sandworms had brought about his slow metamorphosis into a strange creature, huge and recognisably human only in face and arms. 

Tyrannical and secure through his control of the spice melange supplies that confer longevity, he is a ruler with a purpose. Understanding the future he knows that  the evolution of his race is at an end unless he can breed new qualities into the species. He knows also that these vital abilities will only prove their viability by the process of his own destruction."

THE PAWNS OF NULL-A

Sphere paperback, 1974 reprint. Cover painting by
Bruce Pennington.

"What was the follower? 

Gosseyn knew the creature threatened to destroy whole solar systems but not even his Null-A trained double brain could thwart the Follower's plans. Then he found himself face to face with a force that lay at the very roots of human intelligence.... 

And fighting an insane mind that had once controlled his body."

COMIC INFERNO

1973 NEL Paperback. Artwork by Bruce Pennington.

"A time when robots and romen carry out the tasks. A time when man gets along with man. In the skies float the R.S.P.C.R. men - Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Robots - and there seems to be little that can disturb the calm of 22nd Century man. That is, until a strange manuscript finds its way onto Birdlip's the publisher's desk. 

Javlin is preparing for his bout in the arena. He is in a strange world of insect captors, watching the Games for their amusement. And he does not know that his partner against the dreaded yillibeeths is to be - a woman. 

These are just two of the creations from the intergalactic pen of Brian Aldiss. They are always fresh, always amusing and always the best."

Contains Comic Inferno, The Under-Privileged, Cardiac Arrest, In The Arena, All The World's Tears, Amen And Out, The Soft Predicament, As For Our Fatal Continuity and Send Her Victorious.

THE INTERPRETER

NEL paperback, 1975. Artwork by Bruce Pennington

"The time is a distant, infinite future. The place is Earth - a minor planet in a universe enslaved by an alien race. A charge of corruption in their tyrannical regime leads to a threat of human rebellion. For Gary Towler, chief interpreter to the aliens, the situation is desperate. After eons of servitude, he has one chance to free Earth."

My third copy of The Interpreter, I must be collecting them unwittingly - the edition I really want has a Josh Kirby painting on the cover. In the USA The Interpreter was published as Bow Down To Nul, a particular Ace Double edition has a fantastic Emsh painting on the cover.

INDOCTRINAIRE

NEL paperback, 1973 reprint. Cover artwork by Bruce Pennington.

"In the very depths of the densest jungle in Brazil, there exists a circular plain of stubble. A perfect circle. 

This is the Panalto district, and no man has ever come out of it alive. Elias Wentik might, perhaps, be the exception. He finds himself imprisoned in the very centre of the plain, subject to humiliation and bizarre sessions of interrogation. And this visit, so completely contemporary in its paranoid vision of strangeness, has revealed to him the incredible secret of the Panalto. It exists two hundred years in the future."

THE DUNE ENCYCLOPEDIA

Corgi edition, 1984 (paperback), cover painting by Bruce Pennington.

"EIGHT YEARS IN THE MAKING, THE WORLD OF PAINSTAKING SCOLARSHIP AND RESEARCH, CONTAINING THOUSANDS OF ENTRIES AND CROSS-REFERENCES... 

Futurist, journalist, bestselling author, world-maker Frank Herbert's magnificent future history, The Dune Chronicles, has proven itself the most popular and enduring work of speculative fiction of our age - not only for the grandeur of its epic sweep, but for the complexity and intricacy of its world. Now, for the first time, Dune is revealed in panoramic detail - the people, the desert planet, the ecology, the history, the entire universe of the visionary masterpiece! 

The legendary history of Paul Atreides, the Kwisatz Haderach 

Salusa Secondus: the prison planet 

Fremen Desert survival techniques 

Duncan Idao (10158 - 10191): Swordmaster of the Ginaz 

A complete guide to the heraldry of the major house of Harkonnen 

"How Muad'Dib got his name": a folktale from the Oral history 

The Dune tarot; or the Golden Path 

the assassin's handbook: a complete guide to professional Chaumurky 

THE AUTHORIZED GUIDE AND COMPANION TO DUNE! ORIGINAL, NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED MATERIAL!"

SPACE, TIME AND NATHANIEL

NEL paperback, 1971. Cover painting by Bruce Pennington.

"SPACE: T - the inhabitant of a machine that was built by an ancient race of non-humans - had just one duty, to totally destroy a planet from our solar system! 

TIME: Every day, Rodney Furnell awoke to a groaning bedspring. Every day he leaned over and gently kissed his wife's forehead. Every day an audience laughed at him! 

NATHANIEL: He is told a story about the ultimate bureaucrat. A man who brings prosperity to a backward world just by filling in forms and filing reports. 

In these, and eleven other stories, Britain's leading writer of science fiction explores the outer vastness of space and the inner obscurity of man." 

 Contents:

T
Our Kind Of Knowledge
Psyclops
Conviction
Not For An Age
The Shubshub Race
Criminal Record
The Failed Men
Supercity
There Is A Tide
Pogsmith
Outside
Panel Game
Dumb Show

CHILDREN OF DUNE

NEL paperback, March 1978. Cover painting by
Bruce Pennington.

"Frank Herbert's Dune, winner of both the Hugo and Nebula awards, was one of the most famous and widely read science fiction novels ever written. It was followed by the equally acclaimed Dune Messiah and now, with Children of Dune, comes the magnificent finale to this epic series. 

Old Paul Atreides, who led the Fremen to domination of the human galaxy, is gone now, and arrakis itself is slowly changing; ecological change has brought vast areas of greenery and even open water to the desert planet. But all is not well; the altered climate is threatening extinction to the sandworms which are essential to the planet's economy, and the rule of the Atreides family is being challenged by fanatics and their worst enemy, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. 

These are problems potentially far more deadly than any Paul had had to contend with. How the Children of Dune faced up to them creates an impressive climax to one of science fiction's greatest achievements."

THE FLIGHTS OF ICARUS

Paper Tiger hardcover, 1977. Cover painting by Roger Dean.

The Einstein Intersection by Peter Elson.

The Ship That Sang by Angus McKie.

Before The Golden Age by Tony Roberts.

Untitled, painting by Angus McKie.

The Alien Way by Bruce Pennington.

The Princess Of Mars by Bruce Pennington.

DUNE MESSIAH

NEL paperback, August 1982 reprint. Cover painting by
Bruce Pennington.

"A holy war has made Paul Atreides the religious and political leader of a thousand planets. The malign sisterhood of the Bene Gesserit, unable to dominate the man they have made a god, set out to destroy him. 

Paul, who is able to foresee the plans of his enemies, resolves to adapt and shape them to a goal that is as shocking as it is unexpected. 

Dune Messiah - long-awaited successor to double award winner Dune - is an epic of imperial intrigue that spans the universe, rich and strange in its evocation of the history, institutions and people of a far future age."