"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"
Time for some more cover scans from the library of yours truly! This time around, I’ve got three SF paperbacks with art by British illustrator Chris Foss, whose airbrushed visions of massive starships, architecture, and hardware spawned a legion of imitators back in the 1970s (and beyond):
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This morning, let us give thanks to the gods themselves for churches that organize used-book sales:
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ABOVE: Isaac Asimov, The Gods Themselves (New York: Fawcett, n.d.), with cover art by Charles Moll.
ABOVE: Poul Anderson, Virgin Planet (New York: Warner, 1973), with cover art by Charles Moll.
ABOVE: John Brunner, The Whole Man (New York: Ballantine, 1973), with cover art by Charles Moll.
ABOVE: Robert Silverberg, ed., New Dimensions III (Scarborough, ON: New American Library of Canada, 1974), with cover art by Charles Moll.
When I posted “Look Here: Three paperback covers plus with art by Don Ivan Punchatz” back in mid-May, I included a small “bonus” JPEG, reposted from another site, that displays all three of Punchatz’s iconic covers for Avon Science Fiction paperback edition of Isaac Asimov’s classic “Foundation Trilogy.” I would have posted my own scans, except that, at the time, I was missing the first book in the trilogy. Earlier today, however, I found, and purchased, a slightly beat-up copy of the Avon edition of Foundation at a local bookstore that perfectly matches the slightly beat-up copies of Foundation and Empire and Second Foundation that I already have in my collection. So now, as is my wont, I’m here to share my good fortune with the rag-tag fugitive followers of Ragged Claws Network:
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“Don Ivan Punchatz — Don Ivan’s ability to touch men with acrylic and melt them into beasts, or touch beasts with oil and ink, and voila, they are senators or brokers is endlessly stunning. Metaphor, after all, is the universal language and Don Ivan Punchatz could teach at Berlitz.”
— Ray Bradbury
BONUS IMAGES:
The covers displayed above were scanned by me from books in my own collection; the covers displayed below were not:
Went to a church rummage sale yesterday. Picked up three LPs and a small stack of paperbacks, including three with covers by Paul Lehr. Scanned the Lehr covers a few minutes ago. Uploaded the JPEGs to RCN. Typed a few lines of nonsense. Published the post. Tweeted the link. Sat back and admired my busywork.
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To browse through all of the covers with art by Paul Lehr that I’ve posted thus far on RCN, click here, scroll down, click the link to the next page, scroll down, etc.
More covers, freshly scanned:
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To view all of the paperbacks with cover art by Paul Lehr that I’ve scanned and posted so far, click here.
From my personal library of disintegrating pulp:
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My favourite image in the above group is Lehr’s wraparound cover for John Boyd’s The Rakehells of Heaven, even though the display font used for the title and author name is overbearing and, in places, difficult to decipher! To view all of the covers with art by Paul Lehr that I’ve posted so far, click here.
A nice variety of covers by Lehr this time around. I especially dig Lehr’s 1967 cover for Margaret St. Clair’s The Dolphins of Altair, even if the exact location of the dorsal fin on the central dolphin (who, to Lehr’s credit, really looks like he is carrying a weight on his back) is slightly mysterious. I don’t know about you, but I’m happy to chalk this one up to artistic license… the fin is entirely hidden by the woman’s body and that’s all there is to it…
Click here to view all of the covers with art by Paul Lehr that I’ve posted so far.
From the bookshelves of yours truly, here are nine paperback covers (ten, actually; a bonus image was added at a later date) by Paul Lehr, along with one Lehr-ish cover by another hand:
Ragged Claws Network 