"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"
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…
ABOVE: Margaret St. Clair, The Dolphins of Altair (New York: Dell, 1967), with cover art by Paul Lehr.
ABOVE: Jack Williamson, The Legion of Space (New York: Pyramid, 1969), with cover art by Paul Lehr.
ABOVE: Isaac Asimov, The Stars Like Dust (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett, 1972), with cover art by Paul Lehr.
Click here to view all of the covers with art by Paul Lehr that I’ve posted so far.
Keywords:The Dolphins of Altair, The Legion of Space, The Stars Like Dust, A Choice of Gods.
Somebody out there likes Paul Lehr’s work; I know this not because people post to tell me they like it but because the Ragged Claws Network blog stats show regular visits to the Paul Lehr category. So, on with the show:
ABOVE: Josephine Bell, Easy Prey (New York: Ballantine, 1959), with cover art by Paul Lehr.
ABOVE: Robert Wells, Candle in the Sun (New York: Berkley, 1971), with cover art by Paul Lehr.
ABOVE: Larry Niven, John Brunner, and Jack Vance, Three Trips in Time and Space (New York: Dell, 1974), with cover art by Paul Lehr.
Keywords:Easy Prey, Candle in the Sun, Three Trips in Time and Space.
Notice that the publication dates of these covers by Paul Lehr, scanned just this morning directly from the library of yours truly, range from 1969 to 1980. I’m sure some people think of Lehr as a bit of a one-trick pony, but with this little group of four, one gets a nice sense of Lehr’s quiet versatility as an image maker, in a nutshell, as it were. Oddly enough, Frazetta later painted an image, entitled Torment (1986), of a guy impaled on a curvilinear structure that would not look out of place in the future city hinted at in the Gunner Cade cover — which perhaps tells you all you need to know about Frazetta’s attitude to modernity — but Lehr’s flamboyantly attired, bubble-helmeted hero is about as far from the half-naked, heavily muscled, hard-charging Frazetta archetype as one can get. Yes, the Glory Road and Power of Blackness covers are fairly typical Lehr productions; however, with the cover for The Centauri Device, Lehr charges boldly into John Berkey territory, and acquits himself very well indeed.
ABOVE: C. M. Kornbluth and Judith Merril, Gunner Cade (NY: Dell, 1969), with cover by Paul Lehr.
ABOVE: Robert A. Heinlein, Glory Road (NY: Berkley, 1970), with cover by Paul Lehr.
ABOVE: Jack Williamson, The Power of Blackness (NY: Berkley, 1976), with cover by Paul Lehr.
ABOVE: M. John Harrison, The Centauri Device (NY: Bantam, 1980), with cover by Paul Lehr.
Keywords:Gunner Cade, Glory Road, The Power of Blackness, The Centauri Device.
ABOVE: Arthur C. Clarke, The Deep Range (New York: Signet, 1964), with cover by Paul Lehr.
ABOVE: Keith Laumer and Gorden R. Dickson, Planet Run (New York: Berkley, 1967), with cover by Paul Lehr.
ABOVE: John Brunner, More Things in Heaven (New York: Dell, 1973), with cover by Paul Lehr.
ABOVE: Keith Laumer, Night of Delusions (New York: Berkley, 1974), with cover by Paul Lehr.
The 1964 edition of The Deep Range by Arthur C. Clarke with the cover by Paul Lehr is a pretty cool find, I think. It’s a pity the artwork is obscured by the title, etc., but the book is in excellent condition, so it scanned fairly nicely, and of course, it is instructive to compare it with Lehr’s later covers, which, unlike The Deep Range, typically combine highly saturated colours with a strict adherence to traditional colour schemes.
Keywords:The Deep Range, Planet Run, More Things in Heaven, Night of Delusions.
Note that the first two paperback covers below are from early in Lehr’s career as a cover artist while the third one is from fairly late in Lehr’s career:
ABOVE: Robert A. Heinlein, Podkayne of Mars (New York: Avon, 1966), with cover by Paul Lehr (1930 – 1998).
ABOVE: Robert A. Heinlein, Glory Road (New York: Avon, 1966), with cover by Paul Lehr (1930 – 1998).
ABOVE: Sharon Baker, Journey to Membliar (New York: Avon, 1987), with cover by Paul Lehr (1930 – 1998).
Keywords:Podkayne of Mars, Glory Road, Journey to Membliar.
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:
ABOVE: Jack Vance, The Anome (Dell, 1973), with cover by Paul Lehr.
ABOVE: Robert Silverberg, Conquerors from the Darkness (Dell, 1968), with cover by Paul Lehr.
ABOVE: Theodore Sturgeon, The Cosmic Rape (Dell, 1968), with cover by Paul Lehr.
ABOVE: Vernor Vinge, Grimm’s World (Berkley, 1969), with cover by Paul Lehr.
ABOVE: Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination (Bantam, 1970), with cover by Paul Lehr.
ABOVE: Isaac Asimov, Pebble in the Sky (Fawcett, 1971), with cover by Paul Lehr.
ABOVE: George R. Stewart, Earth Abides (Fawcett, 1971), with cover by Paul Lehr.
ABOVE: Philip K. Dick, Counter-Clock World (Berkley, 1974), with cover by Paul Lehr.
ABOVE: Roger Zelazny, Isle of the Dead (Ace, 1985), with cover by Paul Lehr.
ABOVE: Poul Anderson, The Enemy Stars (Berkley, 1965), with cover by Jerome Podwil.
Keywords:The Anome, The Enemy Stars, Andromeda Gun, Isle of the Dead, Counter-Clock World, Earth Abides, Pebble in the Sky, The Stars My Destination, Grimm’s World, The Cosmic Rape, Conquerors from the Darkness.
