Skiffy

October 2, 2010 12:16 AM

Skiffy - a huge collection of classic science fiction book covers, featuring the likes of Chris Foss, Bruce Pennington and John Schoenherr.
posted by Artw (15 comments total)

I feel the need to crossreference this with Good Show Sir.

And then revel in the AWESOME.
posted by Katemonkey at 12:59 AM on October 2, 2010

More Science Fiction book covers from the Book Cover Archive. [prev]
posted by netbros at 1:24 AM on October 2, 2010

Strange - I'd almost completely forgotten about Pennington but it's clear that he was actually quite brilliant. His site has lots of treasures and is nicely navigable.

It really depresses me how awful and cheap British SF cover design is these days - people like Pennington and Peter Goodfellow created work that really enhanced the text. Now the cover is just seen as a vehicle to carry the title and the price.
posted by specialbrew at 2:41 AM on October 2, 2010

Engage second-hand and remainder bookshops flashbacks!
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 3:48 AM on October 2, 2010 [2 favorites]

I love Pennington's stuff; by far the best covers for the Dune books (though now I really want a copy of The Illustrated Dune).
His cover for Gene Wolfe's Shadow of the Torturer is stunning.
And 'Patterns of Chaos', what a cover blurb: "HE WAS POINT-MAN, VICTIM, AND HELPLESS PUPPET ALL ROLLED INTO ONE, UNDER THE ABSOLUTE DOMINANCE OF A SADISTIC BITCH-GODDESS WHOSE VOICE SPOKE WITHIN HIS MIND, WHO SAW WITH HIS EYES - AND WHO COULD PUNISH HIM UTTERLY."

Anyway, there goes my afternoon, curse you ArtW.
posted by SyntacticSugar at 5:14 AM on October 2, 2010

Lordy this is cool. Thanks for that great link. It'll keep me busy for quite a while.
posted by Guy_Inamonkeysuit at 5:56 AM on October 2, 2010

and on the other end of the spectrum of sci-fi book covers, there's always Good Show Sir.
posted by xbonesgt at 7:14 AM on October 2, 2010

This one.
posted by Superfrankenstein at 7:17 AM on October 2, 2010

This one is so familiar to me. I swear I had a book with this on the cover, but I can't remember what book it was. Anyone?
posted by vibrotronica at 9:17 AM on October 2, 2010

This one is so familiar to me. I swear I had a book with this on the cover, but I can't remember what book it was. Anyone?

I think it was in the Harry Harrison book stuffed with robot art, Mechanismo. But I think it turned up in more than one 'slap a load of sf illustrations together with some text and pretend it's some sort of future encyclopaedia' type book
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:26 AM on October 2, 2010

Podkayne of Mars, I think I love you.
posted by Joe Beese at 9:40 AM on October 2, 2010

vibtronica, I am pretty sure I saw it in one of these, further to fearfulsymmetry's comment.
posted by everichon at 10:04 AM on October 2, 2010

That answers my question.
posted by wobh at 12:37 PM on October 2, 2010

Funnily enough, this is an accurate depiction of how I learned about prime numbers in elementary school.
posted by Uppity Pigeon #2 at 12:43 PM on October 2, 2010

Used to spend ages staring at Chris Foss's covers for Asimov novels when I was a child. I was inspired by the fact that it was possible for someone to paint nothing but insane, imaginary spaceships for a living. Then I realised that although it was possible, that someone was Chris Foss. Still beautiful, though.
posted by Grangousier at 12:57 PM on October 2, 2010