A Sci-Fi Book Cover Bonanza!

Attention, 21st Century Earthlings! This is Captain Blastoff, coming to you from the Galaxy Gallery in the future, talking about a great popular art form of the past: Cheap Science Fiction Book Covers!

Space Cadets: Ten-hut! ATTENTION! It’s become clear to me that not all of you junior astro-art aficionados have heeded the advice I gave in the last transmission. Some of you have yet to blast off for that treasure trove of timeless visuals that make up the Flikr Photostream of Hang Fire Books’ Pulp Fiction Cover Gallery!

So just to give you a small sample of the screwball sci-fi you’ll find on Flikr, here, presented with a minimum of my usual mutterings. is a mini-gallery of covers for you to whet you’re appetite with, before you visit Hang Fire‘s massive vault of visuals.

No, sadly, I haven’t read all of these books. It’s good to know there is someone out there in the ether, even more spaced out than your good Captain on this mind altering art. If he’s truly read all of the barmy books he has collected the crazy covers to, well, he deserves a special Captain Blastoff medal and decoder ring, for sure! When you drop by, tell him all of us on the Mystic Moonbase know he’ll have a great future. Hang in there, Hang Fire!

This has been Captain Blastoff, ending transmission.

The Arrival of Alien Abstract Art

Attention, Earthlings! This is Captain Blastoff, coming to you from the Galaxy Gallery in the future, talking about a great popular art form of the past: Cheap Science Fiction Paperback Book Covers!

This transmission I present TWO short story collections by, easily, one of the greatest Sci-Fi fantasizers alive today, :Frederick Pohl Turn Left at Thursday, Ballantine, 1961 and The Abominal Earthman, Ballantine, 1963.

You aren’t going to hear my cosmic prattle about the wonderful, surprising, intelligent and often funny 14 stories in these two volumes, Space Cadets. Pohl is pretty nearly always interesting reading and these books are well worth your time. (I’d also like to recommend his entertaining blog.)

Is that an origami space ship at top? And is the pierced eye on the monitor screen a reference to Dali's famous scene in "An Andalusian Dog?"

No, I’m not reviewing the stories this time because my original mission here is to present Sci-Fi BOOK COVERS! And I’m particularly fascinated by the use of abstraction in these two book covers.

Now, a lot of Space Cadets think that Abstract Art means art without a subject matter; Say, just color and shapes. But that is the definition of Non-Representational Art, NOT Abstract Art.

Okay, I see the spaceships and the aliens...but what in the galaxy is that bodacious blob thang they are staring at?

Here’s my own definition: Abstract Art is when the creator abstracts the form of the physical world to represent an aspect of the subject matter in a manner that is somewhat independent of what we see with our human eyes. For instance, you can tell that there is mountains, a spaceship and some sort of TV or monitor screen on the cover of Turn Left…, but they don’t look “realistic.”

We could get into a discussion of what is “real” in Realistic Art, but I don’t want to digress. Rather, I’d like to curate an on-line exhibit in this transmission, juxtaposing these wonderful, and, sadly, uncredited, abstract book illustrations with a couple of paintings by one of my favorite “art history class” fine artists, Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky. (You can see why he’s mostly just referred to by his last name only!)

No, it's not "Space, the final frontier." It's "Some Circles," 1926. (But I suggest a title change!)

No it's not Spacely Sprockets, George Jetson's work place! It's The Great Gate of Kiev, way back in 1928!

You tell me if you think these two famous abstract works wouldn’t work just as well for Sci-Fi books? Of course, just to be fair, we also need to remember that Kandinsky created his abstractions a good deal sooner than the early 60s publication dates of the Pohl paperbacks…

Still, I hope to show that the art on these “pulp, throw-away” book-treasures ARE worthy of serious consideration and should have been better credited and preserved. I hope, in my small way, to help remedy that…

This has been Captain Blastoff, ending transmission.

Extra: I’m including the Galaxy tabloid printing of the “Pingot” cover from a story also printed in Turn Left, just because I dig robots. And I’d like to thank Hang Fire Book’s Photostream for Turn Left at Thursday‘s reprint version book cover. I include it here as it is also interesting and unusual as it is a collage work cover. If you haven’t discovered Hang Fire Books and love book cover art, I highly recommend you visit that site!

How robots get ahead...by getting a head...

A cosmic collage for a consistently cool creator...

Outer Space Indian Hats on the Up and Up

The Off-World, Winged Wonder! As in, we WONDER what the artist was thinkin' when he painted that hat!?

A newer version without the hat. Not nearly as much fun. Still the juxtaposition of the Indian visage with rocket ships is, in itself, interesting.

That's one city that's really on the move! You could say things are looking UP for them...

The first printing of the story. An equally interesting cover, in my opinion...

Attention, Earthlings! This is Captain Blastoff, coming to you from the Galaxy Gallery in the future, talking about a great popular art form of the past: Cheap Science Fiction Book Covers!

I used to have the “Ace Single” version of The Souix Spaceman by Andre Norton, in the 70s and I was happy to find and read it again, especially since I happened to unearth it in the form of another Ace Double Book treasure with a cover by Ed Valigursky.

Ms. Norton is high in my pantheon of classic Sci-Fi writers. She often champions the causes of tribal cultures. From what I understand she’s got a bit of Native American in her. We are so lucky that she born when she was and wrote wonderful fiction like this tale instead of being in the casino business…

My only disappointment is that Astro-Indian Kade Whitehawk only wore the red tunic you see on the cover, in the book. No mention was made of that really eye-catching, Hawkman style bird hat! I can envision a great scene where an evil alien Styor jumps him from behind, only to have his eyes poked by the stiff primaries feathers of those prominent wings! REALLY “eye-catching!” A funky, feathered fashion statement that serves to protect ones’ back! But be careful about turning suddenly in close quarters; You could poke a hole behind you, in the wall of your space-teepee!

“Side B” of my fabulous flip book had And the Town Took Off by Richard Wilson, who won and/or was nominated for a few Nebula Awards back in the day. Wow, a whole town floatin’ ’round! This beats Up, huh? It’s also got the cold war, a mayor who proclaims himself king and outer space kangaroos who have tried Australia but settled on levitating Superior, Wisconsin…

A town in Wisconsin? I really think they should have picked a burg in oHIo. Get it? Get it?

This has been Captain Blastoff, ending transmission.

The Arrival of Alien Assemblage Art!

Strings, paper and holes in my head?

Picasso wasn't quite accomplished enough to do Cheap Sci-Fi covers.

Gotta look close to see the sparkly space faces!

This Hard Cover version is my 2nd favorite cover; Captures the personalities of the lil' pugnacious Pucas.

Not sure what this one has to do with the story. Anyone know what part of space we are in here?

Attention, Earthlings! This is Captain Blastoff, coming to you from the Galaxy Gallery in the future, talking about a great popular art form of the past: Cheap Science Fiction Book Covers!

This transmission I present The Reefs of Earth, R.A.Lafferty, 1968 Berkeley Medallion.

This is one weird…different…STRANGE book about six Puca (alien) children (seven, if you count Bad John) in the late American West. They are (possibly) part of a space race that is a legend among the Indians. The extraterrestrial little ones make things happen by making rhymes and the town folk better beware…But I don’t think it’s a horror book. And I don’t think it’s a humor book. And, uh, it’s not even exactly a sci-fi book…

When I looked this book up on-line, other reviewers had written “is my favorite SF&F book ever found in 43 years of reading,” “a hidden masterpiece,” and “aliens from another planet with ‘Addams Family‘ tastes” in their descriptions of this story. Someone is even starting a Facebook Community Page about it. And the prices on used copies seem much higher than average, which makes me especially happy that I bought it for a mere 25¢ and in darn good condition, making it still a CHEAP Sci-Fi Book Cover for us to peruse.

Or should I say “coverS?” Because I also found numerous covers on the web, which means it must’ve been reprinted quite a few times. Another sign of it’s cult status? I do like some of the other covers fairly well, but I still like the one I’ve got best. (At top.)

For you that are unfamiliar with the terms, assemblage is the use of objects put together to make art. (I’ve included Still Life with Chair Caning, 1912, by Picasso for comparison.) It’s rare you see a collage/assemblage cover on a Sci-Fi book, especially this early, but hey! It was ’68; It was time for a lot of new things. (Come to think of it, I wonder if the kids are metaphorical hippies, as seen by conservative America?)

Anyway, it’s an unusual cover for an unusual time for an unusual story and I liked it unusually well. So I’ll just close with one of the Bagarthach verses by the brats from beyond:

“The engine spattered him like tar,

And broke his bones and burst his belly.

We gathered Jimmy in a jar.

Hey! Pass the Silly Jimmy Jelly!”

(What can I say after that?) This has been Captain Blastoff, ending transmission.

Extra: If you like Alien Assemblage Art, make like a hippie and groove on this Alien Folk-Pop…man.

They imagined a great future back then…

Solar City: Big fun under the sun!

Chicks dig a cool, convertible boat-car!

"One of these days, Alice...Pow! Right to the MOON!"

This train's in a tunnel under the sea! But, better than that: It's got ginchy fins!

Attention, Earthlings! This is Captain Blastoff, coming to you from the Galaxy Gallery in the future.

In this transmission, Sci-Fi from a different source than usual: The images are from a Japanese artist known as Shigeru Komatsuzaki, an artist who has a number of images online, but there seems to be very little information about him. The reason I picked these images was because they represent, so well, the dream of a society working together to advance themselves.

A few days ago, I was talking with an artist friend, Karine Swenson, who traversed space/time to come to the Mystic Moon Base and view my Galaxy Gallery art acquisitions by another artist, Rik Livingston, who posts this blog from my transmissions.

She happened to mention that I had a lot of retro looking art and, without thinking about it, I said, “Yeah, I like the vintage stuff. They imagined a great future back then.”

After she left, I realized what I had said: I like the vision of the future more from images created in past decades than the ones created in your early 21st century. In the period that is “now” for you, when I walk past a shelf with sci-fi (or any!) DVD rentals, the color scheme is over whelmingly a distressed dark blue, gray and black with splats of red. You don’t have to be a color psychologist to realize this represents depression and violence.

In your present, no one can seem to imagine a future will be brightly colored. Well, except for a few, very political people in the Bible Belt and they only believe Earth will be happy after it’s practically destroyed. (I don’t want to turn this into a religious discussion, but, since I live in the future, I’ll just drop the hint that there is more ways to translate that last book of the Bible than what the televangelists tell you and that, if you believe in something enough it will come true; It will be a self-fulfilling prophecy!)

Creative thinking seems in short supply. For the first time, research shows that American creativity is declining. If you’re just doing what you are told, without even questioning, or looking into other ways of thinking for verification, are you really even living? I will keep bringing you more past visions of the future, in the hopes that they will nudge your imagination and free YOU to think for yourself and create your OWN dreams in the future!

So, this has been Captain Blastoff , with renewed purpose now, ending transmission! Keep looking ahead and “Keep Looking UP!”

Next transmission: Back to those crazy paperback covers!

Extra: Check out another WordPresser with equally imaginative, but different, Komatsuzaki jpgs

Mighty Merlin and the Toothy Bat

Verily, 'twas a super scientifically sorcerous saga!

Attention, Earthlings! This is Captain Blastoff, coming to you from the Galaxy Gallery in the future, talking about a great popular art form of the past: Cheap Science Fiction Book Covers!

This transmission I present TWO covers from the cheap paperbacks of the Grande Dame of Science Fiction and Fantasy, Andre Norton, née Alice Mary Norton:

I transmit my analysis of these paperback art treasures to Rik Verlin Livingston who posts them on the internet. Recently, one of his own artworks, Merlin at Home, was picked as Moderator’s Choice at that fine SF/Fantasy art site, Elfwood. To celebrate, I first peruse Merlin’s Mirror, Daw 1975.

I wish my copy of the wonderful cover art by Jack Gaughan didn’t have slight bends on it. Oh well, an aged look is appropriate to this subject matter, or, maybe, just pretend they are stray wisps of white, eldritch energy? I really like the way Gaughan’s composition flows. It’s simplicity has a medieval quality that I enjoy much more than mere realism. Oh yes, and that’s one fierce dragon; Just look at it’s face.

The story is equally enjoyable, bringing secret, sci-fi elements to this unique retelling of the Arthurian legend. I recommend it.

Our second cover comes from Eye of the Monster, Ace 1962

Cover artist uncredited. This is another one where the monster on the cover doesn’t match the description inside – something that happens quite a bit in this art form – but, hey! it’s a good toothy, giant bat, anyway . The story’s got cat-people and croc-people and it’s a real page turner, with little characterization but lots of action, monsters and “bounding” land rover vehicles in a jungle-world setting!

This has been Captain Blastoff, ending transmission.

This jungle will drive ya' BATTY, blast it!

Perplexed Poul’s Paradises Lost

Beware the subliminal RED SCARY FACE!

Attention, Earthlings! This is Captain Blastoff, coming to you from the Galaxy Gallery in the future, talking about a great popular art form of the past: Cheap Science Fiction Paperback Book Covers!

This transmission I present TWO covers from Golden Age great, Poul Anderson‘s cheap paperbacks:

First, Let the Spacemen Beware! (Backside: The Wizard of Starship Poseidon by Kenneth Bulmer), Ace Double Book 1963

Spacemen land on a world that seems like Shangri-La but turns out to be more of a Forbidden Planet. It would have been a much better read if the surprise wasn’t given away by the title and cover blurb. The uncredited (as usual) cover illustration is much more subtle and appropriate with the almost subliminal red scary face and blue architecture in the background.

I also find it interesting that this tale is somewhat metaphorical of Poul’s own sad, gradual disheartening, over the course of his life, from his early, progressive inclinations. An entertaining planet to visit, none-the-less.

Plastic Man in a Day-Glo Pith Helmet??

My second pick, and favorite of the two covers, is No World of Their Own, Ace 1955

The title font was pretty standard and they didn’t even bother using caps in the second line, but ya’ gotta love the uncredited artist who represented faster-than-light travel as a stretchy space face!

There’s also a Saturn thrown in there, too, ’cause heck! it’s a symbol of sci-fi, I guess, since Saturn isn’t relevant in the story. The funny, little “United States Department of Astronautics“ memo at bottom was added, probably, for much the same reason, as the future described has Earth past the nation-state phase, though things aren’t exactly Shangri-La in this story either. Both books have heroes that represent the best of mankind’s aspirations, even if Poul, himself, is beginning to lose faith in man’s true nature.

This has been Captain Blastoff. “Keep Looking Up!”

Extra: Did James Cameron Rip Off Poul Anderson’s Novella?

Pleasantly Pedaling ‘Round the Red Planet

He went all the way to Mars to ride his hip space-trike.

Attention, Earthlings! This is Captain Blastoff, coming to you from a gallery in the future, talking about the great popular art form of the past: Cheap Science Fiction Paperback Book Covers!

This transmission I present: First on Mars (No Man Friday), Ace, 1957 by Rex Gordon (Stanley Bennett Hough) UK (1917 – ) aka S. B. Hough

The writer liked to create “firsts.” He also wrote First to the Stars and First Through Time.

I like biking, so I bought this book mostly because of the interesting pedal contraption on this great cover. Sure, I love rockets, saucers and time machines, but how often can you buy a piece of art with a great space tricycle??

The cover artist is uncredited and unsigned, unfortunately, but he/she must’ve read the story as there are a lot of details that are shown that are really in the story. I’m all for artistic license but it always impresses me when you can tell the artist cared enough to accurately represent the author’s concepts.

The story starts out a real nuts and bolts, hard science story, explaining in detail how Gordon Holder was the last survivor of a  rocket ship crew that crashed on our red neighbor and how he used science to survive there. But then it gets even more unusual as philosophical aliens, who communicate by generating colored light patterns, are introduced, moving the whole scenario into Eckhart Tolle territory.

This has been Captain Blastoff, ending transmission.

The Useless Junk that Took Over the World!

Think outside the box - especially these boxes!

Attention, Earthlings! This is Captain Blastoff, coming to you from a gallery in the future, talking about the great popular art form of the past: Cheap Science Fiction Paperback Book Covers!

This transmission I present: Mechasm (previously The Reproductive System) by John T. Sladek, Ace 1968

Isn’t this simply great cover art by Leo and Diane Dillon? It’s simple and it’s great. Definitely not the usual, slick, computer airbrushed, “realistic,” illustrations I see on most of you Earthlings’ Sci-Fi/Fantasy book covers here in the early 21st century! Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with those; I guess it’s just the sameness of them all that bothers me.

The back cover blurb mentions Kurt Vonnegut, and this book is very Vonnegut-like; A social satire. The Mechasm is/are boxes that feed on energy and eat all metal to make copies of themselves, enslaving humans to it’s service – even those that thought they were it’s masters. And remember, this was written before the age of the home computer!

Today we know the real “Mechasm” is even more insidious than John T. Sladek thought it was back in 1968. Here’s a good update to this terror tale: The Story of Stuff. Watch it and you’ll doubly appreciate the hipness of cheap, USED books!

This has been Captain Blastoff, ending transmission.

Alien-Jelly Body Hoppers!

"I'm full of space amoeba tentacles!"

Attention, Earthlings! This is Captain Blastoff, coming to you from a gallery in the future, talking about the great popular art form of the past: Cheap Science Fiction Paperback Book Covers!

This posting I present: From Outer Space (previously The Needle) by Hal Clement, Avon 1950

Cover artist uncredited. (boo!) But the art tells the story well:

Two rockets crash in the ocean near an island. From one comes a detective amoeba from outer space who takes up residence inside a boy by sending tentacles throughout his body. Why? Because he’s chasing a criminal amoeba from outer space who is hiding in some other earthling, of course!

A lot of the fun comes from two life forms sharing the same body. For instance, “Hunter,” the detective amoeba, gets rid of other animals in the boy’s body, like viruses and germs. I guess it wouldn’t be so bad having an “inner doctor,” huh? But the whole idea of an intelligent jelly-alien inside my bod’ makes me feel kind’a squirmy.

The amoeba’s tentacles communicates to the boy by enlarging blood vessels on the inside of his eyes to write messages he then sees “written in the air!” They call this “inner net.”

Just kidding! (About the “inner net” part. The method of communication really is part of the book, believe it or not.)

This has been Captain Blastoff, ending transmission.