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Would SF get more respect if its book covers were more sedate?
Submitted by Capt. Xerox on May 12, 2009 - 9:41pm.
I wonder if science fiction might have acquired a better reputation if publishers had abandoned the garish pulp art covers early on and used understated designs as exhibited by this nice collection of Penguin SF book covers.
One of the books in that gallery is George Orwell's 1984, which is not only a great science fiction story, but a literary classic as well. The story about how Orwell wrote the book is almost as compelling as the novel itself.
No doubt, you've got a copy of the book from some old high school English class that is sitting in a box somewhere. Perhaps some day, someone will acquire that box of moldy old castoffs and write a blog about it.
If you love books and like talking with other book lovers about them, you might want to check out Book Army, an absolutely delightful social networking site for bookworms of all types, not just SF fans.
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I wonder if science fiction
I wonder if science fiction might have acquired a better reputation if publishers had abandoned the garish pulp art covers early on and used understated designs.
As a lover of the magnificent book cover paintings that have been created by the likes of Donato Giancola, Bob Eggleton, Michael Whelan, Frank Frazetta, Stephan Martiniere and so many others, I say :
to hell with that.
Many of their paintings are true masterpieces and it would have been a great loss if they had never been commissioned.
Love the art
I hear you. I love science fiction art and wouldn't have my book covers any other way, but the artists you cite are more modern names and their works are tame compared to some of the garish stuff that I was thinking about from the 30s and 40s. A lot of the stuff from that time was also quite good, but even more of it was lurid crap.
C.X.
I think it would get more
Now put a classy pic of Saturn from Cassini on the cover with a restrained modern font and layout and you've got a winner. Simple is better. Creative Review has an article about a dynamic series of SF cover art that would get anyone's attention.
Lurid Crap? You're Nuts
The copy of 1984 you show as an example was published in 1954, so if we take that as a point of comparison then are you trying to say that Richard Powers was painting garish pulp covers? That's absurd! If you are referring to the 30s and 40s, you may be right to conclude that the imagery of BEMs, rayguns, and Earle Bergey amazons with metal brassieres became the MEME of Science Fiction cover art, for better or worse. But please don't trash the work of Edd Cartier, Virgil Finlay, Hannes Bok, etc with your imagined lurid trash. You're only contributing to the popular perception of art that was fostered by Science Fiction pulps and paperbacks as trash, when in fact it included some of the more fantastic and talented illustrators of the 20th Century! Should Time magazine have dumped Boris Artzybasheff in favor of Wall Street Journal style hedcuts? I don't think so! Nor shoud anyone lament the wildly creative art of the SF pulps and paperbacks.
Lurid crap
For every Virgil Finlay and Norman Saunders, there was some nameless hack dashing off cover paintings on deadline. We look back at that time as some sort of Golden Age, but there was just as much crap as great art on those covers. The pretty coffee-table books with the old-fashioned paintings tend to show us the good stuff. You could easily fill up a couple more books with the art that isn't worth remembering. The same is true of the stories inside. We all know the famous names that are now considered to be masters of the genre, but there were a lot of forgotten writers providing filler at a few cents a word.
I collect pulp magazines and original illustration art from those mags, so I'm hardly the sort of person who would knock it, but I think we have to apply Sturgeon's Law to that era and my original point was how would the science fiction genre be perceived today if the artistic treatment of its book covers had evolved along different lines.
C.X.
SF covers and "respect"
Looked at the entire Penguin cover gallery ... and almost nodded off. The cover for "Triffids" was completely devoid of the emotional impact of the early 1960s Fawcett edition. The rest redefined the term "lame." I simply can't imagine buying an SF novel without Lehr, Freas, Powers, Burns, Martiniere (God, this guy is good), Foss, Berkey, Schoenherr, Gaughn, Emshwiller, Whelan or the scores of others whose word adorns SF novels.
And why the hell does SF need more respect than it already has? Personally, I like the ghetto and always have. However, the mundanes laugh at us geeks and then troop down to the multiplex with the girlfriends that us nerds are not supposed to be able to get and drop $10 apiece (not counting popcorn) on the latest EFX-laden blockbusters, then hang with their homeys and play Halo 3. SF owns pop culture, especially if you consider movies based on comics as a part of the mix (which I normally don't, but what the heck...). Respect, re-schmect. Give me a cover with a starship's guns, engines or both blazing and a cool planet, galaxy, mothership in the background and I'm happy. Give the mainstream stuff to the mundanes who need something to read while they're on vacation or in the hospital.
Respectable covers
Looks like you stirred up a tempest in a teapot with this one Cap. We sure seem to have opinions about both the respectability of SF (or lack thereof) and our covers.
I learned a LONG time ago that the art on the cover often had little or nothing to the with the actual novels, but then again I had to actually read the novels in the first place to know that. So I too have often wondered what the average non-fan must think about those lurid covers, and more importantly, what they thought of SF accordingly.
As much as I love those covers myself, I have to admit that they do not make a case for the contents. But I wouldn't have it any other way. Besides, I'm not all that sure that 'tame' covers would necessarily bring more readers. In a way, it's kind of a test. You gotta have a bit of a sense of adventure to be curious to read a book with a wild cover. And that's usually what SF delivers, ... adventure.
~ Lazarus ~
New Gollancz covers
Gollancz must be looking for respectability with their new covers. They are black and white and feature various bits of cut up paper artistically arranged. The designer explains what he was trying to accomplish with them.
I can't say that they look like science fiction novels, but I do like them. I imagine they would appeal to non-SF fans as well which means they just might pick up one of these books to read it. Who knows, they might even become SF fans which is a good thing. No?
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