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These science fiction cover galleries are becoming so ubiquitous it hardly seems worth cataloguing a new discovery. However… This pair are from the George Kelley Paperback and Pulp Fiction Collection at the University of Buffalo Libraries:
The UB Libraries’ George Kelley Paperback and Pulp Fiction Collection includes over 30,000 pulp fiction books and magazines. A selection [...]

I’m on a total psychedelia groove at the moment—again—so expect more posts like this. The iTunes playlist is stuck in 1965–69 and doesn’t exclude moments of kitsch psych such as Incense and Peppermints by the Strawberry Alarm Clock, their debut single and a big hit from 1967. Thoroughly infectious and redolent enough of the era [...]

top left: Bob Pepper (1969); right: David Johnston (1974).
bottom left: Mati Klarwein (1972); right: Gervasio Gallardo (1972).
I wrote about the classic line of fantasy paperbacks in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series last year as part of the post about Bob Pepper’s illustration:
It was the success of the publication of The Lord of the Rings in [...]

Contrasts in Hi-Fi by Bob Sharples.
A Tribute to Alex Steinweiss
The Creator of the Album Cover
Robert Berman Gallery announces an exhibition of Alex Steinwiss. Original album covers, paintings, and collages by Steinweiss, and special tribute by selected artists. Co-curated by Kevin Reagan and Greg Escalante.
In 1939, a 23 year-old graphic designer revolutionized [...]

Electric Funk by Jimmy McGriff (1969).
Okay, so the graphical similarity between Jimmy McGriff’s album sleeve and Nick Drake’s, which appeared a year later, is probably coincidence but I couldn’t help noting it. Electric Funk was released on the Blue Note Records label which was highly regarded for its sleeve design so it wouldn’t be [...]

Previous posts about illustrators.

• Frans De Geetere’s illustrated Maldoror

• Jugend, 1897

• The art of Melchior Lechter, 1865–1937

• Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration

• Jugend, 1896

• Keim & Czeschka’s Nibelungen

• Les Papillons, métamorphoses terrestres des peuples de l’air

• Jugend Magazine revisited

• Heinrich Vogeler’s illustrated Wilde

• Peter Edwards times two

• Sinister silhouettes

• More science fiction covers

• The art of [...]

Previous posts about book covers or cover design.

• Contemporary bookbindings

• Sherbert and Sodomy

• Margaret Armstrong book designs

• Bradley does Beardsley

• Peter Edwards times two

• More science fiction covers

• The Art of Fontana Modern Masters

• Nabokov book covers

• Netherlands decorated books

• March of the Penguins

• Science fiction and fantasy covers

• The art of Ed Emshwiller, 1925–1990

• [...]

Hypnotique by Martin Denny (1959).
In Waikiki, where I live whenever I get the chance, a bistro known as the Daggar Bar and its accompanying Bora Bora Lounge has for some time been the mecca of people who enjoy a new type of music. I’m one of the gang that gathers there to hear the fresh, [...]

I spent much of the summer of 1983 playing games on a very primitive ZX Spectrum computer while listening to the first couple of Street Sounds Electro compilations. Those mix albums were among the best releases that year and remain highly sought after, seeing as they’ve never been reissued on CD.

The musical reputation of the [...]

My battered 1973 Gollancz hardback. Cover illustration by David Smee.
It may be all Harry Potter starter homes crowding the imaginative landscape these days but the lush fields of the early Seventies bred a peculiar brand of wizardry and wild romance, something I was reminded of recently by reviews of a new compilation of psychedelic [...]

Forever Changes by Love (1967).
Art by Bob Pepper, design by William S Harvey.
Following yesterday’s post about Philip K Dick covers (and Erik Davis’s appraisal of the DAW cover), I decided to check out Bob Pepper’s work a bit more and it quickly became obvious I should have joined the dots with this particular artist years [...]

650 Philip K Dick covers here although no thumbnails for ease of browsing. Interesting seeing how many publishers have tried to bracket Dick as a typical science fiction writer when many of his books are marginal sf at best. Then there’s the curiosity of the translated title, Substance Mort for A Scanner Darkly being [...]