I was lucky to spend some time with Whelan during WorldCon '07 and attend his seminars on painitng methods and styles. Interesting guy and very approachable. In fact I've got some pics of him at home somehwere..
Couple of Ace "smallies" I picked up early in my collecting career. Emsh does the Nowlan for sure (his name's on the cover) but can't find a name on the Simak. Think it Emsh, too, though.
bigger here: goodies at thePlenty.net: a Robin Hobb (Megan Lindholm) fansite
Both covers made me pick the books up (in the case of the second I had to read through several other volumes to get to that book ). Sorry but I fit the mold of stick a dragon on thefront......
My favorite piece of sf artwork, the prize of my collection. I know it's a magazine, not a book, but I hope you'll cut me some slack. The super great Frank R. Paul, of course. Read every work, even the ads. Radio was big back then, the computer of the 20s. Just about every ad dealt with radios or radio courses. Radio was so important that in one story, when the characters watched television, that's just what they did. Watched it. If they wanted to hear what was going on, they turned up the volume on the radio. As for the cover story, excellent. Very surprised it hasn't been anthologized (that I'm aware of). Only fault is (SPOILER!) it's a dream story. Other than that, good solid twenties sf.
I can imagine. We tend to dismiss the value "small change" used to have living in the inflated times we do. When comics jumped from twelve cents to fifteen cents in 1969, those extra three cents meant I had to drop a couple titles to make up for it. When they went from ten to twelve cents around 1962 the editor at DC printed a big long apology, blaming the rise on increasing costs of paper, ink, etc. Now prices are raised without notice or apology.
One of my favorite covers is from Cuckoo's Egg by C.J. Cherryh. It's by Michael Whelan and is (or at least was) on display at the Science Fiction Museum in Seattle. I believe it's an acrylic. Suffice to say that the original painting is quite arresting. I wish I had a larger copy to share.
Gee, dask - now I feel like a perv what with the Boyd cover.
He did seem to be hung up on sexual matters as an author. The Pollinators of Eden concerns the seduction of a woman by a plant... Andromeda Gun is a sort of bizarre love triangle... in The Rakehells of Heaven our first meeting with the heroine is a description of her vagina.
I found it all quite liberating when I read them. I got the Gorgon Festival on inter-loan from the library - had a few looks as you can imagine. I think Boyd's reputation has suffered badly from a run of books in the middle part of his career that just aren't any good - apart from GF, The IQ Merchant and Sex And The High Command all appear to have been badly botched, despite having some great ideas. But his first four and last two are classics for me.
PS - that Air Wonder Stories cover is fabulous. Do we have a jealous smiley? I'll try this :jealous:
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