art

Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXLIV (Margaret St. Clair, Edgar Pangborn, Keith Laumer, and Edmund Cooper)

/ Joachim Boaz / 17 Comments

Which books/covers/authors intrigue you? Which have you read? Disliked? Enjoyed?

It’s the summer Joachim Boaz. Where are the reviews? I’m currently on a much needed vacation (Iceland). I will be back soon! In the meantime here are four recent purchases.

1. The Dancers of Noyo, Margaret St. Clair (1973)

  • Davis Meltzer’s cover for the 1st edition

From the back cover: “Like so many others before him, reluctant Sam MacGregor was sent on a pilgrimage for the Frail Vision by the Dancers: androids grown from the cells of one man, with the powers of hypnotism and illusion–androids who held the tribes of the Republic of California in thrall.

But soon Sam began to doubt his own identity, for he experienced, in close succession, extra-lives in different corridors of time and space.

Continue reading →

Adventures in Science Fiction Art: Rodger B. MacGowan’s Approachable New Wave Art, Part I

/ Joachim Boaz / 12 Comments
  • MacGowan’s illustrations for Neil Shapiro’s “Starman of Faraway Station” in Vertex (July 1975)

Rodger B. MacGowan (1948-2025), best known for his wargame art and design, passed away yesterday.1 Most of the memorial posts I’ve seen on social media focus on his later career paths in the board-gaming world. Thus, I thought it would be worthwhile to narrow in on his contribution to science fiction art. After graduating UCLA, where he studied art, motion pictures, and graphic design, MacGowan found work at an advertising agency and an opportunity to create art for one of their accounts, the short-lived Vertex science fiction magazine.2

Continue reading →

What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading? + Update No. XV

/ Joachim Boaz / 120 Comments
  • A selection of previously read novels from my shelf

What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading or planning to read this month? Here’s July’s installment of this column.

Last month I waxed rhapsodic about a powerful interaction with a professor in graduate school… this month I’ll show you a recent obsessive territory I’ve been reading and ruminating about: 1940s and 1950s (and a few from the 60s) social commentary on American affluence, technology, and media. It all started with my media landscapes of the future series–I could not write on the topic unless I read some Marshall McLuhan. And then I had to read about C. Wright Mills to write about Clifford D. Simak and organized labor. And then I needed to track down other popular authors of social commentary published in era. It should not be surprising so much 50s SF revolved around social commentary — it was in the air. You get the idea. This pile represents some of what I now own:

Continue reading →

Exploration Log 3: Interview with Adam Rowe, author of Worlds Beyond Time: Sci-Fi Art of the 1970s (2023)

/ Joachim Boaz / 28 Comments

Today I have the third post in my Exploration Log series.

I would like to welcome Adam Rowe to Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations. He is the author of a brand new book–Worlds Beyond Time: Sci-Fi Art of the 1970s (2023)–on 70s science fiction cover art with a foreword by artist Vincent Di Fate. You can follow Adam’s art account on Twitter and Tumblr. I also recommend subscribing to his free 70s SF art newsletter. You can buy Worlds Beyond Time on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. 

Adam Rowe is a writer who has been collecting retro science fiction art online since 2013. He covers technology at Tech.co and has been a Forbes contributor on publishing and the business of storytelling. He has also written for iO9, Popular Mechanics, Tor.com, and the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog. Worlds Beyond Time: Sci-Fi Art of the 1970s (2023) is his first book.

Continue reading →

Adventures in Science Fiction Cover Art: Mariella Anderlini’s Covers for Roger Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber (Corwin) sequence

/ Joachim Boaz / 10 Comments
  • Cover art detail by Allison (aka Mariella Anderlini) for the 1979 Italian edition of Roger Zelazny’s The Guns of Avalon (1972)

On twitter, I recently learned from Jay O’Connell (cover artist and author) that all of Roger Zelazny’s work will be back in print. What exactly “everything back in print” means in reality I’m not entirely sure–will it include only the best known novels? All the short stories? Are works Zelazny wanted to “kill off” like To Die in Italbar (1973) really going to get reprints? Regardless, I was inspired to look back at the non-English language covers his work has received over the years. Naturally, as I moved to the fantastic Italian presses, I re-encountered and fell in love (again) with Allison’s evocative take on Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber (Corwin) five-novel sequence.

What are your favorites?

Continue reading →

Adventures in Science Fiction Cover Art: The Pop Collage of Atelier Heinrichs & Bachmann, Part II

/ Joachim Boaz / 6 Comments
  • Atelier Heinrichs & Bachmann’s cover for the 1970 edition of J. T. McIntosh’s One in Three Hundred (1954)

In 2021, I posted Part I of my Adventures in Science Fiction Cover Art series on the Atelier Heinrichs & Bachmann. Between 1966 and 1971, they created a kaleidoscopic array of psychedelic visions for the German press Heyne Bücher. I described their art as follows: “Pop surrealism? Lowbrow art? The Andy Warhol effect? However you classify Atelier Heinrichs & Bachmann’s covers […] they’re gleeful and sarcastic.” And despite a few readers who disliked their exuberant/chaotic hilarity (someone described them as the “very nadir in SF cover art”), I stand by my positive assessment. And I bring you Part II of my series!

Continue reading →

Adventures in Science Fiction Cover Art: Ferruccio Alessandri’s Insectoid Visages and Other Nightmares

/ Joachim Boaz / 10 Comments
  • Cover for Galassia #122 (1970). Contains Samuel R. Delany’s The Ballad of Beta-2 (1965) and three short stories by Italian authors (Sergio Ostuni, Ivo Silvestri, and Lorenzo Iacobellis)

Italian artist, author, translator, and comic book critic Ferruccio Alessandri (1935-) created twenty-two covers for the Italian SF magazine Galassia (most of the issues between -132) in 1970. Galassia magazine was instrumental in introducing Italian audiences to the New Wave movement. Issues often contained both translations of popular English language authors and original Italian short stories and experimental visions.

As a unit, Alessandri’s covers convey a terrifying hellscape of insectoid visages (#122, #110, #128, #130), encounters with the surreal (#115), the oddly humanoid shapes (#119, #114, #116, #127), etc. Like searing flashes of a planet bathed under neon light, they are micro windows into the wonderscape of science fiction. While his Galassia covers are unconnected to the contents of the issues (to the best of my knowledge), I find their cumulative effect unsettling and alien.

Continue reading →

Adventures in Science Fiction Cover Art: The Architectural Fragments of Damian Petrescu

/ Joachim Boaz / 7 Comments
  • Damian Petrescu’s cover art for the 1st Romanian edition of Voicu Bugariu’s Lumea lui Als Ob (1981)

Damien Petruscu, a Romanian graphic designer, created science fiction and fantasy covers for a range of Romanian presses between 1966-1985. He also designed countless LP covers from 1966-1983–George Enescu to Latin pop–which you can browse over at Discogs. In my view, his SF covers gave him more opportunity to showcase his talents! I have curated a group that hint at architectural desires and artificial shapes: Urban plans, façades bathed in red mist, totemic uplifts, temples in delicate lines, surreal landscapes of buildings askew… My favorite, his cover for Voicu Bugariu’s Lumea lui Als Ob (1981), might be a direct references to the magisterial ruins of the Sasanian capital at Ctesiphon [below]. He evokes the same crisp façade, desert landscape, and delicate arch.

Continue reading →

Adventures in Science Fiction Cover Art: Johann Peter Reuter’s Surreal Forms Arrayed Across the Plains

/ Joachim Boaz / 12 Comments
  • Reuter’s cover for the 1979 German edition of Philip José Farmer of To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1971)

German painter and graphic designer Johann Peter Reuter (1949-) created fourteen credited covers for German SF presses between 1977-1984.  I have identified a potential fifteenth cover included below–the 1977 edition of Isaac Asimov’s Second Foundation (1953)–that I believe fits his style and date range. From the information gleaned from his homepage, Reuter’s SF output occurred in the first few years as a freelance artist after studying art in Dortmund. He started as a figurative painter before evolving to non-figurative forms (brief artist blurb).

If you’re interested in his non-SF art, check out his fascinating series of paintings from 2004 on the visualization of the mass.

Continue reading →