Despite not always being set in some kind of off-world, futuristic space colony, the aforementioned tropes have been featured so heavily in cover designs they have become synonymous with the oft maligned and much adored genre. With the proliferation of mass market science fiction paperbacks through the decades there was a high demand for visually interesting and imaginative artwork to compliment the story or, more often than not, be even more attention grabbing than the titles. With such a vast amount of published works to choose from we can only discuss a small fragment of the artwork and artists that created some of the most memorable and lasting images.

 

Panther, Asimov, Foss

With publishers often allying themselves with specific artists some covers are indelibly linked with the books, and by extension, the authors who wrote them. Perhaps one of the best examples of this would be the run of Asimov books for Panther by artist Chris Foss. By the 70s Panther had become exclusively a reprint publisher and produced a run of novels with covers by Foss. Specialising in air brushed space scenarios and imaginative, often gargantuan, space craft Foss’s work is instantly recognizable appearing not only on covers and magazines but also as concept art, most interesting with Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky for his sadly ill-fated attempt to adapt Frank Herbert’s Dune for the big screen. His unique style in the covers for the Asimov series served to visually connect the popular works; this was quite literally the case for the covers of Asimov’s ‘Foundation’ trilogy which fit together to form one image from this triptych of covers.

 

 

Ace, Valigursky, Gaughan

For the most part Ace publishing stayed with a particular style; similar to the pulp fiction visuals only with a sci- fi bent. Usually these featured either a hero or the classic damsel in distress as the main focus typified by artists such as Jack Gaughan and Ed Valigursky. Creating over 100 covers for Ace, Valigursky’s depictions of space craft and futuristic scenes tended to follow the sleek metallic formula popularised during the golden age of Hollywood sci- fi. This is typified in Andre Norton’s ‘The Stars Are Ours’ with the traditional figures taking centre stage while the sleek pods hint at some shiny, futuristic misdoings. Gaughan also created a plethora of work in this style but showed a little more flair with a spate of pieces that deviated from this formula. Still concerned with a central figure his covers for ‘The Brains of Earth’ by Jack Vance and the short story release ‘Four for Tomorrow’ by Roger Zelazny seemed to depict much more sinister forces at work and had a more free flowing and experimental design to them.

 

 

Penguin, Aldridge, controversy

Due to the sheer number of publications, reprints and runs, not all of the art work was of a particularly high standard. A large amount were extremely derivative as there could only ever be so many ways to portray particular galactic scenes. To compete and stand out, some publishers and artists went a little off piste and in some cases caused a relative amount of commotion. Famously there was a fall out at Penguin between founder Allen Lane and chief editor Tony Godwin over, amongst other things, the direction the cover art was going. Godwin and art director Alan Aldridge wanted to appeal to a younger audience and to do this released what would be some of the most bizarre and, in my opinion sometimes far too literal, visuals. After a particularly heated disagreement Godwin actually left the company followed not long after by Aldridge, when not only Lane, but several authors became agitated with the direction; some even threatening to jump ship to other publishing houses.These covers in particular seem to split opinion, despite the detractors there was a large fan base for Aldridge’s work particularly during the late 60s when the sci fi run was initially released; his often psychedelic and frankly odd depictions seemed to strike a chord with a certain part of society.

 

 

Collectability

Despite large production numbers of these books there is still a large collectability and the relative cheapness of them make for a great entry point into building a book collection. Being cheap paperbacks, by nature they haven’t got the durability of a hardback or the protection of a dust jacket so whilst many were thrown away others have simply deteriorated badly with time. This makes conditioning and scarcity a big draw. With so many imprints and reissues people often collect a range of covers not only by their favourite artists but the entire gamut of covers for their favourite author and even single titles. So not only do you get some quirky and oftentimes bonkers artwork, you also get some of the most interesting and highly lauded stories speculative fiction has to offer.