Favourite Book Covers

[aubrey]

I suppose it helps if you like the book as well...

Anyway, here are a couple of favourites of mine:





This may seem like a generic fantasy cover: but it captures the atmosphere of the book pretty well: dying sun, decaying city. The only thing wrong with it is the colour of his cloak: which is supposed to be fuligin, the colour that is darker than black; also, the sword shown appears to go to a point, but it shouldn't.

[Weyland]

Jan 15, 2011 18:48:14 GMT aubrey said:

I suppose it helps if you like the book as well...

You could say that, Aub. GREAT thread idea. Here are a couple off the top of my head. Two of my alltime favourite books . . .



I must've read that book at least 20 times. Love it. The chapter There Will Come Soft Rains moves me to tears every time. Bradbury is one of the few writers who can match, and even surpass, John Steinbeck in the descriptive writing department. And his plots are always intriguing, not to say terrifying.

As with so many SF covers, this one bears little if any resemblance to the "reality" of the plot, but I love it anyway. I still have my dad's copy, minus the cover ironically. Thank God for the web. (I've printed a replacement, and keep it with the book, in an airtight plastic envelope.)



Ursula's best work. I read this one now and again too. Do I need to say that the cover bears little relationship to the plot, except for the snow?

Eerie -- almost Bradburyish -- that it echoes one of yours, Aub, in at least two ways. A nice coincidence.

Edit: Three ways.

[Weyland]

There Will Come Soft Rains by Sara Teasdale

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pool singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

[Weyland]

Can we have posters as well, Aub?

I have a version of this one . . .



F'kin' ace!

[aubrey]

Oh, aye.

I've seen that picture; good one (the film's good as well; much better that you'd imagine, really: with a wonderful sense of wonder bit, when they're looking around the aliens' machinery: a shot from above, where you see the tiny human figures, and realise how massive the whole thing is.


I did have a book cover that I really liked, though I never read the book. I think I found the cover and nothing else tucked inside another book. It was an August Derleth Cthulhu book, and it is the only cover I ever framed (I should have it somewhere - I couldn't find it online).

I doubt that the book itself was very good; I once saw something about Derleth that said he was a mediocre writer, but an editor of genius. I know the Lovecraft stories that he finished off were not brilliant - the last paragraph always in italics, and often ending with the phrase, "...and great beasts that fought and tore!"

But we have him to thank for a lot of stuff - Lovecraft, Ramsay Campbell: and plenty of others whose names I have quite forgott.

[Alpha Hooligan]

Great thread!

Any book cover by Frank Frazetta (he is was master, all of his artwork is fucking sublime...one of the greatest artists who ever lived). The energy, dynamism and sheer viscerial impact he brought to the table was unequaled and unmatched IMO. I've never looked at a Frazetta picture and not been thrown around by it's sheer awesomeness.

Swamp Demon


Death Dealer


A Princess of Mars



AH

[Alpha Hooligan]

Other book covers wot float me boat...

Assassin of Gor (Tarl Cabot and his war-tarn messing peoples shit up in a full frontal assault)


War of the Wing Men (great cover, poor book)


The Stone God Awakens (cracking book, deserved a better cover, although it's ok)


The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane (because evil must be confronted and destroyed whenever it shows itself)



AH

[Weyland]

Jan 18, 2011 16:33:32 GMT Alpha Hooligan said:

Great thread!

Any book cover by Frank Frazetta (he is was master, all of his artwork is fucking sublime...one of the greatest artists who ever lived). The energy, dynamism and sheer viscerial impact he brought to the table was unequaled and unmatched IMO. I've never looked at a Frazetta picture and not been thrown around by it's sheer awesomeness.

AH

Those lasses -- they'll catch their death of cold. They should put on a nice woolly liberty bodice and some socks. That should be enough.

Not to forget Boris Vallejo . . .



[Note that considerable self-restraint was exercised in my choice.]

[Weyland]

Jan 17, 2011 18:11:03 GMT aubrey said:

I did have a book cover that I really liked, though I never read the book. I think I found the cover and nothing else tucked inside another book. It was an August Derleth Cthulhu book, and it is the only cover I ever framed (I should have it somewhere - I couldn't find it online).

Wouldn't be this one, would it, Aub?



Or this . . .

[Alpha Hooligan]

Technically, Boris is an excellent artist, almost photographic detail (his wifes work is also superb), but Franks work has a gritty, dirty rawness about it.

I used to have several big hardback collections of Frazetta's, Vallejo's and Chris Achilleos's work, I'm not entirely sure where they went.


AH

[Weyland]

The original Foundation Trilogy . . .
(Though not the original covers.)


Hari Seldon


The First Citizen


Arkady Darell

(Not sure about the artists, but I suspect they're all Michael Whelan. The last one definitely is.)

[Alpha Hooligan]

Chris Foss used to turn out great sci-fi book covers...his ships always looked really functional and realistic to me.






AH

[aubrey]

Ah, Chris Foss - the beardy bloke in The Joy of Sex. I always liked his spaceships - really futuristic, but also ancient.



No, Weyland, the Derleth wasn't one of those: it was a solo book, no Lovecraft in it, except for the Cthulhu idea.

Two more favourites:



This one does sum up the feel of the book very well.



Science fiction stories, some about cats (I do love Fritz Leiber. His dad was in the film of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, you know (unless it was Fritz himself; they had the same name).

[Patrick]

Jan 18, 2011 17:09:11 GMT Weyland said:

The original Foundation Trilogy . . .
(Though not the original covers.)


Hari Seldon


The First Citizen


Arkady Darell

(Not sure about the artists, but I suspect they're all Michael Whelan. The last one definitely is.)

I had fantastic poster in asimilar vein to those. It portrayed a "alien" car race with reptile-like cars running on a track that was suspended in mid air. They all had vicious spikes emerging from each wheel. Very eerie . There were towers in the background rather like the top pic there.

[Weyland]

Jan 18, 2011 20:37:17 GMT Patrick said:

I had fantastic poster in asimilar vein to those. It portrayed a "alien" car race with reptile-like cars running on a track that was suspended in mid air. They all had vicious spikes emerging from each wheel. Very eerie . There were towers in the background rather like the top pic there.

Don't know it, Pat. I suspect Aub has a much broader vision of SF & Fantasy than I do.

The towers are on the planet Trantor, the Capital of the Galactic Empire, close to the centre of the Galaxy. Totally built-up. No surface which isn't man-made except the gardens of the Imperial Palace. Trantor is a key element in the plot of the three books comprising the Foundation Trilogy. I could not praise that Trilogy enough.

[aubrey]

Me neither, Patrick. Sorry (it does seem familiar; but those towers are on a lot of books).