Sunday, 29 August 2010

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.
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9 comments:

  1. Bill29 August 2010 at 20:06

    Wow, that is some great art. I can recognize Roger Dean but so many of the other names are new to me.

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  2. Unknown29 August 2010 at 21:35

    Yeah it's a great book, huge and hard to find without spending a small fortune - I think the majority of the artwork was done by young British artists who were big on the paperback covers over here in the 1970s and 1980s.

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  3. Egrove29 August 2010 at 22:03

    Again very cool! Your recent posts highlight two things:

    a) There was so much talent around in the '70s in the UK, I've said it before - it was a Golden Age.

    b) For some bizzare reason (mainly the advent of Paper Tiger, but also oddities such as the TTA books etc, the 70's and early 80s SF/Fantastic illustration scene in the UK is probably the best documented era and region of SF/Fantasy illustration ever. There was never anything comparable in the US.

    I don't suppose you really want to hear it, but I have to have some forum for bragging rights. I have the original of Before the Golden Age vol. 3 by Tony Roberts. Have always loved it, - I don't know why but I always get a very Zen feel from it.

    Ed

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  4. Egrove29 August 2010 at 22:08

    Sorry, correction, the scanned cover and the Tony Roberts artwork I have have is "Before the Golden Age vol 2". I do also have "Before the Golden Age vol. 3", - but from a differen published version with the Colin Hay artwork.
    Ed

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  5. Unknown30 August 2010 at 15:15

    I think so too, UK artists from that era define SF for me, thanks in no small part to the NEL paperbacks of my dad's - I think Bruce Pennington was the first SF artist I was aware of. The only documented art from the US side of things that I can think of is in Brian Aldiss' Science Fiction Art book (published by NEL in the late 70s).

    Haha, keep the 'bragging' up, it's dead interesting and there's no jealousy here, I'm still satisfied with cheap prints and posters ;)

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  6. Wayne Haag25 October 2011 at 05:27

    Agreed.. The UK sf art was/still is the best. It was a unique era for the genre and the reason I became an artist.

    I am very thankful for the existence of Paper Tiger and the TTA series of books.

    Ahh.. the good ol' days!

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  7. Anonymous17 January 2012 at 02:37

    Thanks for this blast from the past!

    Those Scifi paintings had so much pathos ---so much ambiance.

    The iconic aesthetics of those un-precedented modern paintings always created a Mood/setting/sentiment/emotions that were never caught and presented before . . . that have not been outdone by modern contemporaries. It's the same with Rock and Roll too of that epoch.

    Cheers,
    Bhaktajan

    Thos were

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  8. Lee24 January 2012 at 10:22

    2 of these paintings are in "Spacecraft, 2000-2100A.D." So which came first, these covers or that book?

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  9. Unknown24 January 2012 at 12:01

    @Lee:
    That's a Terran Trade Authority book, right? I think that dates from 1978, Flights Of Icarus (my copy at least) dates from 1977.
    Around the late 1970s lots of paintings were published numerous times in different books, most appeared firstly as paperback covers, though some were artists portfolio pieces.

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