What do you see when you read

Some time ago Emily Asher-Perrin posted an article on Tor.com asking:

"How Do You “See” the Books You Read?"

https://www.tor.com/2019/02/13/how-do-you-see-the-books-you-read/

Based on the fact there were 75 comments, her essay did seem to strike a chord with people. So I am also asking, do you just read the words or do you create visual images of the places and characters the author describes? I was is my late 50's before I realized that other people did (I don't). I attribute some of this to skimming the text, but I have also noticed this inability to form a visual image using my imagination when trying to pick frames for a picture or paint from a sample. (just ask Helen) I need to see the thing complete. 

I wonder if that is part of the reason that science fiction illustration is so important to me. I own multiple copies of the same book because of the covers. I will buy one to read but then be seduced by a "better" possibly more representative cover. They don't need to be representative, I like artists was diverse as Weird Tales alumni like Hannes Bok and Virgil Finlay, the Gernsbeckian Frank R. Paul or the increasingly surreal/abstract stylings of Richard Powers but something just calls to me. That said, traditional SF tropes, space ships and suits, alien landscapes, futuristic cities and powers plants really attract me. I have discussed what conjures up science fiction to me in earlier posts, something I will come back to again and again. 

http://ajaggedorbit.blogspot.com/2018/06/science-fiction-and-me-why-i-read-what.html

Here are a couple of new arrivals that are certainly candidates based on the covers. They also have a bit of a WWII vibe (at least to me) based on the style of the suits and equipment, which reminds me of the b&w films of my youth.

Cover by H. Fox (1962)

Cover by Gordon C. Davies (1957)

Betty Ballantine, Who Helped Introduce Paperbacks, Dies at 99

 Yesterday Doug let me know that Betty Ballantine, who with her husband Ian began Ballantine Books, a huge publishing presence in science fiction had passed away at 99. The New York Times published a nice tribute.  "They started Ballantine Books in 1952, publishing reprints as well as original works in paperback.

While Ian Ballantine, who died in 1995, was the better known of the publishing duo, Betty Ballantine, who was British, quietly devoted herself to the editorial side. She nurtured authors, edited manuscripts and helped promote certain genres — Westerns, mysteries, romance novels and, perhaps most significantly, science fiction and fantasy.

Her love for that genre and knowledge of it helped put it on the map.

“She birthed the science fiction novel,” said Tad Wise, a nephew of Ms. Ballantine’s by marriage. With the help of Frederik Pohl, a science fiction writer, editor and agent, Mr. Wise said, “She sought out the pulp writers of science fiction who were writing for magazines and said she wanted them to write novels, and she would publish them.”

In doing so she helped a wave of science fiction and fantasy writers emerge. They included Joanna Russ, author of “The Female Man”(1975), a landmark novel of feminist science fiction, and Samuel R. Delany, whose “Dhalgren” (1975) was one of the best-selling science fiction novels of its time.

The Ballantines also published paperback fiction by Ray Bradbury, whose books include “The Martian Chronicles” and “Fahrenheit 451”; Arthur C. Clarke, who wrote “2001: A Space Odyssey”; and J.R.R. Tolkien, author of “The Hobbit” and the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy."

full obituary here:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/15/obituaries/betty-ballantine-dead.html

When I moved from reading science fiction to collecting science fiction as well, Ballantine Books, with top notch writers and wonderful covers by Richard Powers were favourites. So I decided to pull some of the books from Ballantine's first two years (1953-1954, pre me even) from my shelves with a few comments. I will only attribute the covers if they are not by Richard Powers. Search the Sky is the first book I remember my buddy Doug and I discussing, possibly before we even started our reading project. We both enjoyed it. I love the covers where Powers combines his surrealist flourishes with realistic elements. 

Brain Wave is an old favourite with both of us, ah! nostalgia and I love the chimp with the inexplicable device. I looked for years for a reasonably priced copy of More Than Human with possibly my favourite Powers cover of all time.

Out of the Deeps better known as The Kraken Wakes is my favourite Wyndham and my favourite "cozy catastrophe" lots of favourites in this post. The Space Merchants was I believe the first novel we tackled on our reading project. And I think I can say we were both impressed. It covered a number of SF tropes, including one of the first examples of meat grown via cell culture in this case "Chicken Little"

So I have a lot to be grateful to the Ballantines for, without this opportunity for authors to find paperback markets outside the pulps who knows what gems we would have missed.  

https://www.nextnature.net/2013/10/the-sci-fi-prehistory-of-victimless-meat/

Also I will include a couple links from ISFDB of some of the full wrap around covers.

Out of the Deeps

http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/9/9a/TFTHDPS1953.jpg

Star Science Fiction Stories

http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/8/82/STARSFS1953.jpg

Brain Wave
http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/c/c4/BRNWAVE1954.jpg

The Space Merchants
http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/5/5f/THSPCMRCHN1953.jpg

Shadows in the Sun, cover uncredited

The Experimental History of Scifi Book Covers (Plus Crime Covers Link)

One of Frank R. Paul's beautiful alien ecosystems,
from the back cover of Amazing Stories for Aug. 1941.

In my previous post discussing Moorcook's essay on Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 I mentioned how much I love these overviews of SF authors, illustrators and their works. Here is another from io9 a video on (The Experimental History of Scifi Book Covers) put together by Nerdwriter?

A selection of covers by Frank R. Paul

Some of my favourite publishers and illustrators are discussed, including Frank R. Paul, Richard Powers, and the myriad artists who worked for Penguin books over the years. I am still disappointed that our trip to London generated no covers by Alan Aldridge, but just like yesterday's link I was again compelled to return to my shelves and see what I could find.

Two Paul Lehr covers, Entropy is by Fernando Fernandes.

Two Richard Powers covers, the Penguin is by Brian Kneale

https://io9.gizmodo.com/this-video-explores-the-experimental-history-of-scifi-b-1826165627

And an added bonus: 
Celebrating the Artists Who Illuminated Classic 
Crime  (Warning pretty sexist stuff, the pulp roots show)

http://crimereads.com/12-cover-artists-every-vintage-crime-lover-should-know/

p://crimereads.com/12-cover-artists-every-vintage-crime-

The Power of Powers

One of the events that propelled me from a SF reader to a SF collector was receiving some books on SF movies and illustration from a friend. That gift and my subsequent collecting led me to a complie, at least in my head, a list of favourite illustrators. Frank R. Paul for the many wonderful covers, he did for Hugo Gernsback's Amazing Stories among others, with their vivid scenes of futuristic cities, science experiments gone wrong, men battling giants insects, aliens, dinosaur, machines run amok or any other threat he could envision against striking red, blue and yellow backgrounds. Virgil Finlay for his luxuriant interior b&w illustrations for pulps like Weird Tales, and his bubble-beckoning beauties on the covers of magazines like Famous Fantastic Mysteries. The longer I collect the more I love Paul Lehr's gorgeous illustrations, with enigmatically rendered figures amid the cones and curves of his dreamlike landscapes and cities. And of course there is Richard Powers with his robots, rockets and inexplicable machines nestled among backgrounds snatched from the dreams and nightmares of any number of surrealists. I first met him not on the wonderful Ballantine paperbacks I adore now but the hardcover series of Andre Norton novels from Harcourt, Brace & World books that formed a cornerstone of the libraries of my youth and coloured so much of my childhood interest in SF. So when I saw that..,

"Science fiction artist Richard Powers is among the Society of Illustrators’ newest Hall of Fame inductees"

quoted from the TOR.COM website, the link to the full post follows

http://www.tor.com/2015/11/20/richard-powers-inducted-into-the-society-of-illustrators-hall-of-fame/

I went to my shelves and pulled some of my favourite covers. I also added a link to Matt Lattorre's wonderful Richard Powers Gallery in my Handy Resources. Enjoy.

New Arrivals

Saturday I was able to stop by one of the Fair's 

Fair bookstores in Calgary. The number of used books  

stores here have really declined over the years, but 

this small family run chain combines a number of 

locations with excellent service. It is so nice 

 to buy in person to avoid shipping costs, to actually 

handle the books and run into items on the shelf you 

did not know you needed until you have them 

in your hand

My haul included a number of anthologies, one, 

a nice copy of Conklin's Great Science Fiction by Scientists.

 Anthologies have always been of interest but since reading

 Bud Webster's articles on collecting anthologies,

 see them in the links under Handy Resources on the right

 or buy his book Anthopology 101, they have become 

something of an obsession.

I also got a copy of the Dick novel with a cover 

I really wanted, a fairly risqué cover for Thomas 

Burnett Swann an author I normally associate with  

minotaurs and fauns, and intriguing novels by Mark S. 

Geston and Michael G Coney which fell into the category of 

impulse buys.

And who can resist a horror anthology with a beautiful 

Richard Powers cover. The authors have a nice SF feel 

including Matheson, Sturgeon, Van Vogt, Kutter and 

Robert Moore Williams. An exceptional trip.