Adam Rowe

Marius van Boordt

Last August, someone reached out to me looking for information about a long-lost bedroom poster from their 1980s childhood in NSW, Australia. All they had to go on was one muddy picture of it: I didn't recognize it, and none of my guesses panned out – it reminded me

Frankenstein art

Frankenstein's monster kickstarted the science fiction genre, so it's no wonder he's a presence in retro sci-fi art. And, thanks to 1930s-50s monster movies, he has a built-in visual archetype: Green skin, a head that's flat on top, and Boris Karloff'

Terry Oakes, "Nocturne"

Welsh artist Terry Oakes is known for 1980s-era horror cover art, as well as a solid amount of science fiction and fantasy covers – I included two of his artworks in Worlds Beyond Time. He's still working today, and his agent Jane Frank just emailed out his most recent

Extended Edition: Sea Life out of Water

Here's the last entry that failed to make it into my art book Worlds Beyond Time. I hoped to get four images in this spread, but I couldn't get in touch with Peter Goodfellow or Una Woodruff, and the cost for licensing John Berkey was a

Extended Edition: Kirby meets Kubrick

I've found Jack Kirby's comic book adaptation of 2001: A Space Odyssey to be a fascinating oddity ever since I learned about it, so when I was putting together my art book proposal in 2019, it made the list. Most of Worlds Beyond Time focuses on

Extended Edition: Floating Cities

This entry would have gone in my book's "Life in the Future(s)" chapter, right after the Domed Cities spread. However, the artists I wanted to include either couldn't be tracked down (Feibush and Dollens), asked for more compensation than I could justify (Lund)

Extended Edition: Future Sports

This art book section was cut from Worlds Beyond Time due to a lack of art permissions – Out of the four images that I had planned for my entry on sporting events of the future, I was only able to get the permissions to use one of them. I wanted

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A hidden trove of Virgil Finlay art

The Last-Minute Sci-Fi Gift Guide

There's only one thing worse than procrastinating on getting gifts for your loved ones, and that's procrastinating on putting together a guide to help out everyone else with all those gifts. It's Dec 12, so you can decide for yourself which I'm

Ralph Brillhart's "D-99" cover

A Tumblr user asked me about a specific book cover the other week, and I figured I'd feature my response about the artist in this newsletter. They asked me: Hello! I don’t know if you have a 60s scifi art equivalent or not, but do you know

Gold Key's "UFO Flying Saucers"

The Gold Key "UFO Flying Saucers" comic book series launched in October 1968 and ran 25 issues until February 1980, although the title was changed to "UFO & Outer Space" with issue #14 on June 1978. Heritage Auctions has all the covers listed here and here,

Hipgnosis, MC Escher, and Spy Vs Spy

I'd love to write a book about M.C. Escher's impact on pop culture (although he apparently hated pop culture, so getting the rights might be a challenge). I'd probably have to dedicate multiple chapters to this lithograph, Relativity, since it's referenced

Extended Edition: Alien Nightfall

Here's another entry I cut from my art book, and the first one to be about an entire theme rather than a specific artist. Somewhat ironically, I opened this write-up by talking about how rare scenes set at night were, and that same rarity is why I wasn&

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Pulp adventure tropes, swipes, and surrealist gambling

Someone posted a thrift shop find on Twitter a good while back: This absolutely gonzo cover to a 1977 Penguin edition of the nonfiction book The Psychology of Gambling. I wasn't able to find a clean scan of that cover online, but if any readers know of one,

Extended Edition: Roger Dean

Placid, geologically imaginative record covers are what UK artist Roger Dean is best known for, particularly his work for the prog rock band Yes, who he has continually created posters, brochures, and stage installations for since late 1971. Dean’s art spans an impressive range of mediums and techniques, with

Solving the 1976 'Wrinkle in Time' Cover Artist Mystery

I've been posting the same uncredited cover to a 1976 Dell Laurel-Leaf edition of A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L'Engle, for years and years. I always get the same response: People recognize it as a beloved image from their childhood – one of those slightly traumatizing

Extended Edition: Horacio Salinas Blanch

This installment wraps up the three international surrealist cover artists that I cut from my art collection's first chapter. *** David Pelham, art director at Penguin Books during the ‘70s, had a specific aesthetic: spare, stylized, surreal, centered on a single object, such as his iconic 1972 cover to

Half-Forgotten 70s Sci-Fi: "Fantasy Voyages"

I recently received a tip in my Tumblr messages about an interesting pair of books I hadn't heard about before: Hi, thanks for everything you post! I have been looking for two books largely missing from the internet: Two large children's Golden books by Linda and

Extended Edition: Wojtek Siudmak

Wojtek Siudmak is second on my list of "surrealist cover artist I wanted to include a two-page spread in my book," after Henri Lievens. The Polish artist is alive and well today, but I couldn't get through to him while putting my book together. I reached

I'm giving a virtual presentation on sci-fi art history this Tuesday!

I'm giving a virtual presentation for a local bookstore, Third Place Books, in just a few days - Tuesday, August 8, at  at 12 pm EST / 3 pm PST. The link to register for the Zoom is here, and you should all join! It'll be just

Extended Edition: Henri Lievens

The time is upon us! My art book Worlds Beyond Time is officially released this week. In honor of its release and of the relaunch of this newsletter, I'm starting a new weekly series. And – because the Lord of the Rings was released on DVD during an impressionable

Retro Paperback Art in 'Black Mirror'

The new season of Black Mirror recently came out on Netflix, and the third episode confirmed something I've suspected for a while: Someone working on that show really knows their retro paperbacks. Read on for mild spoilers for the third episode of this season, "Beyond the Sea,

Interview: Rick Sternbach's Dolphin Suit

Rick Sternbach has a long legacy in science fiction art. He co-founded the Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists in 1976 and the non-profit International Association of Astronomical Artists in 1981. He won the 1977 and 1978 Hugo Awards for Best Professional Artist. He was Assistant Art Director and

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Worlds Beyond Time is out this month

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"Swiping" in Retro Sci-fi