Pulp/Sf/Fantasy Paperback Covers

Best Selling RPGs - Available Now @ DriveThruRPG.com
Italian fumetti comics are truly bizarre and often quite disturbing with their extreme sex and violence
Some interesting stuff in general on his feed.

Italian translations of American SciFi are really funny. The American novel will have a robot say standing looking at a black hole from a space station. The Italian translation might just have a "sexy" woman winking at the reader in a modern day room. It's not as common now, but in the 70s and 80s it was quite common.
 
Sweet Valley High photo references for covers.

 
I remember when my sister used to consume those in quantity, and used to think I was a fast reader until she overtook me at about age 12. She can go through genre fiction at a fantastic rate.
 
384aaaec9a6ee2f5004d6ce0cec2b8e3.jpg

X+Sold+for+Slaughter.jpg

23007.JPG
 
More psychedelic sf/fantasy covers.

Is it just me or if Lee's sf and fantasy still underrated?

c9a5f6d6e117a0d1d7c79ba2cb81050e.jpg

16ab4af6b86e5a8085a43fbe85de2df9.jpg

If I was going to recommend on Elllison book this would be it. The severely surreal 'At the Mouse Circus' is the best thing he ever wrote.

5dd0d4fc5056ac0416636eb92f6785b3.jpg

1af75a49392d18c70b416446ca9c2606.jpg

John Brunner's proto-cyberpunk gets name checked a lot but for me his Traveler in Black fantasy is even better and deserves more attention.

For rpg folks check out his still fresh approach to magic, law and chaos: inter-related and central to the worldbuilding.

8500342fab68efd3abd58897f3758239.jpg
 
Last edited:

I want to draw one's attention to this issue of Startling Stories in particular as it includes Margaret St. Clair's 'Vulcan's Dolls' which is a novella better known (a little, St. Clair is criminally underrated) under the title Agent of the Unknown which is an excellent and very dark story of androids. Along with stories by Brackett and Pratt, that looks like a hell of an issue, can't judge a [magazine] by its cover!

Oh and I notice that the recent popularity of Appendix N, which lists some of her later books, led to her formerly cheap paperbacks rocketing in price.

Glad that people are rediscovering her, even if via a limited and reductive D&D lens, but annoyed at these absurd prices. I see a collection of her short stories with an introduction by Ramsey Campbell put her back into print a few years ago, hopefully that continues.
 
Last edited:
I want to draw one's attention to this issue of Startling Stories in particular as it includes Margaret St. Clair's 'Vulcan's Dolls' which is a novella better known (a little, St. Clair is criminally underrated) under the title Agent of the Unknown which is an excellent and very dark story of androids. Along with stories by Brackett and Pratt, that looks like a hell of an issue, can't judge a [magazine] by its cover!

As it turns out, that issue is available through the pulp magazine archive at the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/Startling_Stories_v25n01_1952-02

Here's another quintessential '50s cover, this time for a Planet Stories issue (Winter, 1954) featuring Leigh Brackett:

planet_stories_1954win.jpg
 
Old nostalgic one for me is this cover of a local translation of H.G. Well's "War of the Worlds". For odd reasons they translated it using the word for Plato's celestial orbs rather than the usual words for "World" or "Planet".

30114244348.jpg
 
They went through the trouble of making the tree match up across covers, but not the shield?
 
Some different covers of Burrough's Warlord of Mars (Barsoom #3) through time:

J. Allen St. John's cover for the 1919 initial publication and Bob Abbett's for the 1963 Ballantine paperback:
Warlord of Mars 1919.jpgWarlord Ballantine 1963.jpg

Frank Frazetta's dust jacket for a Doubleday omnibus of 1971:
Warlord Frazetta.jpg

Gino d'Achilli's cover for the 1973 Ballantine paperback and Michael Whelan's for the 1979 Del Rey edition:
Warlord Ballantine Achilli 1973.jpgWarlord Whelan 1979 Del Rey.jpg

I have a fondness for the 1960s Ballantine paperback Barsoom covers, myself. Whelan's John Carter is too Tarzanish for my taste and I'll cop to liking Barsoom illustrations with more clothing than Burroughs actually describes.
 
Some covers of Jack Vance's classic The Dying Earth:

The 1950 original book publication and Ed Emshwiller's for the 1962 Lancer reissue:
Dying Earth 1950.jpgDYNGE1962.jpg

Chris Foss's cover for Mayflower (1972) and the Hildebrandt brothers' for Pocket Books (1977):
THDNGRTHWJ1972-Foss.jpgDYNGE1977.jpg

George Barr's dust jacket for the Underwood-Miller hardback (1976):
THDNGRTHMM1976.jpg

The uncredited Pocket Books from 1979 and Geoff Taylor's for Panther/Granada in 1985:
THDNGRTHZ-1979.jpgTHDNGRTHPH1985-Taylor.jpg

Tom Kidd's art for the very pricey Subterranean Press edition (2013):
THDNGRTHMM2013.jpg
 
Banner: The best cosmic horror & Cthulhu Mythos @ DriveThruRPG.com
Back
Top