RAYGUNS AND ROCKETSHIPS Vintage Science Fiction Book Cover Art 2nd Edition

This is one cool book. We've all seen those wonderful classic pulp covers...on U.S. pulps. But there's another universe of pulp and paperback classics all produced in England and rarely seen in the U.S. Here at last is a full collection! - Bud. Rayguns and rockets! Spacesuited heroes caught in the tentacles of evil insectoid aliens! Who could resist such wonders? Science-fiction paperbacks exploded over the 1940s and ’50s literary landscape with the force of an alien gamma bomb. Titles such as Rodent Mutation, The Human Bat vs The Robot Gangster, Dawn of the Mutants and Mushroom Men from Mars appeared from fly-by-night publishers making the most of the end of post-war paper rationing. They were brash and seductive -- for around a shilling, the future was yours. This also includes tons of great Pan covers, newly created for imported American authors like Arthur C. Clarke, Heinlein, Dick, Poul Anderson, Ray Bradbury...all the greats. Vintage digests from the 50s and 60s with first appearances of stories and novellas are also here. Ron Turner is very, very well represented here, with wild covers that are just simply fun. But Josh Kirby, who we know from later works and a Dragon's Dream art book, got his start here in the digests and is well represented also. Original British sf in the pulp era was often conceived around a pre-commissioned cover and a title suggested by the publisher, and the writers were paid by the word, and sometimes not paid at all. Titles were knocked out at a key-pounding pace, sometimes over a weekend, by authors now lost to literary history (plus a few professionals who could spot an opportunity) who were forced to write under pseudonyms like Ray Cosmic, Steve Future, Vector Magroon or the best known, Vargo Statten. Despite the tight deadlines and poor pay, the books’ cover artists still managed to produce works of multi-hued, brain-bending brilliance, and collected here is an overview of their output during an unparalleled period of brash optimism and experimentation in publishing. 8 new pages in this second edition. Afterword by Phil Harbottle.