Classic Science Fiction Covers

[Extollager]

(My copy is in better condition than this one!)

[Extollager]

It looks like Paperback Library briefly toyed with the idea of a series to rival the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series. This is the only book of which I'm aware that has the centaur (rather than unicorn) design and the "Paperback Library Fantasy Novel" label. Does anyone know of others?

[Extollager]

These are not images of my copies -- but I found nicely-priced copies of my own this summer in a southern Oregon used book store.

[Extollager]

This one just for laughs. The novel is excellent, an eerie Twilight Zone-y thing with mythological elements, but if you didn't know that already you'd hardly guess it from the cover, taken from a British TV miniseries. (Alan Garner has an interesting anecdote about being on the scene for filming and just about going berserk.) I have seen some of the miniseries at YouTube and wasn't all that taken with it...

[Extollager]

I don't seem to run across very many references to Poul Anderson's short novel The Enemy Stars. here published as We Have Fed Our Sea, but it is one of my favorite works of sf. I like being able to read it in these "atmospheric" issues rather than in a paperback with bland recent cover art.

[Extollager]

Got this one (though this is someone else's image) when I was eleven. That would make it one of the first sf books that I ever owned.

[Extollager]

Two books I'd keep even if I had to get rid of almost all of my sf:

[Extollager]

I associate this novel by Lester del Rey with Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions and de Camp and Pratt's Land of Unreason. A modern earthman is plunged into a world of legendary or mythic adventure. I suppose I haven't read this del Rey is decades. Despite the cover, the other world involved is a Norse mythological one. Wait, it's not that the hero goes to the mythic world; it's that mythic events -- Fimbulwinter -- are coming to ours.

My favorite novel about Norse myth material encroaching on our world may be Lars Walker's Wolf Time, which I really urge you to read if you like this sort of thing. For a while, at least, Baen Books made it available as a free read online, if you can't get hold of a copy.

[Extollager]

One of the books I've owned for the longest time -- got it 18 March 1970:

[Extollager]

Just a few more vintage sf pbs from my collection, but the images aren't mine.

[dask]

Well, I'm about as jealous as I can be. Someday when I get lots of time I'll pump a bunch of stuff in here. The cover to DAMNATION ALLEY in post #2 if simply fantastic.

[Vetch]

What a great thread with utterly awesome pics!


This one by Micheal Whelan breathes the old pulp style, I think. I love it very much.



(Here's a bigger version of the picture
http://lcrazzy1.narod.ru/image/fantasy/michael_whelan/michael_whelan__chanurs_homecoming.jpgThis


This one is 'classic style', too.
(Actually not so exciting, but I like it, coz I own it...)





And then the covers by Mark Slawoski. Perhaps not old enough to be called 'classics', but as they have changed the design of M. Banks' books they are now out of print and I miss them:

[Vetch]

...




8)

[Vertigo]

I do really like those older Banks' covers.

Interestingly I saw your cover for the Cordwainer Smith Space Lords and thought I recognised it as the cover of The Rediscovery of Man. Sure enough on Fantastic Fiction they have both books sharing the same cover art. Strange!

One of the nice things about eBooks is that when I have a cover I don't like (I get to see them in full cover in my Calibre ebook mangement software) I can go search for a different cover and, if there are any, replace the cover I don't like.

[Elflock]

Here are some that I like...