Spaceships From 1970s British SF Paperbacks, Part 1
posted by Paul McAuley at 12:41 pm
About Me
- Name: Paul McAuley
- Location: London, United Kingdom
I'm the author of more than twenty books, including novels, short story collections and a film monograph. My latest novel is Beyond the Burn Line. For reprint, translation and media requests, please contact Oliver Cheetham at the Mic Cheetham Agency.
Previous Posts
- Links 22/07/13
- In Which I Get Reviewed
- Dr Gagarian
- Shaw And Superman
- Links 14/06/13
- Gesture Art
- The Masters Of The Measureless Mind
- There Is A Light
- Links 07/06/13
- The Swarming Dead
18 Comments:
That Brian Aldiss cover looks like the new Mac Pro to my eye.
Unless I'm mistaken, the cover art
for most of the books is done
either by Chris Foss or artists
influenced by him.
Nobody has ever painted spaceships
in a more convincing or evocative
manner; he gave them the look
of being built out of real hardware
while, at the same time, giving
them the look of something out
a dream.
The cover of The Last Starship from Earth caught my eye in a newsagents in Barry circa 1974 - something about the title and the image really struck my imagination. Still not read the book...
334, of course, that well known space opera.
Last Starship v good.
I'm pretty sure that 'only' 8/13 of these covers are by the great Chris Foss. More covers next week, and attributions.
I count ten by him.
I can't find attributions for the Anderson and Delany. Do you have evidence they're by CF?
No, I was eyeballing it based on my childhood and the giant coffee table book of his work that I have. No guarantees!
Does Hardware have all his covers?
One of the images here looks a little like CF's stuff...but isn't.
I'd say the Delaney is by Tony Roberts. Very active around the same time as Chris Foss.
Thanks Al - can't find it on his web site, but one of the other covers is definitely by him.
Only SF cover artist to have appeared in the Tate (when Glenn Brown 'appropriated' his cover image for Double Star).
Yes, I remember the kerfuffle around that Tate painting - very cheeky. I think Tony Roberts' cover for Van Vogt's Destination:Universe is one of my all-time favorite SF images.
I highly recommend the recent Chris Foss omnibus, by the way.
I have the omnibus as well and it is wonderful.
I think we're of an age (I'll be 42 in two months) and I have so many childhood memories of his work on books. I didn't even know who he was until a few years ago! Then I saw pictures of his work (and then the omnibus) and it brought back a lot of memories for me.
The top one (Aldiss) looks like a Bruce Pennington, another favourite of mine of the era along with Chris Foss.
I'm sure I read somewhere (it might say so in the Hardware book) that Foss is colour-blind, which explains some of the psychedelic colours in his artwork.
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Anything yellow and striped is usually Chris Foss - I love his ships, from the first cover of his I encountered (Asimov's Currents of Space). I only found out recently that he worked on designs of Ridley Scott's Nostromo (http://alienseries.wordpress.com/2012/10/23/space-truckin-the-nostromo/)and of course, illustrated the Joy of Sex book.
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