II would like to mention that a very interesting and well-written book on “1970s Science Fiction Art” has just been published. Some of you may be planning on getting one right away. Unfortunately, many people will click on something else. Before doing so, please pause for a moment.
Adam Roberts, an erudite British novelist and literary scholar, championed the prominence of science fiction and fantasy (often ignored by literary scholars) in the modern imagination, as evidenced by the extraordinary influence of Tolkien’s works. I have been advocating for a while. Star Wars and its ever-expanding legacy. I would also like to add that there has been a huge increase in “horror” (considered a part of fantasy) in recent fiction, especially in the last five years or so. Some of these are “straight horror”, but many are different types of fiction in which “horror” elements play an important role.
so what? Well, even if you’re not a long-time reader of science fiction (like me) and have seen a fair amount of it on screen, books like the one I recently picked up by Adam Lowe You might want to pick it up. Timeless: Science fiction art of the 1970s (Actually, the subtitle should read “1970s and 1980s”). It offers a kind of cultural anthropology through “a visual history of the spaceships, alien landscapes, cryptozoology, and industrial machinery of his 1970s science fiction art.” The book is superbly produced and features a collection of illustrations and cover art from his science fiction novels of the time, making it ideally organized for browsing. It is organized into subsections of individual themes, allowing you to jump around freely without losing track of the thread. I was unaware of Mr. Lowe’s work until I came across this fascinating book. “Curating his popular multi-platform 70s sci-fi art feed and delivering the best retro sci-fi art to his 100,000+ Instagram followers @70sscifi. He lives in Seattle .”
Even though he takes his scholarship lightly, Lowe has an encyclopedic knowledge of his subject. We know from the beginning that we are in the hands of a writer who could have made this book longer, even at the expense of accessibility. Of course, taste factors are also taken into account in his image selection. There is a style of illustration that is not often introduced here. One of my favorite paperback covers of his from the 1970s and his 1980s is his Barclay Shaw cover of CJ Cherryh. merchant’s luck (Published by DAW Books in 1982). In it, a slim, dark-haired young woman in close-fitting silver clothing stands by a spaceship’s control panel, brandishing a blaster and in an action pose as if confronting an intruder. ing. Her face is framed by stars visible through the back window. Lowe has little interest in this kind of human-scale, quasi-realistic imagery. (It would have been nice if the index included not only illustrators but also authors of representative works, but it is not possible to cover everything.) Lowe consciously creates “dark” images and images with a strong sense of the absurd. (e.g. Ray Feibush’s cover of the British edition of Isaac Asimov rings of saturn [1974], In it, a ringed planet is represented as a giant skull with a sickly toothy grin), and, along with the most haunting, a giant “spaceship” is a 70s Even now that I’m halfway through it, it still leaves me in awe.
I’ve been thinking about the title of this book for a while. These are by no means images of a “world beyond time.” As the subtitle and main text of this book suggest, they are images of imagined futures (more or less seriously “imagined”) rooted in a particular era and a particular “industry.” Decades later, Rowe’s own extremely knowledgeable text reveals. For example, it would be interesting to compare the images collected here with book covers and other images from 2010 to today.
Science fiction and fantasy readers who still have lots of books from decades ago may be inspired by Mr. Lowe’s account to pull books off their shelves, dig through stacks of books, or post images online. I would probably rely on it. I’ve already started doing that (in particular looking into Philip K. Dick titles). I’ve also had dreams where the covers of old books appeared. It’s no use trying to remember the cover when you wake up. For several years when we lived in Pasadena, there was a bookstore called Planet Ten that specialized in science fiction and fantasy. I visited regularly and looked at the bookshelves, and every time I turned the pages of a book, the memories of those days came flooding back. A world beyond time.
The future will soon become the past.As I have observed elsewhere, Philip K. Dick’s action in his 1968 novel Do androids dream of electric sheep? (The movie was based on blade runner) is set in 1992 after the “end of world wars”.Many years later, this novel was reprinted (now blade runner) has changed the timing of its action, moving it to the 2020s. I haven’t looked at the recent reissues to see if the same move has been made again. The “future” I imagined in the new science fiction books I browsed on Planet Ten a long time ago seems insane today, even if more care had been taken in setting the time frame for action. right. “Science fiction” can become “historical fiction” in a strange way, contrary to the usual development of the term.
But now I have to go back to my bookshelf and rummage through more books from the 1970s and 1980s inspired by Adam Lowe’s masterpiece.
John Wilson is the following contributing editor. Englewood book review and Senior Editor Marginalia book review.
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Image by Jimmy Baikovicius. Licensed via Creative Commons. Image has been cropped.