"This day's experience, set in order, none of it left ragged or lying about, all of it gathered in like treasure and finished with, set aside." –Alice Munro, "What is Remembered"
More cover scans by me. Big surprise.
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ABOVE: Robert A. Heinlein, The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag (London: New English Library, 1980), with cover art by Peter Gudynass.
ABOVE: Keith Laumer, The Best of Keith Laumer (NY: Pocket Books, 1976), with cover art by Carlos Ochagavia.
BONUS IMAGE:
ABOVE: René Magritte, The King’s Museum (1966), oil on canvas, 89 x 130 cm. Via TRANSISTORADIO.
I posted two of the Runestaff covers displayed below back in October 2013, but the other two are freshly scanned from old paperbacks that I purchased yesterday at a 60% discount from a local used bookstore that is closing its doors for good at the end of the month:
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ABOVE: Michael Moorcock, The Jewel in the Skull (Frogmore: Mayflower, 1973), with cover art by Bob Haberfield.
ABOVE: Michael Moorcock, The Mad God’s Amulet (Frogmore: Mayflower, 1974), with cover art by Bob Haberfield.
ABOVE: Michael Moorcock, The Sword of the Dawn (Frogmore: Mayflower, 1975), with cover art by Bob Haberfield.
ABOVE: Michael Moorcock, The Runestaff (Frogmore: Mayflower, 1975), with cover art by Bob Haberfield.
Another parky morning on the Canadian Prairies, another pair of imperfect picks from the paperback pile:
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ABOVE: Rod Serling, Night Gallery (NY: Bantam, 1971), with cover art by David Blossom.
ABOVE: Luke Short, The Stalkers (NY: Bantam, 1979), with cover art by David Blossom.
RELATED LINK:
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More cover scans, courtesy of yours truly:
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ABOVE: Clifford D. Simak, Enchanted Pilgrimage (NY: Berkley, 1975), Z2987, with cover art by Paul Lehr.
ABOVE: Stephen Tall, The Ramsgate Paradox (NY: Berkley, c1976), Z3186, with cover art by Paul Lehr.
ABOVE: Anders Bodelsen, Freezing Down (NY: Berkley, 1972), S2186, with cover art by Paul Lehr.
ABOVE: Harry Harrison and Brian Aldiss, eds., Best SF 73 (NY: Berkley, 1974), with cover art by Paul Lehr.
The art on the cover of Freezing Down is uncredited, and no signature is visible, but I’m going to go ahead and attribute it to Paul Lehr. If you know better, you are welcome to post a comment and set the record straight.
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BONUS INFO:
In The Studio (Dragon’s Dream, 1979), on pages 103 and 104, Barry Windsor-Smith provides a brief account of the genesis of Whithering:
“In the spring of 1975 I was working on a pen and ink drawing of trees, just trees. It was inspired, in part, by a wonderful painting of old Hampstead Heath by John Constable. At that time I didn’t think my audience was ready for — or let’s say interested in — a new work by me that was ‘just trees.’ Constable himself had a witticism about painting some of his pictures with ‘eye salve.’ What he meant was that he would make a picture as commercial as possible if he needed to sell it. As I wanted the fantasy market to see my tree drawing, I took a tip from Constable and applied a little ‘fantastic eye balm’: right in the middle of the picture I drew a shrouded figure of Death — a skull-headed man — and off in the distance a dark, foreboding mansion. This made the trees seemingly incidental. I called it Whithering (p. 110)… a deliberate non sequitur.” […]
“One night I got a frenzied call from an associate in London. He’d just shown a reproduction of the picture to a much respected fellow artist whom I’d never met, and whom my associate had only just met. Over the crackling transatlantic line I heard him say, ‘Hey! Guess what!… I just showed Whithering to so-and-so and guess what he said, — ‘Ahh, Constable; those trees. Barry just stuck that dead bloke in there so he could get away with drawing trees, didn’t he’?… He knew! There were a few cackles of laughter and then he hung up; that was the end of the call. I was suffering from insomnia at the time, I recall I slept that night and glowed the next day.”
Does Windsor-Smith’s reminiscence rule out the influence of Doré’s composition on Whithering? I don’t think so, but if you check out the comments section of this post, you’ll find a reader who disagrees with me.
BONUS IMAGES:
Three paintings of “Hampstead Heath” by John Constable:
Only a day after I almost apologized for not posting more often since the summer, and I’m back with two more covers scanned from the magnificent mouldering heap that I laughingly refer to as my personal library:
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ABOVE: John Jakes, On Wheels (NY: Warner, 1973), 75-123, with cover art by Don Ivan Punchatz.
ABOVE: Mike Resnick, The Three-Legged Hootch Dancer (NY: Signet, 1983), 451-AE2082, with cover art by Don Ivan Punchatz.
To view all of the covers with art by Don Ivan Punchatz (1936 – 2009) that I’ve posted so far, click here and scroll down.
Since I started TRANSISTORADIO back in August, I have been even slower to post new stuff here at RCN than I used to be, but this evening, I found the time to scan and process four covers with airbrush art by Stanislaw Fernandes, whose work has been featured once before here at RCN. Enjoy!
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ABOVE: Arthur C. Clarke, Reach for Tomorrow (NY: Ballantine, 1972), 29474, with cover art by Stanislaw Fernandes.
ABOVE: Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood’s End (NY: Ballantine, 1974), 29730, with cover art by Stanislaw Fernandes.
ABOVE: Michael Moorcock, The Cornelius Chronicles (NY: Avon, 1977), 31468, with cover art by Stanislaw Fernandes.
ABOVE: Michael Moorcock, An Alien Heat (NY: Avon, 1977), 34611, with cover art by Stanislaw Fernandes.
Here at RCN, we are unaccountably proud of our unsung power to distract an uncommunicative coterie of unwashed hipsters from the unbounded corruption of the uncaring world with an unsteady stream of unprofessional scans of unsound books from the unkempt collection of RCN’s undistinguished doofus-in-chief, yours truly. Like these, for instance:
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ABOVE: John Crowley, The Deep (NY: Berkley, 1976), D3163, with cover art by Richard Powers.
ABOVE: Clifford D. Simak, The Goblin Reservation (NY: Berkley, 1969), S1671, with cover art by Richard Powers.
ABOVE: Zach Hughes, The Stork Factor (NY: Berkley, 1975), N2781, with cover art by Richard Powers.
I have all sorts of used books in my personal library that I purchased I can’t remember when for maybe a quarter or fifty cents a piece just for the cover art, including these, which I just scanned for display here at RCN:
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ABOVE: Madonna Kolbenschlag, Kiss Sleeping Beauty Good-Bye (NY: Bantam, 1981), with cover art by Leo and Diane Dillon.
ABOVE: Shakti Gawain, Creative Visualization (NY: Bantam, 1985), with cover art by Leo and Diane Dillon.
Shakti Gawain? Of course, Shakti Gawain! Would anyone in the 1980s have purchased new-age claptrap like Creative Visualization had it been penned by Mike Smith from Canmore, Alberta? Not bloody likely!
And will you look at that: both the copyright page and the author’s acknowledgement credit the Creative Visualization cover art to Rainbow Canyon… wait, what? Rainbow Canyon? Of course, Rainbow Canyon! It’s perfect!
The other cover is uncredited, but you and I both know that the art for both Kiss Sleeping Beauty Good-Bye and Creative Visualization is by the Dillons, right?
Ragged Claws Network 
