Odds and Ends - Nov 2025

Adam Rowe

24 Nov 2025 • 5 min read

Katsuya Terada

Welcome to another grab-bag issue.

I'm starting with something particularly fascinating that I stumbled across. It's even about 1870s speculative fiction illustration, so it's technically within my purview here at the increasingly inaccurately named 70s Sci-Fi Art blog.

Here's the deal. About a year ago, in this unassuming Reddit post, researcher Götz Kluge appears to have discovered for the first time that Henry Holiday's front cover illustration for “The Hunting of the Snark” – published in 1876 and comissioned by author Lewis Carroll himself – features a hidden upside-down map of the British Isles in the sky.

Here's the evidence, with the vertically flipped map on the left and the illustration on the right. I'm convinced!

The possibility that the clouds and sky formed a map was brought up in this 2004 paper by John Tufail, although Tufail appears to have interpreted the clouds as land, rather than sea. The Reddit poster discovered the specific map on their own.

So, this might be the first time anyone's solved this 150-year-old Lewis Carroll puzzle?? And it's just sitting in a year-old Reddit post that only has three upvotes?

Well, okay, it looks like the author also has a Snark-themed website with a post about it. And after reading that blog a little more, I'd guess the hidden map Easter egg is the artist's idea, rather than Carroll's – looks like Henry Holiday often mirrored other artworks. Even the face of the guy above is copied from another old painting.

But still, I think this is all pretty cool and should get more attention! Get on this Metafilter: I expect a post by noon.

My 2025 holiday shopping gift guides are all collected on my Bookshop account this year! Hope you like buying books.

Check out the main page here or just see which titles I'm recommending for the three specific themes I have so far:

Someone on Tumblr posted an impressive collection of scans of science fiction and outer space artworks by David A Hardy.

Here are a few of my favorites. I don't think I'd ever seen that underwater scene before.

This blog post on Chris Achilléos dropped a fun fact:

"Achilléos's work has been widely influential, particularly his fantasy images. The costume worn by Kate Bush in her Babooshka video was based on a cover painting for the novel Raven, Swordsmistress of Chaos by Richard Kirk (Corgi, 1977)"

For reference, here's the music video and the cover (NSFW).

Jeremy Blum wrote an interesting Tumblr post explaining what makes these late-80s Legend of Zelda illustrations by Katsuya Terada unique.

You should read the whole thing for more artwork and the actual backstory, but here's the first paragraph:

Katsuya Terada is a Japanese artist cut from a different cloth, with an intimidating body of work evoking memories of 1980′s film classics like The Dark Crystal and Conan the Barbarian rather than the typical doe-eyed anime flavors that his contemporaries so often cling to. Some time in the late 80′s, Nintendo discovered his work, and perhaps figuring that his depiction of sword ‘n sorcery was a good sell for Western audiences, commissioned him to create several illustrations for in-house strategy guides and magazines like Nintendo Power.

In what's now a recurring feature for my Odds and Ends posts, here's a great example of an illustration that I missed including in a past post: Micheal Whelan's 1982 cover to Special Deliverance, by Clifford D. Simak.

It was suggested for my Cubes post, but it actually would have made even more sense in my "Coffee, Tea, and Drinks" roundup.

That one was suggested by Dream Chimney on Bluesky, my favorite record label that also follows my blog on social media. Check out their podcast - it's a weekly music mix I listen to religiously.

Another Dream Chimney suggestion for my drinks post: Jill Bauman's 1980 cover to another Clifford D. Simak, Way Station.

Plus, also suggested by another Bluesky user for my Cubes post, Wayne Barlowe's 1993 cover to David Alexander Smith's In the Cube. The cube here is, apparently, Boston.

Jane Gallion and the Tao of the female smut writer - Pulp Curry

I thought this was an interesting article exploring some hidden history. It even has some sci-fi artist connections: Milton Luros did some covers for science fiction magazines in the 40s and 50s before his second career as a smut publisher in the 60s.

I just checked my blog and I've posted exactly two Luros illustrations over the years. One is this example of a skeleton in a spacesuit, from my deep dive into that niche topic.

Originally published as the cover to *Future Science Fiction*'s March 1953 issue.

The other is this interesting detail from Luros' cover to Dynamic Science Fiction, June 1953.

Anyway, the whole article above is worth reading, along with Andrew Nette's full pulp history book, Girl Gangs, Biker Boys, and Real Cool Cats: Pulp Fiction and Youth Culture, 1950 to 1980.

Music rec: Here's a great (albeit explicit) hiphop mix from DEEJAY T-Jr, from a Mixcloud account that has a ton more world-class DJ mixes.

Next Time: Sheep and the Pastorial