Flickr Round Up (1)

A selection of differing illustration styles all linked from my Flickr Favourites. I figured that rather than post these one at time It’d be better to pack them into groups as a kinda round up. So here’s the notes on the images:

Top: This is one I spotted a while back via Will Schofield’s amazing A Journey Round my Skull. This cover is from a 1975 Estonian Children’s book “Panga-Rehe Jutud” by Jüri Arrak. This is typical of the rare, outlandish source material that he so often posts.

2nd Top: Ejection ‘Captain Lockhead and The Starfighters’. A 7″ single sleeve, in a style somewhat reminiscent of Barney Bubbles though it is in fact the work of Rodney Matthews. Love the plum and salmon pink colouring here.

3rd Top: Another lift from “A Journey Round My Skull” this image comes via a special feature Women Snakes and Stalkers – South Asian Book Covers. Well worth checking out to see a really diverse range of Illustrative work.

4th Top: So back to more SF orientated material, and here’s a cover for the 1975 Robert Silverberg Short story collection ‘Sunrise on Mercury’ art by Peter Goodfellow. What actually caught my eye here was that this wild sun-scape actually reminded me very much of the 1988 Sega arcade game ‘Galaxy Force 2’. Not sure if any of you remember that, it was kinda an evolution of sprite scaling tech used in Sega’s Outrun or Afterburner. Anyway, the Coin-Op was pretty rare in the UK, expensive to play and not particularly entertaining. On the plus side, the level graphics were pretty imaginative and considering this is a 22-year-old game the pseudo 3d effect looks very advanced for its age!

5th Top: A 1963 cover for the John Wyndham apocalyptic classic ‘The Kraken Wakes’ art by Denis Piper. Even though it’s over fifty years old (first published 1953) this is still definitely one SF novel I’d class as worth a read, a plot that mirrors the plight we face today with potential global warming and rising sea levels. Highly recommended!

Bottom: The final image is another classic penguin David Pelham SF cover. Here’s a link again to the Penguin SF Book covers gallery: http://www.penguinsciencefiction.org/ – this image is via Flickr user levar