I’ve never been a fan of A. E. van Vogt. A while back, having just finished his “masterpiece” The World of Null-A (1948), I headed to the used book store and saw Jerome Podwil’s cover for Vogt’s sequel, The Players of Null-A (1966) and had to pick it up. Simply put, it is a spectacular piece of art. Discovering Podwil’s Calder-esque machine extending its limbs across the plain made me pay more attention to the covers as art and the artists who made them. Hence this series of posts! (Adventures in Science Fiction Art Index)

(Are any of the books worth reading? What’s your favorite of his work (perhaps one I haven’t listed)?)

(Cover for the 1966 edition of The Players of Null-A (1966), A. E. van Vogt)

Deep greens, flying machines, a frantic race across (_ _ _ _)…

(Cover for the 1966 edition of The Four Day Weekend (1966), George Henry Smith)

The rampant machine archetype…

(Cover for the 1965 edition of The Black Star Passes (novelized in 1965), John W. Campbell)

Sprouting across a planetscape….

(Cover for the 1965 edition of The Other Side of Time (1965), Keith Laumer)

Figures awed by an unknown creation…

(Cover for the 1965 edition of The Enemy Stars (1959), Poul Anderson)

Stylized spaceship, armless occupants, masked, skeletal?…

(Cover for the 1969 edition of Space Lash (1969), Hal Clement)

Tool? Weapon?

(Cover for the 1966 edition of The Crack In Space (1966), Philip K. Dick)

Adventures in Science Fiction Art Index