What is it about a cover that grabs you? Maybe it’s a glimpse into a fantastical land, or a style of art you’ve never seen before, or a figure on the cover who is particularly compelling (or hilarious). We asked you to share the SFF book covers dynamic, unexpected, and baffling enough that they’ve remained imprinted in your memories decades after you first picked them up off the shelf.
“The trade paperbacks of Kim Stanley Robinson’s [Three Californias trilogy],” said @rakdaddy. “Mid-90s, I think. Beautiful impressionist paintings.”
@impribable shared the 50th anniversary edition cover for The Two Towers—that’s 1987, for those keeping score—”b/c even at 12 I knew there was no way Legolas looked like that.”
Jack Gaughan’s cover for Second Stage Lensmen by E.E. “Doc” Smith stuck with @dcrwrites, who “bought it when I was a kid and loved ever since”:
“James Gurney‘s cover to Tim Powers’ The Stress of Her Regard,” said @FlyingTrilobite. “Read it back before I knew who Gurney was.”
“The Michael Whelan covers from the Dragonriders of Pern series!” said @CarlyASilver:
In addition to singing Whelan’s praises, @Peter_Fries also called out John Berkey‘s Star Wars book covers:
@D_Libris mentioned the cover of Terry Pratchett’s Night Watch, which parodies a famous Rembrandt portrait:
“The older Royal Assassin cover with mostly shirtless Fitz howling at the moon,” tweeted author Laura Lam. “Teenage me particularly liked it.”
“Dragonlance by far,” tweeted @john_zeleznik. “Larry Elmore is an icon.”
@River_Vox suggested John Christopher’s The White Mountains: “My first sci-fi book, discovered in the elementary school library.” The cover is by Roger Hane, who also illustrated the covers of several Narnia books:
@FredKiesche tweeted, “Bantam covers for S.R. Delany, 1970’s, when Dhalgren came out.”
@hoopmanjh tweeted about Thomas Canty‘s cover for the first U.S. hardcover edition of Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner:
“Anything with a Chris Foss spaceship on it,” said @Gollancz.
Did any of these covers strike a chord with you? Be sure to add your own favorite SFF covers in the comments!
Hahaha, I had that Two Towers cover. I totally forgot what it looked like, but my first versions of Hobbit/LotR were those editions. Oh man, that is funny. I really liked the Hobbit version though, Gollum was pretty creepy looking!
I said this in the ‘SFF covers that made you pick up the book’ post, but Whelan’s Martian Chronicles is one of my favorite covers ever, hands down :)
Speaking of Asimov covers, and (@1/Lisamarie) of Michael Whelan, I was given this edition of Robots and Empire one Christmas as a teen… I thought (and still think) it really stokes the sense of wonder!
Anything ever published by DAW. Particularly the Elric of Melnibone books.
Truly it was a dark, dark time for Tolkien covers (and made me all the more determined to hold on to my paperbacks that had Tolkien’s own illustrations on the covers).
Does it count if you still have them? If so:
My introduction to Clarke. A good place to start with a dramatic Peter Jones image.
I know it seems inherently wrong to have a Boris Vallejo without a barbarian warrior (and optional leg-clutching wench) but this one adorns a favourite Pohl novel.
A serene and very blue view of Gethen from Tim White.
Finally, a surreal Darrell K. Sweet (it makes sense in context).
I was a hormone addled teenager.
/My mom asked me if I was reading any dirty books. “No,” I lied, thinking about my Gor novels. “Why do you ask that?”
She then held up my copy of ‘Friday.’
“Oh,” I deadpanned. My family laughed.
Michael Whelan’s cover of Dragon Prince (Melanie Rawn) is the one that did it for me, that made me pay attention to the who the artist was (also, I remember seeing that cover and other awesome art in Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell II cd booklet / liner notes)
The one that first got me into SF was when I saw the Geary cover on the original Scribners edition of RED PLANET that I came across in my elementary school’s library
Hmm, memorable covers.
The whole series had such an extraordinary mixture of convention and bizzare.
Michael Whelan’s work on Tad William’s To Green Angel Tower was magnificent, and I really liked that they flipped the cover around on each part when they released the paperback as two volumes.
Speaking of Red Planet, this is the cover of my dad’s copy (which I remember reading cover-to-cover one summer afternoon around 2nd grade?).
One jumped immediately to mind for me:
So much mystery there…
@11 – Yep, that’s one from my father’s collection as well. Remember that cover vividly.
My favorite though was Have Spacesuit, Will Travel.
I love all of the Ace covers from those Heinlein juveniles. (And was surprised a few years ago when I found out those editions actually dated from the early 1970s, and so were even younger than I was …)
The Ballantine Lord of the Rings covers by Barbara Remington. One painting across three books.
How could you forget the Grok cover of Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strang Land???
Any of the Stephen Youll covers from Asimov’s Robot and/or Foundation series. Very engaging!
Also The Anything Box by Zenna Henderson
I have always been partial to Croatian editions of Bujold’s Vorkosigan saga, all done by Esad T. Ribic, with the one for Vor game probably being my favourite.
@17 That cover is by Michael Whelan, not Steven Youll
These two hooked my on Sci Fi as a kid. I would stare at them and try to imagine the stories, but didn;t have money to buy them.
Bruce Pennington’s covers for Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun
Just look at that….
And Pauline Ellison’s covers for Ursula K. LeGuin’s Wizard of Earthsea trilogy!
Love them so. I guess I really want to see more illustrative covers again…
[well, that didn’t work.]
The Lord of the Rings, Ballantine paperback edition, 1965. You know the ones.
I still have them.
Thank you Tor and @river_vox. I read the white mountains as an elementary school kid too, but I have always been unable to recall the title or author. The story stuck with me, though. So nice to see it here and be instantly transported back in time.
I love those Pennington covers for Wolfe — I hadn’t seen them before. I’m also partial to the Don Maitz covers — those are on my copies.
@25: The Bruce Pennington The Shadow of the Torturer painting is Gene Wolfe’s favourite piece of cover art from his books, so much so that he wrote it into The Urth of the New Sun: http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0010/0119.shtml. We’ve had the great Foss revival with Hardware: hopefully it will be Pennington’s turn soon:
This beautiful Elantris cover.
And then, my personal favourite of all time. Cover Title: Trantorian Dream,
Pennington’s covers were amazing, and reused surprisingly often. This one from Dune originally I believe crops up all a few times, I have it as the below
And here it is again
I’ve personally always preferred the UK covers to the US ones.
Ian Miller had a great style for Michael Scott Rohan’s Winter of the World series – this one was The Forge in the Forest.
and also in Bob Shaw’s books
Steve Weston pretty much defined Pern’s dragons for me, as Whelan did for the US.
Impractical but stylish as hell.
And Geoff Taylor *was* paperback fantasy for much of the 80s – he did David Eddings, Raymond Feist, Jack Vance, Fritz Leiber, Jonathan Wylie, Katherine Kerr.
@20 (extremely red-faced) – you are correct! Both geniuses in my opinion, but I did, in fact, mix them up. Here’s one by Stephen Youll.
The definition of badass – and why is this not still in print!!!?
Can I list an entire series? And immediately, most of you know I mean the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series from the late ’60s to early ’70s. I have bought copies of these books just for their covers. I have bought copies of books *that I already own* just for these covers. My list of illustrator-saints include Bob Pepper, Gervasio Gallardo, Frank Pape, Ian Millar, Sheryl Slavitt, David Johnston, Donna Violetti, Ray Cruz, and Keith Henderson. I almost hesitate to post a link that will invariably eat up a lot of people’s time, but here goes: Ballantine Adult Fantasy covers
sdowney (@15): I knew those covers by Barbara Remington for the longest time, but I never learned to appreciate them until I did see them as one continuous artwork and caught the embedded “journey” aspect of her painting.
Gene Szafran did a number of striking covers in the 1970’s. Some of the best airbrush work I’ve seen.
Sadly, Szafran reportedly came down with multiple sclerosis in the late 1970’s, ending his career as an artist. He died in 2011.
Lord Foul’s bane – all of the covers in the series were pretty cool.
Any of the artwork by Michael Whelan that has appeared on scifi/fantasy books is just fantastic.
@7/JAWolf: I was right there with you re: the Friday cover, although I didn’t actually own the book – I just looked really, really hard at the thumbnail of it in my issue of Xignals newsletter from the local Waldenbooks. (Anyone else remember Xignals? I loved that thing!)
Another cover I saw first in Xignals and was always intrigued by, although I still haven’t read the book, lo these decades later – another great one from Mr. Whelan:
Yes, the Ballantine Adult Fantasy covers are wonderful, and so is the Michael Whelan cover of The Martian Chronicles. Another edition of The Martian Chronicles has a superb cover (and inside illustrations) by Ian Miller.
There are several wonderful covers of paperbacks by Ray Bradbury, whose artists I can’t name, and which I lack the time and skill to post, but which I think appeared on editions from the sixties or seventies: The October Country, The Illustrated Man, The Day it Rained Forever, The Golden Apples of the Sun. (Maybe others will know which ones I’m referring to.)
A superb Asimov cover is Robot Dreams, which Asimov also admired. He said that the cover illustration by Ralph McQuarrie humanized robots in a way he had never seen before.
Anything by Kinuko Craft, but this was my first exposure to her art so it has a special place in my heart.
I love the covers that Stephen Bradbury did for my favourite series, the ‘Saga of the Exiles’ by Julian May – I love the way he paints mountains. The covers for her Galactic Milieu series are great too.
I liked a cover David Cherry did for one of his sister’s books with her featured in character. Alfred Bester had some good covers and Jo Walton’s current trilogy has ended up with remarkably fortunate covers after a false start.
My first and forever thought however is the Winston endpapers.
I know, I know, I know. The cover doesn’t always tell you what’s actually in the book and we shouldn’t pick up a book just because of its cover. THIS cover by Jim Burns, of the woman with silver eyes walking through a time portal, made me pick up the book 27 years ago. I still have it.
And THIS cover of the Earth-goddess who would ensnare your soul, ensnared my attention:
the Siudmak cover for the paperback edition of Return of the King has always been a fav of mine
The POV, the blue lettering.
These are the covers that young teen me was completely drawn to:
#16, you’re not the only one who loves this book:
Another one I remember from the paperback spinners in the public library:
Not too much, if any, media tie-in fiction have shown up in these discussions (maybe because, by the nature of the beast, they only rarely present us with really new visions?), but I do love the McQuarrie cover for Splinter of the Mind’s Eye.
Did McQuarrie ever provide cover art for original sf or fantasy books? Have I missed some in these discussions? (Apologies in advance, if so!)
44, ClarkEMyers: “My first and forever thought however is the Winston endpapers.“
Here you go (from Wikipedia’s entry on Winston Books):
These are recent, but struck me. I don’t know a lot of vintage SFF art, since I’m relatively new, but these stuck out:
The entire trilogy, really.
And:
@52: Indeed he did. Some highlights:
This collection from the iconic Del Rey series includes the classic “With Folded Hands …”.
This book is the sequel to Dragon’s Egg, a hard SF novel featuring life on the surface of a neutron star.
A pair of covers for Asimov’s robot retrospectives (I have both of these).
Finally, another Williamson, this time for the final volume of his collected stories.
I remember walking into a drugstore in Tucson, AZ, in, what, 1979, seeing Splinter of the Mind’s Eye on a paperback rack and it was like the heavens opened up and choirs of angels were singing, “New Star Wars! Hosannah in the highest!”
Martin Springett for Guy Gavriel Kay’s The Fionavar Tapestry. Book 1
Book 2
Book 3
So many great memories from seeing old covers I’d forgotten about..
Here’s one I just thought of. The execution isn’t all that great IMHO, but the image of a wizard unexpectedly in someone’s modern kitchen drinking a beer is arresting. Even better, it’s an event that happens very early in the story, so the cover teased the story perfectly.
“@@@@@impribable shared the 50th anniversary edition cover for The Two Towers—that’s 1987, for those keeping score.” Um, no: The Two Towers was published in 1954. It’s not the same as The Hobbit, and you know that. Come on!
I always liked this Jim Gurney cover and the novel with the most frustrating ending in the world!
City by CliffordD. Simak
This early cover for Sundiver is one of my favorites, guaranteed to make me pick up the book again whenever I see it. Even the text adds to the effect IMHO. (None of the newer covers I’ve seen do anything for me.)
I wish I knew how to insert pictures into these little text boxes, as it would be worth 1K words. The covers I would share wouldn’t be book covers, they would be the cover paintings from Analog magazines from the early to mid 1960s, when I was just starting to outgrow the old Tom Swift books in the basement, and looking for something more interesting. Kelly Freas, John Schoenherr, et al, led me into some great reading!
Robert Gould’s covers for Michael Moorcock’s Elric series (Ace Books), conceived of by Terri Windling when she was fantasy editor there!
@63: To insert pictures.
1: First, find the picture you want to insert, say, the December 1963 cover of Analog by John Schoenherr, depicting the first part of the Frank Herbert serial “Dune World”.
2: Copy the link
).
3: Above the comment box is a row of icons, beginning with B I S: the icon furthest to the right, next to the broken chain for remove link, is a small picture which seems to show some mountains and the sun. This is insert/edit image.
4: Click on insert/edit image. A new box appears. Paste the link you copied into source. You can write a description here or in the text box. Proportions are automatically constrained.
5: Click OK and the image should appear:
Thanks SchuylerH for the explanation, and also for posting one of those great Analog covers!
One of my favorite stories and a captivating cover.
All the John Howe covers for Robin Hobb’s books. Particularly The Mad Ship. That haunted me!
I actually only discovered Robin’s books through John’s art! So I have this art to thank for introducing me to my favourite fantasy series of all time!
As important as the Dragonlance novel covers were, some of the adventure covers were just as important. I mean this one still makes me stop and gawk.
Agree on Pennington, Stephen Bradbury, Michael Whelan and several others mentioned here.
The Whelan cover of Exile’s Gate is one that stayed with me:
And I love this cover for Richard Cowper’s Road to Corlay, by Mick van Houten:
(I don’t know if these links will work; sorry if they don’t…)
Oh, yes, Friday. Heinlein’s free-love dirty old man period but not so far out there as to be utterly unbelievable.
…now where was I?
Oh yes. I always loved this cover of Jack Vance’s Lyonesse, the trade format when it was a single book, not a trilogy.
And original cover of the Gunslinger trade (Michael Whelan).
Before I could read beyond Dr. Seuss level, this cover, spread across three books, caught my eye on my dad’s shelf. I loved it and was a little frightened of it at the same time. It was so fantastical. As my reading got better, I told my dad I wanted to read those books. He told me I had to read The Hobbit first. I did, and then I read LOTR over and over and over again. I kinda never returned the trilogy to my dad’s shelf. It has been with me through most of my travels. The covers are falling off and a bit crumbly now. I confessed recently to filching dad’s Tolkien books. He smiled and told me to keep them.
@MattDiamond – Loved that cover.
An ACE paperback, San Diego Lightfoot Sue is one of my favorite covers by David Heffernan. I saw a print of the original in the 80’s and decided it was too much. The next day I went back for it and it was gone.
A Spaceship for the King – The Original Analog cover and the DAW Paperback: – Kelly Freas. Teasing the story