(Ed Valigursky’s cover for the 1957 edition of Doomsday Eve (1957). Robert Moore Williams)
The nuclear scare produced some of the best dystopic visions ever put to paper — the devastation would be utter, complete, and the radiation, oh what fun science fiction authors and filmakers had with the effects of radiation. A red spectrum! Mutations! Hybrid bug people! Godzilla! Women with two heads! An endless assortments of monsters… I’ve selected a wide range of covers depicting the actual nuclear explosion — not the after effects. Families gaze from caves in dispair, watching the bomb incinerate their world. People run helter-skelter away from the explosion. Or, artists take a more stylized approach to the explosion — figures are cast upward amongst the wreckage of buildings. Continue reading