Science Fiction Cover Art

[Graham1973]

The covers by unknown artists for the UK release in 1988 and 1992 of 'Tales from the Spaceport Bar' and 'Another Round at the Spaceport Bar' edited by George H. Scithers & Darrell Schweitzer.

 

[Justo Miranda]

Hi

 

[Graham1973]

The cover by James Gurney to William Greenleaf's 1982 novel 'The Tartarus Incident'

 

[Graham1973]

Atilla Heja's cover to William Greenleaf's first novel, 1980's 'Time Jumper'

 

[Graham1973]

Algol was a fanzine that existed between 1964 and 1978 before going professional under the name Starship in which form it lasted until 1984. For a period they used artwork covers created by professionals. These two 1970s covers feature art by D. A. Dickinson and Eddie Jones.

 

[Graham1973]

Cosmos was a short lived science fiction magazine that appeared for four months in 1977. The four covers were done by George Schelling (May) Vincent DiFate (July), Jack Gaughan (September), Jack Gaughan (November).

 

[publiusr]

The vault

Science Fiction Sets & Vehicles

Outer Limits TOS Spacecraft

It was only about a decade of separation between Star Trek and Star Wars---but it felt longer.

For one, woodcrafting was about sculpting blocks down to a desired, flowing shape.
For the other, it was about greebling things up for very busy surface details.

With CGI, like cars (what with the Audi-rip-off Ford Taurus)---ships became prone to blobification in the digital era.

Spacecraft in 1977 looked so much different than trekships of 66---but now there is what I call the Homeworld Stagnation that has lasted for decades and continues to poison the well.

Sci-fi spacecraft have gone from graceful, to pebbly, to swollen.

 

[Rhinocrates]

Spacecraft in 1977 looked so much different than trekships of 66---but now there is what I call the Homeworld Stagnation that has lasted for decades and continues to poison the well.

Sci-fi spacecraft have gone from graceful, to pebbly, to swollen.

Amen.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StandardHumanSpaceship

 

[Graham1973]

The cover by Steve Crisp to Jack Vance's 'Trullion: Alastor 2262' (1973), note also the interesting cameo from another fictional universe in the background.

 

[publiusr]

Ah, the new Federation starship…
USS Robespierre.

Actually Christopher Bennett had something similar in a recent novel.

 

[martinbayer]

There are a few fundamental first principles for future exoatmospheric spacecraft design. For starters, for any pressure vessel, be it a human habitat or a propellant tank, a sphere is the ideal shape based on a mass per volume ratio. The second best choice, based on considerations such as launchability or (artificial?) gravity, are cylinders. After that, it's up to flat surface panels, either for heat rejection or for solar power generation. And if there are any propulsion units, their thrust vector with any forseeable technology better be aligned with the center of gravity of the craft - I'm looking at you, Enterprise...

 

[Rhinocrates]

Maciej Rebisz dances across the line between realistic speculation and stuff that wouldn't be out of place in Stewart Cowley's Terran Trade Authority books. There's a distinct Peter Elson influence.

 

[Rhinocrates]

Angus McKie did a series to illustrate Brian Stableford's Hooded Swan series. Stableford, alas, died a couple of months ago and was very prolific as a writer, historian and translator of sf. He had a very strong sense of irony - 'Hooded Swan' is a name for the dodo and creators of an advanced starship synthesising human and alien technology (and hopefully culture) thought that it would make its contemporaries obsolete, as dead as the dodo, which is the first level of irony. However, being who he was, he added another level in a a plot extending through the series of a commercially-driven galactic empire emerging that would eventually have no place for such idealistic endeavours. The narrator and protagonist, Grainger, is the ship's pilot and a breezily cynical commentator on the pretensions of both his employers and that imperial forces he foresees arising.

 

[Graham1973]

...I'm looking at you, Enterprise...

So was artist Robert Tinney when he did the cover art for BYTE magazines December 1977 issue.

 

[Rhinocrates]

McKie took a rather literal interpretation based on the 'Swan' name. This is my own take on the Hooded Swan, based on descriptions in the books. She was supposed to land on her tail and have an articulated exoskeleton over a quasi-musculature.

 

[Rhinocrates]

Some images without the text.

 

[Rhinocrates]

Stewart Crowley used the Hooded Swan art for the Interstellar Queen in his Terran Trade Authority series and McKie has inspired some fanart too.

 

[Rhinocrates]

Brian Stableford followed up the Hooded Swan series with the Daedalus series, about the crew of a starship sent out to recontact interstellar colonies after a century-long hiatus. They were 'hard sf' in the sense that Stableford's qualifications were in biology and sociology and he plausibly explored scenarios related to these disciplines. His narrator and protagonist, Alex, was just as cynical as Grainger but a scientist more willing to lecture on what he found. Grainger knew how the Hooded Swan flew but explained only as much as he needed to as a pilot while Alex just didn't give a damn about the mechanical stuff - though he did get on well with the equally cynical pilot who was pretty much a female version of Grainger. Tim White did a few of the covers. All we know about the eponymous starship is that it was black and cylindrical and equipped with sophisticated laboratories and wasn't suited to hopping about on a planet once it had landed.

The one with the yellow sky is from The City of the Sun, about a colony that had built a city based on Tommaso Campanella's Renaissance utopia of that name.

 

[Rhinocrates]

Brian Stableford co-authored The Third Millennium with David Langford, a fictional future history inspired by HG Wells' The Shape of Things to Come. This is Tim White's art for the paperback edition.

 

[Rhinocrates]

Stableford then used The Third Millennium as a worldbuilding template for another series about the effects on society of genetically-engineered 'emortality' on society. That is, a succession of technologies can extend life almost indefinitely, but don't necessarily protect one from misadventure or murder. Donato Giancola illustrated some to these.

 

[Rhinocrates]

Finally, US editions of the Hooded Swan and Daedalus series. Frank Kelly Freas did Rhapsody in Black, Promised Land, The Paradise Game, The Fenris Device, and Swan Song from the Hooded Swan series; Jack Gaughan did the cover for Halcyon Drift, the first of that series; Don Maitz did Balance of Power and The City of the Sun from the Daedalus series; Terry Oakes did The Florians from that series and HR Van Dongen did The Paradox of the Sets, the last of that series, which was not published in the UK. First, Freas:

 

[Rhinocrates]

And the others:

 

[Rhinocrates]

Better resolution versions of Freas' art. The Hooded Swan appears in the background of the cover for Rhapsody in Black as a classic sci-fi rocketship.

 

[Rhinocrates]

Let's just say that if I had a choice between a falcon and a swan, I'd take the dodo.

 

[Graham1973]

Covers from pre-Warhammer issues of White Dwarf which used images (some recycled) by well known science fiction artists. Eddy Jones (Issues 12 & 22), Jim Burns (Issue 43, a rare fantasy image from this artist), Angus Mckie (Issue 20, recycles the cover from 'The Fenris Device') and John Harris (Issue 41)

 

[Graham1973]

The cover by Mike Van Houten to a work by Ursula Le Guin, that's commonly referred to as a novel, but is really a piece of speculative anthropology, a gilmpse into a far future Napa Valley and the people who live there entitled 'Always Coming Home'. When it first appeared in 1985 it was a multimedia extravaganza for the period being accompanied by recordings of the various songs featured in the story orchestrated by a friend of the author, composer Todd Barton. This component disappeared from subsequent reprintings, such as the Grafton edition whose cover is featured here.

 

[martinbayer]

I think especially on a realistic science and technology focused forum like this that an *extremely* strong and bright dividing line needs to be drawn between actual hardcore *science* fiction and effing "multimedia extravaganza" fantasy including "speculative anthropology". This forum is about hardware, not squish-ware. But also, please don't sue me.

 

[Antonio]

I agree with you. Our treasure is the hardcore nucleus of the forum and our aim must be on preserving it. I have no doubt about that.
But considering this thread is in the "Bar" sub section of "Discussion and Speculation" section, we can allow some off-topic threads because the level of containment here is reasonable safe.

 

[southwestforests]

in his Terran Trade Authority series

When I first encountered that series in the late 1970s I was looking forward to seeing its great potential fulfilled.
Alas, history did not go down that road.

Only 2 books from it I got, and I still have them, Spacecraft 2000 to 2100, and Great Space Battles.

 

[martinbayer]

When I first encountered that series in the late 1970s I was looking forward to seeing its great potential fulfilled.
Alas, history did not go down that road.

Only 2 books from it I got, and I still have them, Spacecraft 2000 to 2100, and Great Space Battles.

I have those too, as well as Starliners and Spacewreck. If you have a hankering for those (or any other books, for that matter), I recommend checking out https://www.bookfinder.com/.

 

[Graham1973]

The cover to the 8th issue of UK D&D magazine 'Imagine' which recycled the artwork created by Peter Goodfellow for a UK edition of Jack Vance's 'Trullion: Alastor 2262'

 

[Graham1973]

The poster for the Atari Game 'Final Legacy' a victim of the companies turmoil in the mid 80s. The game scenario has some vague similarities to the scenario in the novel 'DEMON-4' by David Mace in that it is set after WWIII and the player has to face a computer that is trying to win the war for it's side.

 

[Justo Miranda]

I agree with you. Our treasure is the hardcore nucleus of the forum and our aim must be on preserving it. I have no doubt about that.
But considering this thread is in the "Bar" sub section of "Discussion and Speculation" section, we can allow some off-topic threads because the level of containment here is reasonable safe.

I would like to share with the forum the one hundred and twenty thousand illustrations in my collection, but copyright rules prevent it. So I use this section to share something from time to time.

 

[Justo Miranda]

Post-2

 

[Justo Miranda]

post-3

 

[Justo Miranda]

Art is enigmatic, I don't understand what hidden reasons the cartoonist would have to include the guy on the left.

 

[Antonio]

Art is enigmatic, I don't understand what hidden reasons the cartoonist would have to include the guy on the left.

self portrait?

 

[Rhinocrates]

Art is enigmatic, I don't understand what hidden reasons the cartoonist would have to include the guy on the left.

What guy on the left?

 

[Graham1973]

A Star Wars inspired cover for an Atari Game...

 

[Graham1973]

How to make BASIC look like fun...