#Worlds Beyond Time

[70sscifiart]

Richard Hescox, “First Contact.” When I wanted to include this artwork in my art collection, I reached out to the artist for more information on where it was first published and got a surprising answer: Never. Hescox created it as a sample for his portfolio in 1975.

My art collection has a nice clean version of it in my section about gunfights in space. So, today is the first time this one has appeared in print!

My book "Worlds Beyond Time: Sci-Fi Art of the 1970s" is out now, get it here!

[oldschoolfrp]

Santa finally brought me @70sscifiart's book! It's a fun retrospective on the cover art that shaped our first impressions of many classic novels.

[archivist-dragonfly]

Book 472

Worlds Beyond Time: Sci-Fi Art of the 1970s

Adam Rowe

Abrams 2023

Another new book from Abrams. We’ve gotten to the point in publishing where, if you’re like me and like large-format art books, you need to get used to the idea of buying them when they are released. Fewer and fewer publishers are taking the risk of releasing art books, and they are staying in print for shorter and shorter periods of time. So, when I heard about this book, I made a point of getting myself a copy, and I’m glad I did. While my preference in vintage book cover art leans more toward the pulp era, it is the 70s covers that I find myself the most familiar and nostalgic. Featuring some all-time greats—Frazetta, Vallejo, Elson, Emshwiller, Mead, the Dillons, et al—and divided into subject categories such as spaceships, cities and landscapes, plants, animals, aliens, fantasy realms, and cryptozoology, this is a beautiful and very welcome look at an incredibly creative, experimental, and occasionally ridiculous sci-fi decade.

[retroscifiart]

Absolutely essential book by @70sscifiart for everyone into pre-digital era sci-fi and fantasy art. Available here https://linktr.ee/70sscifiart This will become a sought after classic like Tomorrow and Beyond: Masterpieces of Science Fiction Art was in 1978

[tanadrin]

My copy of Worlds Beyond Time: Sci-Fi Art of the 1970s by @70sscifiart just got here, and it’s gorgeous. A seriously impressive collation of work, with a wealth of information on individual artists and on trends in popular SF illustration in the period. Also nostalgic as hell to see some of my favorite cover illustrations from old paperback books I read as a teenager.

[vintagerpg]

Good books feed brains! This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we’re looking at some cool books that came out in 2023. Perhaps in a novel twist on frequency bias, Stu noticed a bunch of books hitting shelves that, like steak and red wine, seem to pair well with his own Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground in a variety of ways. So here we are, chatting about Adam Rowe’s Worlds Beyond Time, Astral Eyes’ Spell Bound, Aaron A. Reed’s 50 Years of Text Games, the two-volume Talking Miniatures from Shaggy Dog Publishing and the truly astounding Arik Roper retrospective, Vision of the Hawk. Call it a holiday gift guide - if you like our work, we bet you’ll like theirs!

[ghoulnextdoor]

31 Days of Horror, Day Eighteen: 1970s Sci-fi Art Monsters – Unquiet Things

Image credit: Richard Hescox artwork featured in Worlds Beyond Time: Sci-fi Art of the 1970s

[lithiumrox]

I don't even know where to start with this arc finale.

I loved Suvi going "I'm going to come clean to Steel this time. No really, I'm fully going to tell her everything now...okay I'm still holding back this one little bit for myself." 😂

Is the fox going to get an Arctic coat to match Ame's new outfit? He'd look so good in white.

I can't wait to see fanart of all of the spirits Ame awakened, they all sound so cute

I can't wait to see fanart of Kalaya's half-spirit were-badger descendants, they all sound so cool and hot

Speaking of...why do their glamours/human forms look like Suvi? Did Kalaya do like Eursulon and make a disguise that looked like a friend? Did you take inspiration from the man who set you free, or is it something more?

Who exactly is your ex-husband, Kalaya??

[rowecommaadam]

The Financial Times just gave my art book a lovely shout-out!

Financial Times, August 5, 2023, p. 15

[70sscifiart]

Black Mirror and retro sci-fi paperback cover art

Someone on the Black Mirror team really knows their late-60s sci-fi paperbacks! Spoilers for Season 6 ep "Beyond the Sea." 

This paperback is a 1967 edition of Ray Bradbury's 'The Illustrated Man,' with a top-tier Dean Ellis cover.

Ellis was a great paperback artist: He balanced one central image with intricate details, making covers simple yet engaging. Ellis covers don't usually have this much ennui, which makes this one a particularly good pick for the episode, about an astronaut who also feels alone.

The other main paperback featured in the episode is a 1968 edition of 'The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress,' by Robert A. Heinlein, with a cover by Paul Lehr.

Lehr is an icon of 60s/70s covers, so he's a great artist to include. This particular cover has one of his signature tropes - A crowd of tiny figures gathering around a single object, in this case a moon base.

That said, that particular Lehr cover looks more similar to the style of Richard Powers (a surreal 50s artist who influenced Lehr) than is typical for Lehr. Here are a few other 1968 Lehr covers that I think represent him better, with more shadows and monochrome.

But here's what blows my mind: We never see the cover to one paperback spine in this scene. It's this 1967 Richard Powers cover, with the yellow spine.

It seems to show a man enviously watching a woman from behind a screen - incredibly on-the-nose symbolism for this episode.

I wonder if the prop person for the show came up with multiple options and the Powers cover lost out to the Lehr one. Either way, it's an amazing Easter egg. 

 If you liked this, subscribe to my newsletter - My latest issue covers Black Mirror’s retro sci-fi cover art in more depth. You might also enjoy my art book Worlds Beyond Time, which has a restored version of that exact Dean Ellis Illustrated Man cover in it.

[downthetubes]

Out Now: Worlds Beyond Time: Sci-Fi Art of the 1970s

Worlds Beyond Time: Sci-Fi Art of the 1970s offers a glorious retrospective of SF-inspired imagery the artists who created some extraordinary images

Worlds Beyond Time is a new book out now from Adam Rowe, published by Abrams, described as the definitive visual history of the spaceships, alien landscapes, cryptozoology, and imagined industrial machinery of 1970s paperback sci-fi art, and the artists who created these extraordinary images. In the 1970s, mass-produced, cheaply printed science-fiction novels were thriving. The paper was rough,…

[basquerville]

Suvi, Ame & Eursulon | Chapter 2

[jacodraws]

remember when this arc was about having little sandwiches at cafes...

[dumpster-fire-sapphic-failgirl]

Worlds Beyond Number is wild because Brennan Lee Mulligan uses every ounce of his philosophic and empathetic learnings to create the most heartrending situations and scenes

Then, like an emotional devastation katamari, this fucker picks up THREE whole ass other people like him. Lou Wilson, who will make you cry while you’re in the middle of laughing. Aabria Iyengar, who is a fucking genius and dives full ass into her character’s flaws because your heart will die of a thousand cuts when it all hits. And Erika Ishii. At first blush, a bit of a clown, albeit a sultry one when they want to be. More than happy to play the fool. Lets you underestimate them, so you let them get close, and when you realize how deep you’re in it’s too late

So these FOUR chucklefucks, these four geniuses of humor and tragedy, hire a fucking Maestro of Sound Design in Taylor Moore to produce their home game. And everything is tighter. And even more immersive. And heartwrenching and hilarious and cozy and creepy.

Anyway, this team of FIVE people decide that they’re going to make one of the best podcasts currently airing and it’s only nine episodes in.

[bruqh]

conspiracy brain prediction for new d20 season:

i think aabria is gonna climb up on the table at some point

[steddieas-shegoes]

Steve and Eddie go through the whole adoption process in 1996, despite how difficult it was to find somewhere willing to help them at all and despite their conflicted feelings on adoption.

The way they saw it though, providing a loving home for a child who needed one was better than the alternative. Eddie had enough experience with temporary foster homes to know stability was better than constant moving and questionable foster parents.

They get a foster placement almost immediately, a six year old girl named Amelia. She’s quiet, but not in a way that worries them. She’s very focused, and enjoys going to school more than any regular children’s hobbies. Neither of them know what to do with that other than keep encouraging it.

She stays for months, months turn into a year, and the agency finally gives them the go ahead to complete the adoption process.

But they don’t do anything without talking to Amelia.

She’s happy there, her therapist signs off on it immediately and explains that Amelia has shown more personality development and less signs of trauma with them than she had even living at home. Not to mention they actually brought her to appointments, unlike her previous guardians.

To celebrate, they throw a party with all their friends and family and tell Amelia she can invite anyone from school she wants. She invites everyone.

Turns out their daughter is a social butterfly and is friends with everyone.

At the party, Eddie pulls out his guitar, plays a bunch of popular kid-friendly songs after a very scathing look from Steve as a reminder to behave.

Amelia walks over to him after a few songs, on a sugar high like he’d never seen on her before, and asks to play the guitar.

He’s hesitant, but not because he’s still protective of his guitars, more because he doesn’t want her to embarrass herself in front of her friends. Kids are cruel, even and especially at seven, and the last thing he wants is this to be the thing that kids talk about for the next ten years.

She sits on the couch and holds it, arranging her fingers…correctly. Eddie watches.

Steve is watching from across the room.

She starts strumming, very quietly at first, not as confident as she’d been a moment ago. And then she starts really playing.

It’s one of the songs Eddie wrote. He played it for the last four months nonstop as he perfected it, and she’d apparently been watching.

Eddie’s jaw is on the floor and he quickly looks over to Steve, who has a similar look of surprise on his face.

He doesn’t interrupt her. She makes it through the entire song.

She looks up.

“When did you learn to play guitar?” Eddie asks.

“When I was watching you.”

“But have you played before tonight?”

Amelia shook her head, looking down. “Didn’t wanna touch it without asking.”

Eddie pulls the guitar from her hands and sets it aside, then pulls her into his lap and hugs her. Steve sits down on the couch next to them, hand on her back.

“You can always ask, sweetie. And if you’re this interested and this natural, we can buy you your own guitar if you want. I didn’t think you were interested in playing.”

“I wanna be like you,” Amelia admitted against his shoulder.

Eddie was done for. He looked at Steve, half-panicked, trying not to cry in front of these people, but Steve wasn’t faring any better.

“Then we can go get you a guitar tomorrow. You can get your own picks, too. They might even have purple ones.”

“Can I have red? Like yours?”

“Of course, sweetie.”

It only took them two days after that to realize she could play by ear, just like Eddie.

And then it only took another day after that to realize she had taught herself to read music too.

They spent hours and hours every week playing together while Steve cooked dinner or checked her homework or just watched them.

When Eddie’s band decided to record another album and go on tour when Amelia was 12, Eddie insisted that she get to be on it.

She ended up helping write one of their songs, played on the track on the album, and with a lot of work, convinced Steve to let them homeschool her for the entire 8 months they’d be on tour so she could perform on stage with her dad.

“Can’t believe she’s not even genetically yours. Are you sure you didn’t have an affair?” Steve asked the night before they were leaving for Europe.

“When would I have had an affair? I came back to the tour bus or hotel with you every single night,” Eddie kissed him softly. “She’s amazing, huh?”

“She is. What happens when she wants to be a full blown rockstar like her dad too?”

“Then we make sure she’s protected and has good people around her like I have. She could be a rockstar easily. She’s got the talent and the presence,” Eddie smiled. “And she’s got me to make sure no one takes advantage of her. But she’s only 12. We’ve got time to worry about that later.”

“You’re bringing her onstage every single night all over the world for the next eight months, baby. I think later is now.”

Eddie sighed. “She’s gonna blow them all away. I’m proud of her. Let’s focus on that for now.”

And she did blow everyone away. The fans and the media had nothing but good things to say, and Steve didn’t have to go into overprotective mom mode at all until she was 15 and signing a record deal of her own.

But between Eddie and him, the entire industry knew better than to fuck with her or them.

They made rules, of course. School still came first, she still had required family events to be at, she still had regular friends at home. She wasn’t allowed at any parties, not even the events for award ceremonies.

But she didn’t really need those rules. She had no interest in parties or abandoning her friends or family, and she was a straight A student who still had hopes of getting into Brown for Journalism like her Aunt Nancy. She had a passion for music and wanted to share it, but not at the cost of the rest of her life.

And Eddie and Steve did everything they could to make sure she got to have everything. That’s what they’d promised her from day one.