I always liked these paperback covers, a very of-their-time series published by Corgi Books in the UK from 1969 to 1970. A sea of metallic silver ink surrounded the paintings by Bruce Pennington. Seeing them together makes me wish I had the full set.
Mr. Electrico was a beautiful man, see, because he knew that he had a little weird kid there who was twelve years old and wanted lots of things. We walked along the shore of Lake Michigan and he treated me like a grown-up. I talked my big philosophies and he talked his little ones. Then we went out and sat on the dunes near the lake and all of a sudden he leaned over and said, I’m glad you’re back in my life. I said, What do you mean? I don’t know you. He said, You were my best friend outside of Paris in 1918. You were wounded in the Ardennes and you died in my arms there. I’m glad you’re back in the world. You have a different face, a different name, but the soul shining out of your face is the same as my friend. Welcome back.
Ray Bradbury’s life was like a Ray Bradbury novel. From an amazing interview at the Paris Review.
Some memorial links:
• The New Yorker unlocked two Ray Bradbury stories.
• Evan says “Loves, did you know Bradbury was a poet? Now you do.”
• A man who won’t forget Ray Bradbury by Neil Gaiman.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The book covers archive
Previously on { feuilleton }
• The fantastic and apocalyptic art of Bruce Pennington
The covers are beautiful. I don’t recall seeing them here. (I do remember stealing my father’s sci-fi books about that time….)
One of the greats…
I too like this Corgi series of books and fortunately they are still in my library after forty years. The only one I have that isn’t included in your picture is ‘Machineries of Joy’, another Bruce Pennington illustration… a canival with mushrooms in the foreground. I would be very interested to know if there were more designed in this style that I am not aware of.
Hi Ian. That cover is included in the Bradbury set at the Bruce Pennington page linked above but I don’t know whether he painted more than seven of them.
Thanks John… What a trip back in time your links opened. The Dune books and Gene Wolfe’s ‘The New Sun’ will always be associated in my imagination with Bruce’s evocative style. It also bought back the atmosphere of that science fiction wilderness of the early 70s when there was nowhere near the visual amount of fantasy that you can see today and Bruce, Tim White and Chris Foss covers were so welcomed. (It also bought back the memory of Science Fiction Monthly which I posted up around my drawing board at college and sadly left behind.) Not only did your links refresh my admiration for the covers, I once again fell into the deliciously haunting and romantic style of Ray Bradbury. God speed Ray… see you at the end of time.