"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"
So many covers to scan… so little time…
[CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE]
ABOVE: Arthur C. Clarke, Dolphin Island (NY: Berkley, 1971), with cover art by Paul Lehr.
ABOVE: Dean R. Koontz, Nightmare Journey (NY: Berkley, 1975), with cover art by Paul Lehr.
ABOVE: Richard Rohmer, Separation (NY: Bantam-Seal, 1977), with cover art by Paul Lehr.
More cover scans, courtesy of yours truly:
[CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE]
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.
Freshly scanned from the collection of yours truly, here’s one of Paul Lehr’s best covers with a close-up shot of a human being, which may seem like I’m damning it with faint praise, since most of Lehr’s classic covers are populated with tiny figures dwarfed by technological wonders, strange lands, alien life forms, the cosmos itself, but that is simply not the case. So let me say it plainly: Crompton Divided is one of Lehr’s best covers, period:
[CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE]
To view all of the covers with art by Paul Lehr that I’ve posted over the years, start here and click back through the (p)ages. I think you’ll like what you find there.
BONUS IMAGE:
Nice colour here; subject matter is a bit underdeveloped, like concept art for an animated movie, but it’s evocative enough, I guess:
[CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE]
The art on the covers of Judgment on Janus and Eye of the Monster is uncredited, and no signatures are visible, but as luck would have it, Judgment on Janus is identified as a painting by Dean Ellis on this page at The Illustration Exchange: Science Fiction and Fantasy Art Collectors’ Site, and Eye of the Monster is clearly by the same hand, though if you had told me that the Norton covers were painted by Paul Lehr circa 1980, I likely would have struggled to provide stylistic or technical reasons to reject the attribution. If Ellis in such paintings was actually trying to copy Lehr’s style circa 1970 — which, given Lehr’s reputation and success in SF circles, is by no means out of the question — he erred on the side of a type of over-simplification that Lehr himself often flirted with but did not fully embrace until a decade later.
Truth be told, I don’t really like Ellis’s technique here — or Lehr’s technique circa 1980. It’s too stripped down. The paint is boring. Yes, it’s precisely and decisively applied, but it lacks subtlety, depth… mystery…
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.
[CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE]
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:
[CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE]
To view all of the paperbacks with cover art by Paul Lehr that I’ve scanned and posted so far, click here.
More “treasures” from my personal paperback collection, scanned just for you, dear reader:
[CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE]
To view all of the paperbacks with cover art by Paul Lehr that I’ve posted over the years, start here.
From my personal library of disintegrating pulp:
[CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE]
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.
None of the following three covers with art by Paul Lehr really hits the mark. The painting on the cover of Hellstrom’s Hive (1982) is especially anemic; as far as I am concerned, it has very little of interest to say about Frank Herbert’s novel, the SF genre, Lehr’s chosen subject matter, or anything else other than, perhaps, the vain hope that slick technique alone would be enough to fulfil the brief. (Yes, I understand the idea here is that the viewer is supposed put together the visual clues to realize that the red barn, farm house, windrows of hay, etc., are actually located on a planet that is not earth, and that the tiny figures on the hill are not merely your typical human farmers but something more sinister; however, when such a simple idea is so blandly and schematically worked out, how can the viewer’s reaction be anything but boredom?) The fact that Lehr’s hypothetical hope turned out to be not so vain after all — the painting, obviously, was published — seems to me to have been less likely an endorsement of the painting as an effective cover illustration and more likely a tribute to Lehr’s long track record as a distinctive, reliable, and admired SF cover artist.
[CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE]
Click here to view all of the covers with art by Paul Lehr that I’ve posted so far.
To view all of the covers with art by Paul Lehr that I’ve posted so far, click here.
Ragged Claws Network 