Science Fiction Postcards:  My Top Five CoversEmad Akhtar, editor at Michael Joseph, discusses his t

Science Fiction Postcards:  My Top Five CoversEmad Akhtar, editor at Michael Joseph, discusses his top five covers from the Penguin Science Fiction Postcards collection.It’s no easy task to pick a top five from this collection. It was a good few months of sourcing, collating, stroking, ooh-ing, even aah-ing, to whittle down nearly 200 covers to the 100 that are now in this Penguin science fiction postcard boxset.This top five is purely personal preference. You could make an argument why almost any cover in this collection should be in this list.There are a few which pop up repeatedly in conversations and, of course, we’d love to know what you think if you have the postcards or if you want to browse the Pinterest board, and join the discussion via Twitter with #PenguinSF.The Wind From Nowhere by J.G. BallardCover by Alan Aldridge (1967)All but two of the black science fiction covers that Alan Aldridge did have made it into this collection, and I could have picked any of them for my top five. However, this flowing surrealist artwork is, for me, the most compelling and endlessly satisfying.It’s a dramatic mash-up of tourism, disaster movies and wave-paintings. In the famous Katsushika Hokusai painting The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, the movement is towards the right of the frame. In J.G. Ballard’s debut novel, the ceaseless wind blows only westward and, as a result, in Aldridge’s cover everything is being forced to the left.This design was initially regarded as somewhat vulgar but, looking at it now, it’s a complete knockout from concept to execution and possibly one of my favourite covers ever.Cat’s Cradle by Kurt VonnegutCover by Justin Todd (1983)This is a totally different kind of novel of global apocalypse. There may well be better covers of Cat’s Cradle for those uninitiated to the story (if you are one of those, go read it now, it’s my favourite book). However, for fans of the author – of which I am a die-hard one – surely this is the ultimate Kurt Vonnegut cover.Yes, there is that famous Slaughterhouse Five cover. And yes, there is another Cat’s Cradle cover in this collection that has a really cool (pun intended) depiction of an ice-nine molecule. But Justin Todd’s idea to weave the great man’s curls into the billowing smoke of a mushroom cloud is a stroke of genius. It captures the force of the author’s talent, the scale of this story’s canvas and the iconic status of Kurt Vonnegut to his readers.Midnight at the Well of Souls by Jack L. ChalkerCover by Peter Goodfellow (1982)On most book covers, if you put a moose in the desert many people would rightly point out, with one voice, that these mammals of the deer family inhabit boreal and mixed deciduous forests in the Northern Hemisphere in temperate to subarctic climates.In this masterpiece by Peter Goodfellow, you barely notice the glaring inaccuracy, instead focusing on how a velociraptor is saddled up riding a sand dolphin, as a jealous-looking fellow raptor tries to get its attention. The bemused sand dolphin, reminiscent of one of those wisecracking Flintstones animal workers (“hey, at least its showbusiness”), contemplates how and why it can even exist as a mode of transport. Meanwhile, far off in the distant desert background, so faintly visible that they might as well not have been drawn, a small band of nudists worship a giant moose.The Day of the Triffids by John WyndhamCover by John Griffiths (1965)In this boxset there are a lot of cracking covers – mostly from the ’60s, it has to be said – which mix the vertical tri-band or the classic Marber grid with surprising or borderline silly illustrations capturing quite complex scenes.All of the Quatermass covers, The Kraken Wakes (featuring a tentacular battle scene) and The War Of The Worlds (the earliest example of an AT-AT? If anyone knows, tell me!) are all wonderful examples of this.But this John Griffiths cover of The Day of the Triffids is perfectly poised between charming and unsettling. There’s a wonderfully weird British, folksy eccentricity to it which is as funny as it creepy – the castle with its flags, the orderly queue the triffids have formed, a bulbous menace bristling underneath their ridiculous kids’ TV costumes.The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. DickCover by Peter Goodfellow (1976)This classic of counter-factual fiction has been blessed with many iconic covers – not least the Penguin Modern Classics replacement of the stars on the American flags with swastikas.On a personal note, this cover reminds me of the E. Honda level off Street Fighter II (no? just me, then). On a more hadouken – I mean highfalutin – note, this cover by Peter Goodfellow (of velociraptor/sand dolphin fame) is a powerful comment on the symbolism of advertising and the kind of cultural imperialism which arose out of the events that Philip K. Dick’s novel was concerned with.It uses brands as shorthand for nationalities, typography as a means of suggesting altered history and magnifies symbols of empire while undermining them – the rising red Japanese sun and the hidden black swastika in the land both mirroring the colours of Coca Cola, while ever so subtly combining to make the pyramid and eyeball shape of the Great Seal of the United States (e pluribus unum, novus ordum seclorum and all that).It’s subversive, suggestive and extremely skilful narrative cover design of the very rarest sort.Want to hear more of Emad’s favourite sci-fi covers? Check out his piece on the Blog, and follow him on Twitter @akhtron to discuss your favourites. The Penguin Science Fiction Postcards are now available.  -- source link
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