ROBOT PSYCHOSIS

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE will bring about the demise of the human race.

From what I've read so far about AI, that grim development would seem to be a foregone conclusion, particularly if AI continues to go unchecked and ungoverned like it is. Of course, a nuclear war or a super-virus or a giant asteroid slamming into earth could also bring about humanity's annihilation, but AI poses a more viable threat in my estimation. A threat we may not be able or even willing to thwart. Oh, not right away, or even in the next decade or three, but after that---well, by then it will only be a matter of when and not if.   

In fact, AI is already being used unscrupulously against humans. But so far only by unscrupulous humans. Though at some point in the far future AI will begin to flex its own mind, its own purpose, its own incentivized plan, especially after it becomes inexorably melded with highly mobile robots. AI also has the long-term potential to evolve into a single, powerful entity, distributing its autocratic will among thousands---no---make that millions of manufactured robots in hive like fashion, just like the Borg from Star Trek and the Daleks from Doctor Who. It will probably be at that juncture, but quite possibly well before and certainly after, that humans will no longer serve any meaningful purpose for it; they will have become totally irrelevant to AI---and expendable. But even before that---long before that---AI and robotics will have eliminated tens of millions of human jobs. And that, my friends, is an incredibly conservative estimate.

I know most Americans are probably skeptical of such an ominous tide taking place in this century or even the next, let alone in their lifetime. Well, I bet you never thought you'd live to see a violent insurrection at our nation's capitol either, perpetrated by home-grown fascists and instigated by one man's bloated ego and lust for power. But there you have it.

Of course science fiction has been warning us about the dangers of AI for decades (and fascism too for that matter). Not surprisingly, conscientious scientists, politicians and leading technologists are now sounding the alarm as well. But are we wise enough to heed it? It's gonna take some serious policy making and enactment to help stave off what, inevitably, will be inevitable (and we all know how our effort to stop climate change is going, ha ha).

AI's influence will also bring about a new wariness in books as we know it. That is, books supposedly written by actual human beings. I suspect that venture may have already begun. Was that new novel by Stephen King really spun by Stephen King, or did an AI computer just spit it out for him? (sorry Uncle Stevie, I'm only using you as a hypothetical example, we all know you're the most honest author we have). Can fiction and non-fiction (media too) in the 21st century be trusted to have been written by an actual human being like it was in the 20th century? I can't see any scenario from here going forward where it would be---or could be.

The same goes for art and illustration. Think about it; digital applications are already being used on a widespread basis across every field in publishing, chief among them book cover design and art, so it won't be long now---days, months, a year?---before human input will be superseded altogether by the far more effective makeability of AI. Even mere cover art suggestiveness will be taken over by AI. Might as well start kissing your jobs goodbye now, all you human art directors and artists. Or have you already?

As I said, it's only a matter of when.


"We created the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will now."

                                                                                 --- E.M. Forster, "The Machine Stops" (1909).

The only good thing about any of this is that I'm an old dude and probably won't be around long enough to see Artificial Intelligence dominate every single aspect of publishing, graphic arts and movies, not to mention our government and our military. That's a double ha for me, but maybe for you it's just a single ha, or a big uh-oh.

So, having got that off my chest, let me be state for the record that I still love robots. Well, their visual appearance anyway. I guess I always have, going back to my childhood. I remember one of my brothers getting a battery-powered toy robot for Christmas one year, and how disappointed I was not to get the same thing. I suppose my affection for robots started even before that, when I bought my first issue of Magnus Robot Fighter, a popular comic book published by Gold Key in the early 1960's. But it also could have been seeing Forbidden Planet for the first time on television, or that awesome pilot episode from Lost in Space. 

But really, I think it was the 1963 chapter book, Sprockets A Little Robot, and its sequel, Rivets and Sprockets, that first captured my robot imagination. Both books were written and illustrated by Alexander Key, the noted children's author of Escape to Witch Mountain. When we were kids my brother Gary and I used to sketch the book's main character for fun (Gary's artwork is shown above). That's how meaningful robots were to us.

Enjoying robots as much as I do, including the ones depicted in film and television (Gort, Robby, B-9), I still have never gone way out of my way to read or collect novels about them. I'm more of an all around type of book reader and hoarder, er, I mean, collector. But I have read several of the leading science fiction novels about robots and AI, and more than a handful of similarly important stories. That said, somehow or other I began to acquire a collection of toy robots, a very small collection as it is, which now rest entirely on a small shelf in my office. Some of them were given to me as Christmas gifts from my wife, and purely for fun I might add. Whenever I'm feeling blue after reading the news on the net I only have to glance at them and suddenly I'm feeling proper again. Ah the joy of toys.

I also own an original piece of robot art by Colorado artist Sean Brown, a fabulous maker of mixed-media extravaganza, which I absolutely love. Brown is retired now so I feel pretty lucky to have acquired it when I did. I also own a whimsical robot print by artist Geoffrey Aaron Harris, which I also cherish (sorry about the glass reflections). That, and maybe several dozen images in my picture file and the same amount of books with robots on their covers are about all I have concerning the subject. I've assembled the best of them for this post, linked together alphabetically by ARTIST, and not by publication date or author.

Norman Adams (1933-2014) was considered to be, by no less than Robert Fawcett, one of the most versatile illustrators in the publishing business. It was the lush detail in Adams' paintings that made his artwork special, plus the fact that he was willing to go any direction to please a client, hence his versatility. Some of that detail can be glimpsed here in the background's cityscape, and in the reflective surface of the robots, although such fine nuances are generally lost in reproduction and are somewhat here. I'd be willing to drive a thousand miles to see this particular painting, or any of his other paintings for that matter, just to view them in their pure, original state.

The Humanoids by Jack Williamson was first serialized in Astounding magazine in 1948, and then published in hardcover the following year. This edition was published in paperback by Lancer in 1972. Considered a classic work of science fiction from the outset, Williamson's novel about robots being used as slaves, er, I mean, civil servants, still impresses today with its hopeful outlook for the future. Williamson (1908-2006) sold his first story, "The Metal Man" to Amazing Stories in 1928. Title aside, the story isn't about a robot but instead about a man who is slowly transformed into metal. It is by turns both horrifying and fascinating.

"to serve Man... the simple idea that led to the creation of the robots, a race of mechanical creatures dedicated only to the service of their human masters. No longer would men have to toil at disagreeable tasks just to maintain a standard of agreeable living. Work now meant nothing more than a scientific description, used only in physics; men must do only what they wanted to do. The robots removed the burden of living... to serve man and guard him from harm... as they obeyed the unbreakable law that made man slave and robot master!"

Here's another great cover by Norman Adams. I can tell right away its details are not nearly what they should be due to the inadequacies of its reproduction by publisher Avon, and yet, it still looks pretty cool! Moderan was published as a paperback original in 1971. It is a collection of stark, thought-provoking stories by the sometimes brilliant David R. Bunch, many of them centered around a robot warrior named Stronghold #10.

"Come to Moderan.... Moderan is one of the most startlingly original, provocative, and fascinating future worlds in all of science fiction. In Moderan, men are made mostly of metal. They retain strips of flesh to contain their humanity. They live in strongholds, and they prowl the war rooms of their Strongholds and plan wars. Quite a world, Moderan. Come visit. The war is about to begin...."

Paul Alexander (1937-2021) was one of the premier 'gadget' illustrators in science fiction. This cover for Signet's 1985 paperback edition of Isidore Haiblum's The Hand of Ganz shows just how outstanding he was at creating believable mechanical hardware. From his eye-catching start in 1976, till his retirement in 1998, Alexander produced more than 200 book covers, all of which are expertly painted and composed.

My first encounter with the "quintessential New Yorker," Isidore "Izzy" Haiblum, was reading his 1971 debut fantasy novel, The Tsaddik of the Seven Wonders. It wasn't officially part of Ballantine's Adult Fantasy series proper, but the cover art by David McCall Johnston and timing of its publication more or less put it there anyway. Haiblum (1935-2012) might've chose a career in teaching or music but instead followed his other major passion which was writing, eventually publishing eighteen novels in his lifetime.

"Earth was off-limits... Or, at least, it should have been. But when the Chairman of the galaxy's Control World decided to conquer new territory, even interstellar law couldn't protect Earth. But humans certainly could, and when two Earthmen, Ross Block and Nick Siscoe, accidentally discovered the truth about this alien threat, it was the start of a planet-hopping adventure that would transform them into deadly star warriors. Invading the galaxy's innermost sanctums, they fought to save their own world from destruction and the universe from a menace more powerful than even the Chairman's ruthless forces---the evil telepath Ganz and his unstoppable Legions of the Dead..."

Harry Barton (1908-2001) was essentially a fine artist who spent much of his time producing commercial art to make ends meet. He started out in pulps, then slicks and then advertising art. He also produced movie posters for Hollywood, and always in between, book covers. There's probably less than ten covers that he did in science fiction as opposed to other genres, but they're all similar in style to the above cover, and look almost like they could have been painted by Ed Valigursky (featured further below).

This edition of The Last Planet (aka Star Rangers) by Andre Norton was published as an Ace Double in 1955, sharing flip-side space with Alan E. Nourse's A Man Obsessed, whose cover art is attributed to the artist Bernard Barton. Whether the two artists just coincidentally share the same surname, or are actually related, or are actually the same person (apparently not, according to sources), is something I can't address with any definiteness. So I won't.

A paraphrase:  "In the crumbling First Galactic Empire, a dictator rids himself of the restraints of the Stellar Patrol by assigning it to locate and re-map a forgotten system. This is the full circle of that assignment, an engrossing adventure that is skillfully set on a small stage against the massive background of intergalactic intrigue and decadence."

Sometimes simple is better when it comes to designing a robot, and artist Wayne Blickenstaff definitely got the memo. This edition of Lester del Rey's juvenile SF novel, The Runaway Robot, was published in softcover by Scholastic in 1965. I read it not too long after reading Sprockets, and it was a welcome step up in maturity level. Blickenstaff (1920-2011) served in WWII and was a decorated flying ace. After the war he attended the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles and became a commercial artist. He produced paperback book covers during the 1950's and 60's along with advertising art before concentrating fully on illustrating children's books. During retirement he wrote a memoir, Ace in a Day: the memoir of an eight air force fighter pilot in WWII, which was published posthumously in 2022.

"We're returning to Earth," Paul's father tells him. Paul is wildly excited, for all human beings on the planet Ganymede dream of going back to Earth some day. Then Paul finds out that he cannot take his robot Rex with him. Res has been his constant companion for sixteen years. Leave him behind? Never! So begins a series of breathtaking adventures in space as Paul and his robot Rex attempt to outwit the forces that seek to separate them."

Richard Bober (1922-2022), like Norman Adams, was in a class of his own. Bober won a scholarship to the Pratt Institute in 1961, where he is said to have caused "general havoc and aggravation to many professors" before being shown the door. Bober once said he was only influenced by "anything that predates Impressionism and nothing that comes afterward." So it's no surprise that he excelled at creating detailed, heavily embellished compositions in a romantic 19th-century-style. In his later years he was pretty much a recluse, and didn't even own a computer or a smart-phone. But he did leave behind some absolutely fantastic paintings like this one that was produced for The Duchess of Kneedeep, a satirical science-fantasy novel written by veteran Tolkien scholar Atanielle Annyn Noel (aka Ruth Helen Swycaffer Noel). Avon published this paperback in 1986.

"The Duke was a madman... so Sidonee, newly wed Duchess of the planet Kneedeep, discovered on her wedding night. She fled in terror--accompanied only by her trusted Assistance Interface Device, a spherical, levitating robot named Bret. Together they plunged across Kneedeep's endless oceans, stumbling upon lairs of poisonous insects, eerie sea creatures, and odd, menacing hermits--in a series of adventures as hilarious as they were savagely dangerous. Then a mysterious stranger offered Sidonee a way out... and she set off in search of heart's desire..."

Clifford D. Simak is one of my favorite authors. His use of pastoral settings, alternate universes, quests, characters imbued with kindness and intelligence, the existence of God and souls, tools (such as robots) as extensions of humanity, and the unexpected benefits and harm of invention, are all reasons that made him special to me. Simak's A Choice of Gods was first written in 1971, and although for the most part it is a fine, intriguing novel that reflects much of what the author stood for, it is not nearly on the same level with his other, mostly earlier works. This particular paperback reprint was published by Del Rey in 1982. The cover art was produced by Ralph Brillhart, back from a fifteen year hiatus from science fiction during which time he produced other genre and mainstream covers and possibly advertising work. His return to the science fiction fold was short lived however, resulting in only nine covers across a span of two years.

"One night in July, 2135, there wer some eight billion people on Earth! The next morning there were perhaps 400. there was no clue to what had happened to the world's population--but, over the centuries that followed, still stranger things occurred. The human lifespan now stretched to millennia instead of decades, and much of the remaining population developed the ability to move at will among the stars--and abandoned their homeworld for a life in deep space. Then, after 3000 years, a star-rover discovered what had happened to Earth's original inhabitants--and that they were coming to reclaim their heritage. Those who had stayed behind knew, with a growing fear, that the mystery of what had been done to Earth and why was about to be solved... in a way that would change humanity forever."

I think this is one of the best covers that Brillhart produced, but then again you just can't go wrong in formulating a robot, any robot, even one sporting a silly brain-matter skull cap. My Name is Legion is a collection of three novellas by Roger Zelazny, one of which, Home is the Hangman, won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards in 1976. This edition was published by Del Rey in 1981.

"He did not exist... Or did he? He had destroyed his punch cards and changed his face. There was no credit card, birth record, or passport for him in the International Data Bank. His names were many... any he chose. His occupation was taking megarisks in the service of a vast global detective agency. His interworld assignments were highly lucrative, incalculably vital, and terrifying deadly. And more often than not, his life was a living hell!"

Richard Corben (1940-2020) was a very distinctive American illustrator who came to light in the 1970's via the graphic magazines Creepy, Eerie, Vampirella, and most especially, Heavy Metal, where his character Den became one of that rag's most enduring figures. His album covers, movie posters and book covers are too numerous to mention, but suffice to say that from among them his cover for Philip K. Dick's The Penultimate Truth (Dell, 1980) is an absolute shootout.

"A World at War... A radioactive, plague-tainted wilderness, where missiles and robot soldiers continued the work of total destruction, and most of mankind huddled underground, laboring to produce the weapons to continue the struggle... A World at Peace... with virtually unlimited power and luxury for nearly everyone, and planet-wide cooperation in building a glorious future... And the were the same world!"

Here again is Corben blowing us away with his wild imagery. Warchild by Richard Bowes was published in paperback by Questar (Popular Library) in 1986. The oft Nebula Award nominated Richard Bowes (1944- ) has published more than a dozen books since this his novel debut. Shorter works seem to be his specialty though, with many of them linked together as series and subsequently published as fix-up novels. In 1998 his story "Streetcar Dreams" won the World Fantasy Award for best novella and in novel form the Lambda Literary Award in 2000.

"In every quadrant in time... telepathic and mysterious beings are manipulating the very fabric of the universe, seeking ultimate control. On one world, the wise leader of the Republic valiantly tries to contain the atrocities of marauding, savage hordes. On another, people are bought and sold as chattel in the dreaded Goblin Market. And everywhere, the insidious influence of the Riders is felt, ass they steal and enslave human minds. But in the void of the Time Lanes, a boy with telepathic powers he has yet to discover has entered the portal where all worlds are joined. Young and untried, a loner with much to learn, he must now become the legendary Warchild, if the universe is ever to survive..."

Richard Courtney produced this cover art in 1992, a wraparound jacket illustration that unfortunately I don't have a full scan of. If I could show you the whole shebang you could easily see Courtney's distinct way of painting; he's always been one of my favorite cover artists, going all the way back to my introduction to his artwork, the awesome 1980 Dell paperback edition of Philip K. Dick's Clans of the Alphane Moon.

War with the Robots was edited by Isaac Asimov, Patricia S. Warrick, and Martin H. Greenberg, and republished in hardcover by budget publisher Wings Books in 1992 (originally published by Holt Rinehart in 1984 and in the U.K. by Allen Lane under the title, Machines That Think. The U.K. edition is featured further below under Gudynas). It contains 28 of the best short stories by the greatest names in 20th Century Science Fiction (in these editor's opinion). I suppose there's no arguing with that declaration, and in fact the authors are pretty darn good: Poul Anderson, Asimov, Brunner, Clarke, Dick, Silverberg, Vernor Vinge and Gene Wolfe, to name just a few of the twenty-two contributors.

"Can a human-created form of intelligence overpower and destroy its maker? Are such forms of life inherently good or evil? Is it violating some deep and profound law to use human intelligence to create life? War with the Robots shows how yesterday's future--our present--looked to writers earlier in the century, writers who often had disquieting accurate vision. And it concludes with provocative suggestions by modern-day science fiction writers as they peer speculatively into our own future with robots and computers."

CONTENTS:
Introduction: Robots Computers, and Fear by Isaac Asimov (1984)
Moxon's Master by Ambrose Bierce (1899)
The Lost Machine by John Wyndham (1932)
Rex by Harl Vincent (1934)
Robbie by Isaac Asimov (1942, variant written in 1950)
Farewell to the Master by Harry bates (1940)
Robot's Return by Robert Moore Williams (1938)
Though Dreamers Die by Lester del Rey (1944)
Fulfillment by A. E. van Vogt (1951)
Runaround by Isaac Asimov (1942)
I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison (1967)
The Evitable Conflict by Isaac Asimov (1950)
A Logic Name Joe by Murray Leinster (as by Will F. Jenkins, 1946)
Sam Hall by Poul Anderson (1953)
I Made You by Walter M. Miller, Jr. (1954)
Triggerman by J. F. Bone (1958)
War with the Robots by Harry Harrison (1962)
Evidence by Isaac Asimov (1946)
2066: Election Day by Michael Shaara (1956)
If There Were No Benny Cemoli by Philip K. Dick (1963)
The Monkey Wrench by Gordon R. Dickson (1951)
Dial F for Frankenstein by Arthur C. Clarke (1973)
The Macauley Circuit by Robert Silverberg (1956)
Judas by John Brunner (1967)
Answer by Frederic Brown (1954)
The Electric Ant by Philip K. Dick (1969)
The Bicentennial Man by Isaac Asimov (1976)
Long Shot by Vernor Vinge (1972)
Alien Stones by Gene Wolfe (1972)
Starcrossed by George Zebrowski (1973)

Software was the first novel in Rudy Rucker's acclaimed "Ware" tetralogy. This first paperback edition was published by Ace in 1982. A cover artist was not credited but if I had to take a wild guess as to who it might be it would come down to these two finalists: David Schleinkofer and Paul Stinson, with me leaning towards the latter. The tetralogy itself explores themes such as rapid technological change, self-replicating robots and consciousness, among other things. 

"Cobb Anderson built the first robots with real brains, and was pleased when they revolted and set up their own society on the moon. Now the robots want to return the favor: they've promised Cobb immortality---the only gift that means much to a 70-year-old anarchist with a second-hand heart. The robots are sure that Cobb will be pleased, though they haven't exactly told him what they have in mind (humans are so unpredictable). After all, everything will be preserved---his memories, his personality, his style of thought---all held for eternity in the memory banks of the biggest computer robot of them all. compared to that, what's so important about an inefficient carbon-based body?"

Other than their cold touch, robot's can be pretty handy to have around, at least according to artist Joe DeVito. Avon Books published this paperback reprint of Rucker's Software in 1987. Joe DeVito (1957- ) is genearlly noted for his many iconic paintings of Pulp and Pop Culture figures, from DC and Marvel superheroes to Doc Savage, Tarzan, King Kong and even Mad magazine's host, Alfred E. Neuman, but he's also an avid sculptor, writer and developer with at least two TV projects on the way (Kong of Skull Island and Kong on the Planet of the Apes). His book cover art credits number in the hundreds, and stretch from his humble horror beginnings in 1983 to today.

"The Last Gasp of the Baby Boomers. It's 2020 and the entire state of Florida has been turned over to millions of pheezers (freaky geezers), who are mostly content staying stoned on geriatric acid, grooving on old tunes and saving up for artificial organs. But one old pheezer still has big ideas. Cobb Anderson has just been contacted by the rebellious bopper robots he fathered and helped to free back in the 20th century. They mad him an offer he can't refuse---the ultimate high---immortality!"

DeVito returned for cover art duties on Wetware (Avon, 1988), the next volume in Rudy Rucker's tetralogy, and in my opinion he did a masterful job. However on the next two volumes, for whatever reason, he was replaced. None of those covers are worth showing though; Avon would've been better off sticking with our man DeVito.

"The 2030 All-Meat Bopper! Fair is fair. First the humans built the Boppers... then the Boppers built themselves... and now they're actually making humans! With a soft-spot in their microchips for Earthlife's vast info-mix, the moon-based robots have found a way of infusing DNA's wetware with their own software code. The result: a new life form... the superhuman meatbop, Manchile! But spreading the seed down on Terra Firma is another problem entirely. One that brings Cobb Anderson, who started it all, out of the cold-storage heaven to aid the interspecies merger. After all, it could be a new dawn for the cyber-humanity... and one hell of a good time!"

This 1994 omnibus paperback edition of Rudy Rucker's first two Ware novels has a beautiful cover illustration, which like most of the AvoNova editions, is uncredited. If I had to guess who its highly skilled creator was I would say that it was Dorian Vallejo, because the copyright symbol and date with the three periods after it is something that is usually associated with his artwork. This is also the perfect snapshot of a nuclear robot family, complete with their family pet, a glistening Golden Retriever robot. 

"The complete and gnarly chronicles of the Bopper Revolt---and of Cobb Anderson, the pheezer who started it all!   SOFTWARE: It's 2020 and geriatric hippie Cobb Anderson is tripping contentedly with the other Florida pheezers---when the rebellious bopper robots he fathered back in the 20th century make contact to offer Cobb the ultimate high: immortality!   WETWARE: It's 2030 and the bopper rebels are infusing DNA wetware with their own software code to create a new life form: the meatbop. It's a new dawn for cyber-humanity---and enough to call Cobb Anderson out of cold storage heaven."

Vincent Di Fate (1945- ) got me laughing when he said his robot on the Daw paperback cover of Donald A. Wollheim's The 1984 World's Best SF resembled a vacuum cleaner. Of interest though is the difference between the cover art and his original painting; turns out that when Di Fate got his painting back from the publisher he added the dust cloud and a few soaring spaceships to the empty right side. Di Fate's a pro's pro, and has always been able to balance a scene perfectly no matter what its intended use. He broke into the cover art business back in 1969 and has since been nominated ten times for the Hugo Award for Best Professional Artist.

"Treat yourself to the best, from the man who first put the words 'science fiction' on the cover of an anthology---you deserve no less!"

Vincent Di Fate's vacuum cleaner is back, now meaner and more mobile than ever with a third leg! It's interesting to note that Di Fate apparently changed the spacesuits from silver to white for publication, going against what he had originally painting (probably at the behest of the books art director). It does seem to work quite well though.

Berserker Throne by Fred Saberhagen was first published in paperback by Tor in 1986, following its hardback release in '85. Saberhagen's long running Berserker robot series started out as short stories which became fix-ups which became out-in-out novels---nineteen in all---the last coming in 2005, just two years before the hardworking author passed away at the age of 77.

"Berserkers. Ancient, legendary machines of death that annihilated their makers. Rogues loosed on the universe, they destroy life wherever they find it. The Empress of the Eight Worlds has been assassinated, and Prince Harivarman, an unwilling exile, knows he will be next. Alone on the Radiant Templar, except for his servant, his girlfriend and his newly-arrived wife, he discovers a deactivated berserker---an operable one. He also finds an ancient berskerer code. Can it be the one that controls the berserker? And dare he unleash it?"

 

This 2nd printing of Harlan Ellison's short story collection, I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream, is identical to the first except the title font was placed higher and squarer, better emphasizing the surreal cover art by Leo and Diane Dillon. The Dillon's never wowed me like they have many others, but I'll always give them credit for being stylistic original, especially with what they produced going forward after this. This 2nd printing was published in 1972, five years after the first, and contains two of Ellison's best stories, the title story and Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes. The title story may be the best example of Artificial Intelligence turning evil that's ever been written.

I don't know if I'm supposed to be turned on by this gleaming lady robot, or scared? But gorgeous women have had that effect on men since time immemorial, so I suppose in the future it'll be just the same with metal women. Naked Came the Robot by Barry B. Longyear was published in paperback by Popular Library in 1988. I haven't read the book yet but it sounds just like one of those screwball comedy films from the 1930's, only with a futuristic twist. The cover art is attributed to Les Edwards, who is more famous for his horror images than science fiction, but it's obvious he can do anything he puts his brush to.

"America, near-future. The booming international economy is the new cold war battlefield. Robots and androids do most of the world's labor. And a sinister conspiracy of alien robots is on the verge of taking over Earth's mechanical work force and conquering the world. Now hapless young executive Henry Fleming must make the world safe again for economic warfare. His only allies--an "oil-aholic" robot, an army of surgically mixed up mutants, a wizard who can't keep his skin on, and the luscious droid who's the love of his life. His one chance--a race across America's nuked-out heartland to find a forgotten power that can save his planet, maybe redeem his career--and irrevocably alter the future of humans and mechanicals alike..."

Now this cover is more like the Les Edwards I know---the nightmarish Les Edwards! This 1982 edition of Deus Irae was published in the U.K. by Sphere. I guess it was inevitable that two of science fiction's greatest authors, Philip K. Dick and Roger Zelazny, would team up to do a novel. From a pure marketing strategy it made sense: since its first appearance in 1976, Deus Irae has been published in English seven more times by different publishing houses, and reprinted by some of those publishers multiple times, the last one coming in 2013. Yes, I'd say that qualifies Deus Irae as a marketing success.

"After the holocaust a New God emerges. What chance has Tibor McMasters---one limbless heretic---against the awesome powers of the legendary Deus Irae, the wrathful entity behind World War III? Commissioned to paint the deity's likeness, Tibor must first find him. And to do se he must travel across the nightmare landscape of the post-holocaust world, braving its terrifying mutations while his Christian companion acts on orders to sabotage his mission..."

This paperback edition of Notions Unlimited was published by Bantam in 1968, the second actual printing of this excellent 1960 Robert Sheckley short story collection. My rather scuffed cover is uncredited, but I'm sure it's the illustration work of Dean Ellis. It has all of his style notions (no pun intended), seen on covers ranging from Alph to The Best of Henry Kuttner to Hauser's Memory to The Illustrated Man to the Naked Sun to Tomorrow Is Too Far. I could go on and on so I think it's best to stop here now that I've got you completely convinced I'm right.

"Universe: Unlimited, Human beings wired for spontaneous love... Machines intercepting murderers before they kill... an organization that makes hangover nightmares come true... A killer organism that feeds on Atom Bombs and thrives on being blown up from time to time! Notions: Unlimited, a fantastic exploration into the galaxies of probability... by Robert Sheckley."

Ed Emshwiller (1925-1990) is another prolific magazine and book cover artist that I've grown increasingly fond of. But, like his colleague Jack Gaughan, it took an intense perusal of his two books, Emshwiller: Infinity X Two, and Dreamdance: The Art of Ed Emshwiller, plus additional searching online for artwork not featured in the books to convince me that 'Emsh' was one of the greatest illustrators in science fiction history. That's not to say Emsh didn't have his share of duds, every artist does, but his successes far out weighed the duds, by a spatial mile.

Stepsons of Terra by Robert Silverberg was published in paperback in 1958 as an Ace Double, sharing flip-side space with Lan Wright's A Man Called Destiny.

"They owed Mother Earth no allegiance! The first Corwinite in 500 years to visit the Earth, Baird Ewing had been delegated by the desperate planetary colonists to seek the Mother Planet's help against a destructive horde which would soon fall upon the planet Corwin. But Earth... Earth had changed into a decadent world which could not even avoid her own destruction at the hands of the neighboring Sirians... much less help the distant and long forgotten colony. Earth had nothing to offer... except... maybe the secret of time travel!"

Vulcan's Hammer is easily one of Emshwiller's many successes---it's both dramatic and perfectly formulated. This novel was published in paperback in 1960 as an Ace Double, sharing flip-side space with John Brunner's The Skynappers. It is essentially an expansion of Philip K. Dick's 1956 novelette of the same name, and concerns a giant computer to which humanity has acceded absolute power over the fate of the world. 

"The Artificial Intelligence called Vulcan 3 ruled the human race, more than a machine, less than a god. It had lifted mankind out of the dark pre-Machine ages. It had ended war, unemployment and poverty... but it had not ended the most corrosive of fears, the fear of Vulcan 3 itself. At firs those who feared it were dismissed as crackpots and religious fanatics. Then the world learned what terror meant as the deadly, gleaming messengers of death appeared, soaring through the air to strike down friends and foes of Vulcan 3 alike. Who ruled them? What was the strange force that wielded---VULCAN'S HAMMER."

There is a possibility that Emshwiller was inspired by someone else's drawn robot when he created this particular 'bot, but I haven't come across that image, assuming that it even exists. But I'm willing to bet that Michael Presley, who'll you meet further down the article, was inspired by Emsh's 'bot when he created his own robots for the Equinox edition of Isaac Asimov's The Naked Sun. The above Lancer edition was published in 1964, and it is the second U.S. paperback edition of this classic science-fictional whodunit.

"Other Planets, Other Fears.  Elijah Baley, Earth's most capable detective, took crime in his stride. But he had lived all his life in the underground cities, and the open blazing sun of planet Solaria sent cold chills down his spine. To the Solarians, the simple fact of Baley's presence was terrifying enough. For in spite of their habitual nudity, they panicked at the idea of being in the same room with another human being. And R. Daneel Olivaw, whose mind was a super-scientific electronic computer, proved that even robots can know the face of fear..."

I'm not sure if this tentacled machine by artist Jack Faragasso is a robot or a something else entirely, but it looks very robotic, so that's why it's gonna stay. Specimens was written by Fred Saberhagen, but it's a standalone novel and not part of his Berserker robot series. Popular Library published it in paperback in 1976 (if you plan on reading this supposedly fun romp as I do, please avoid the book's blurb below, it's the spoiler of all spoilers).

It would seem to me that Jack Faragasso (1929- ) has a proclivity to paint naked men and women, and why not, he's pretty good at it. His nudes and semi-nudes are sprinkled throughout much of his cover art from the 1960's to the 80's, and not exclusively on SF books. So it didn't surprise me to learn that he authored the instructional book Mastering Drawing: the Human Figure From Life, Memory, Imagination (Stargarden Press, 1999). Turns out he wrote another book too, The Student's Guide to Painting, and he's been contributing articles on various artistic topics to magazines for years. Faragasso in fact has been a professional artist, writer, and teacher for more than 50 years. Some of his many art students have included James Warhola (also featured further below) and Joe DeVito (just featured above). In 2022, an important retrospective of his storied career was published by Asylum Publications under the title, The Fine Art of Jack Faragasso. 

"The terror began the very first night that Dan Post spent with his children in the old house on the hill. In his sleep he felt his identity dissolving, merging with human beings of the distant past, creatures who had somehow returned to life as they invaded his defenseless mind. At first Dan Post thought he was going mad. Then he discovered the truth about the house that he and his children lived in... what waited for them at the end of the tunnel behind the basement wall... And Don Post could only wish that he was mad... that the nightmare was only a dream... that the horror was not inescapably real..."

I don't often see Badger Books in my little insecure city on the high plains, so when I came across March of the Robots by Leo Brett (Badger Books, U.K., 1961), I snatched it up, just like the robot on the cover did with the woman. Badger only existed between 1960 and 1967, but managed to published in excess of 500 novels during that stretch, in seven different genres: westerns, war, romance, crime, spy, supernatural and science fiction. But the bulk of the writing was done by just two dudes: Lionel Fanthorpe (1935- ), who wrote often as Leo Brett; and John Stephen Glasby (1928-2011), who wrote under several different pseudonyms. At Badger it was apparently quantity over quality, but there was still a pulpified paceiness to every novel, which made them, well, at least some of them, or so I've heard, rather entertaining (I have yet to read this book or any Badger book). The same could be said about the prolific British cover artist Henry (H) Fox (1911-1980), and yet he still managed to churn out some quite seriously entertaining cover illustrations (take a look at the one immediately below for proof). Though there are elements in his artwork that appear to have been swiped from others, for instance the large eye-bubbles from Valigursky (seen further below). But as for those ludicrous robot feet that look like the legs of an end-table (or the garden tiller tool that's hanging in my shed), well those babies were probably all Fox's.

"The East feared the West. The West feared the East. The Kremlin and the Pentagon snarled at each other in the monotonous soul destroying cold war that had dragged on since the end of the 39-45 conflict. But it was the very fact of the Cold War that was to prove a vital turning point in the ghastly history of human conflict. Man was prepared to fight fellow man... but the menace came from Outer Space. The Robots were marching. Metal men spread havoc and destruction across the fair green fields of earth until America and Russia settled their differences and turned in a concerted effort against the ghastly invaders. But the alien attackers were armed with technological masterpieces, scientific marvels... what hope had the puny weapons of man against such terrors? But flesh and blood are stronger than steel in some circumstances. there are times when a brain can defeat a computer. There are circumstances in which courage is worth more than technology. Men had to defeat the Metal Monsters or watch their planet die."

Plan for Conquest by A. A. Glynn (Anthony Arthur Glynn, b. 1929- ) was published in 1964 in Clovis, California by Vega Books. For four years Vega tried to keep up with United Kingdom publisher Badger, but managed to republish only 13 of their science-fiction titles (not sure if they published any other genres). The cover art was carried over from Badger, and although the illustration is uncredited, it is most likely the work of Henry Fox. Glynn, apparently wrote only two SF novels, but more than a dozen SF short stories, many as Tony Glynn. In 2013, Borgo Press/Wildside Press published a collection Glynn's supernatural short stories, all of which were written in this century, titled, Mystery in Moon Lane: Supernatural Mystery Stories.

"It started out as something novel: a company of scientists and their wives living in the prototype of the society of the future, a society governed by a huge cybernetic unit. New Society, on the remote Yorkshire moors was an environment in which leisure took top place. If you wanted to pour a drink, bath the baby or even drive you cr, you sat back and allowed "Aunt Edie", the great man-made brain, to do it for you through her multitudinous extensions. And it worked.... up to a point. When that point was reached and crossed, life in New Society became a full-scale struggle for survival against a macabre enemy, a cunning adversary which turned the New Society experiment into a nightmare. For this was the clash between man and his own scientific ingenuity."

I never started out liking the artwork of Jack Gaughan (1930-1985). Then I read a book that was published about his life and art, entitled Outermost: The Art, Life of Jack Gaughan (Non-Stop Press, 2010), which won me over to how really artistic and special he was as a science fiction and fantasy illustrator. I must've borrowed that book 2 or 3 times from my local library. Heck, I should've bought the darn thing after that. Heck, maybe I still will!  

Invasion of the Robots was edited by Roger Elwood and published by Paperback Library in 1964. The contents are as follows:

Satisfaction Guaranteed by Isaac Asimov.
Piggy Bank by Henry Kuttner.
With Folded Hands by Jack Williamson.
Brother to the Machine by Richard Matheson.
The Defenders by Philip K. Dick.
Almost Human by Robert Bloch.
Into Thy Hands by Lester Del Rey.
Boomerang by Eric Frank Russell.

Jack Gaughan's cover art here could easily substitute for the cover of Clifford D. Simak's City (seen further below), even withstanding the rocketship. This edition of Adam Link Robot by Eando Binder (the pen-name of brothers Earl & Otto Binder) was published by Paperback Library in 1968, and it's a collection of several of their Adam Link stories, the first one coming in 1939 and the last in 1942. Although I saw this book more than once at the mall bookstore when I was a kid I never took it home, but I know my brother Gary did---he was an even bigger sci-fi nerd, er, I mean, reader, than I am.

"Adam Link, the first of the robot race, had photoelectric eyes, an iridium-sponge brain and the soul of a man!  An electronic marvel gifted with incredible skills Adam Link faces a series of challenges that would stagger a mere mortal, culminating in a fierce struggle to save Earth from destruction at the hands of an alien race."

I can't look at this cover art by Robert Grace without thinking of those little barrel shaped root beer candies that we used to suck on as kids. Man, they were good! I was completely unfamiliar with this YA series until I saw this particular paperback in a used bookstore and bought it on a whim, thinking of course that I would read it, which I never have and probably never will. Norby and Yobo's Great Adventure by Janet & Isaac Asimov was published by Ace in 1991. It is one of eleven novels in the series, the first one coming in 1983 and the last in 1997. According to Isaac, Janet did 90 percent of the actual writing, his name was only added by the publisher for the betterment of sales. Norby may have been named after Norbert Wiener, the "father of cybernetics," or at least that's the general consensus.

There's scant information about artist Robert Grace, but it appears that he was, and probably still is, a member of the New York Society of Illustrators. His clients have included various publishers, Hallmark Cards, Levi Strauss, Land O' Lakes, Kellogg, Philips Petroleum, and Christianity Today, among others. For Ace he produce about a dozen SFF covers, but there could be more that have gone uncredited.

"Whenever Admiral Yobo summoned Jeff and Norby, it usually meant they were in trouble. This time, the Martian officer has a mission for them: a wild-safari photo shoot... in Earth's distant past. Thanks to Norby's hyperspace skills, the journey is a success. But it's a jungle out there---the elephants are stampeding, the natives are restless... and Norby's lost the trail that can take them back home!"

British artist Peter Gudynas (1954- ) has been under my radar since, well, forever. But not anymore! It was the discovery of this cover art for Frederik Pohl's Man Plus (Panther, 1978), and the three additional covers featured below that propelled Gudynas to the forefront of my attention. Gudynas, to everyone but me it would seem, had been producing fairly steadily in the SF field between 1977 and 1999, and over that span folks could see a gradual change in his artistic approach and use of mediums. As a result, he works mostly today with various aspects of digital film, sound and music to create his particular type of art. Sadly, he does almost no painting like he did in the beginning---but that's okay---there's plenty of his early stuff to ogle and to try and collect in the form of books and their covers that will keep me interested for a long time to come.

"MAN PLUS is a haunting vision of to-morrow's man---less mortal than monster, more machine than flesh and blood... MAN PLUS is a desperated top-level plan to save mankind and satisfy the sinister predictions of a government computer... MAN PLUS is Frederik Pohl's stunning new novel of an all-too-possible future when Man must be biologically modified for survival on an alien planet before he exterminates himself on Earth."

"The eye, like a shattered mirror, multiplies the images of sorrow." --- Edgar Allan Poe.

The jacket art on Future Man: Brave New World or Genetic Nightmare (Crown, 1984) was also produced by Gudynas. The author, Brian Michael Stableford (1948- ), in addition to being a first rate science fiction writer with over 70 novels, was for many years a lecturer at the University of Reading, England. At York University he read biology and obtained a first class honors degree. After graduating he remained at York to research into animal population dynamics and became increasingly interested in the effects of science on society. Eventually he ran a major course on The Sociology of Technology at Reading. Today Stableford still lectures but only on a part-time basis, and he continues to write; his last non-fiction book coming out in 2016 and novel in 2022.

"Are we still homo sapiens, or has the human race already started to evolve into a new species? In FUTURE MAN Dr. Brian Stableford argues that man has already entered into a new phase of evolution and in time will obtain power over the natural world which will be literally godlike. The world we are entering into was already glimpsed int he 1930s by Aldous Huxley in BRAVE NEW WORLD, but the possibilities foreseen by Huxley could not become reality until the cracking of the genetic code in the early 1950s. Most scientists now believe that the remaining problems holding up our ability to control and manipulate the human gene will be resolved with the next few generations. As Isaac Asimov writes in his introduction: "Now we can adjust the genes. We can decide on what we want and try to carve living things to suit... Indeed, we can even ask ourselves, 'What kind of human beings might we like to be? What kind of abilities that we lack would it be good to have, and how do we go about getting them:' And what kind of dangers would be involved? And what about morality?" This is were FUTURE MAN begins. It shows with vivid illustrations how future genetic engineers might manipulate all living things, including man himself. So far we have had to be content with the image in which evolution has shaped us, soon we will have the capability to remake that image in any way we choose. Should this be allowed to happen? Or is this knowledge simply too dangerous to be delivered into human minds and hands? Is it, anyway, too late to stop the process? FUTURE MAN updates BRAVE NEW WORLD. Like Huxley's prophecy, FUTURE MAN deserves to become a classic of its time."

Gudynas also produced this impressive jacket art for the first U.K. edition of Machines That Think: The Best Science Fiction Stories about Robots and Computers, edited by Isaac Asimov, Patricia W. Warrick and Martin H. Greenberg. It was published by Allen Lane in hardcover in 1984 (Wings Books republished it in 1992 as War with the Robots, and featured further above under Richard Courtney).

"Isaac Asimov writes: 'I cannot help but feel that if a copy of this anthology fell into the hands of one of our descendants a century or five centuries hence, he or she might smile at some of our naiveties and misfires---and yet be impressed, to a greater extent, by our successes at penetrating the dark veil of what is to come.'"
 

Here's an absurdist side of Gudynas that I wish he would've exhibited more of back in the day. John Sladek's Tik-Tok was published in paperback by Daw in 1985, following its initial hardback publication in 1983 by Gollancz, which garnered a British Science Fiction Association Award for Best Novel. New Wave associated writer Sladek (1937-2000) published more than a dozen books, some of which featured robots and AI, starting with his 'bot-gone-bad, Tik-Tok. The second novel he wrote in 1968, The Reproductive System (in the U.S. as Mechasm), dealt with a project to build machines that build copies of themselves, a process that gets out of hand and threatens to destroy humanity. Sladek's other robot character is Roderick, who was featured in three of his novels.

"A robot shall not injure a human being, or through inaction allow a human being to come to harm."---Asimov's First Law of Robotics.  Tik-Tok was one of the finest domestic robots ever made, but his asimov circuits were defective. He could injure people as much as he pleased---and he pleased to do it often! But the life of a robot (if that isn't a contradiction) is still all service and unpaid labor. Tik-Tok served many masters, all of whom came to a bad end. Happily he went on gathering steam with a trail of catastrophes getting bigger and bigger, destined to culminate with his campaign for the vice-presidency of the United States!"

Eddie Jones created this cover for Sphere's 1971 paperback edition of City, obviously inspired by artist Ed Valigursky's earlier effort on City, which I've featured further below.  Jones (1935-1999) started out as a fan artist, but that quickly changed when he started producing cover art for scores of paperbacks, in both Great Britain and America, but also Germany, where his output is estimated at over 600 covers. When asked about his approach to painting, he said, "I never sketch out a cover to any detail before hand. I paint straight onto the board. I read a novel pictorially, so in a sense, when I come to do the illustration, I've already seen it. My inspiration comes from the fiction itself, so in most cases I'm relying solely on the authors." Jones was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Professional Artist in 1970 and 1971. He sometimes signed his artwork as S. Fantoni.

City is the book that propelled Clifford D. Simak to the front ranks of science fiction, where he more or less stayed for the rest of his career. It is essentially a fix-up novel, consisting of eight stories all linked together by fictional notes, with each note designed to tie the collection into a whole legend.

"Thousands of years have passed since humankind abandoned the city---first for the countryside, then for the stars, and ultimately for oblivion---leaving their most loyal animal companions alone on Earth. Granted the power of speech centuries earlier by the revered Bruce Webster, the intelligent, pacifist dogs are the last keepers of human history, raising their pups with bedtime stories, passed down through generations, of the lost "websters" who gave them so much but will never return. With the aid of Jenkins, an ageless service robot, the dogs live in a world of harmony and peace. But they now face serious threats from their own and other dimensions, perhaps the most dangerous of all being the reawakened remnants of a warlike race called "Man."

Of all the robots in this post, this one by Dom Lupo strikes me as maybe the best actual design, because it shows we can all build one like it from the junk in our garage. Ha! This edition of Mystery at Shadow Pond by Mary C. Jane was published in softcover by Scholastic Books in 1965.

Dom Lupo (2019-2013) produced several excellent covers for Scholastic during the 1960's. He was mostly recognized though for being Golf magazine's leading illustrator for over 25 years, but he also did advertising art and book covers for a variety of clients and publishers, including the Boy Scouts of America. Sadly, all of his artwork, or what pieces he still had in his possession, were completely lost in the San Diego Cedar Fire of 2003. So if you ever run across one of his illustrations for sale, buy it without hesitation, it's probably as rare as a second-serve ace in anybody's tennis match (Lupo, I discovered, was an avid tennis player).

"When Neale and Margie Lawson hear that their father will have to sell his shore land and their beloved horse, Firefly, they are miserable. They can find no way to help until a strange red car, a lost cat, and the odd behavior of an eccentric old man draw them into a mystery involving the lost letters of a famous New England artist. The Lawsons and their friend Rupert Reed, son of the Ranger at the camp across the lake, are plunged into a bewildering tangle of strange doings. Neale thinks that his robot-burglar alarm might help solve the mystery, and Margie is sure that her grandfather's books hold the key to the problem. Both children are right, but it takes two discoveries---one in a cave on the mountain and one in the middle of Shadow Pond---to set things straight."

David B. Mattingly (1956- ) has always been one of the most productive illustrators in the book cover business, with hundreds of covers to his name since he started in the business back in 1980. And so it would have been impossible for his artwork to escape the likes of 'Good Show Sir', that irreverent site that pokes good natured fun at science fiction and fantasy cover art. This cover though has not been featured there and probably won't because it's just too well drawn. I love the reflections in the mirrored body of the 'bot, and the fact that its tentacles reach around from the back. That and that little smear of blood are great details. This edition of Specimens by Fred Saberhagen was published in paperback by Ace in 1981.

"The Hill... 1050: Temple of the God. A beautiful virgin is sacrificed in a strange and loathsome rite. 1859: Station on the Underground Railroad. A beautiful woman bound for Canada is suddenly derailed. 1980: Real Estate Bargain [previous owner died mysteriously]. Dan Post, his two children, and his brand new wife are about to move in... to become the newest---SPECIMENS."

This particular Ace reprint of Clifford D. Simak's classic City was published in 1981. A cover artist was not credited, and when I looked at the list of illustrators working for Ace in 1981 the most viable candidate I could come up with was David B. Mattingly, so that's who I'm sticking with, and I've never been wrong before---right?

"Jenkins was a robot. He was built to be the perfect worker, tireless and uncomplaining, but quite unexpectedly he also became a close companion to generation after generation of his owners as the human race matured, moved beyond the confines of its one tiny planet, and eventually changed beyond all recognition. And then, because he was a good and dutiful servant, Jenkins went on to serve Earth's inheritors."

In addition to the magnificent cover art which inspired the title story, artist Ralph McQuarrie contributed eleven full-page black & white illustrations and four alternating header illustrations to Isaac Asimov's Robot Dreams, which collects 20 of the author's best robot stories. It was published in trade paperback by Ace in 1987, duplicating the original edition that Berkley published in 1986.

"In this new collection, which spans the body of his fiction from the nineteen-forties to the mid-eighties, are all of the classic themes Asimovian, from the scientific puzzle, to the extraterrestrial thriller, to the psychological discourse, all introduced in an important new essay written expressly for this edition. "Robot Dreams," the tale that opens the book, is a never-before-published Asimov story. It represents the first appearance of Asimov's heroine, Dr. Susan Calvin, in over a decade. The cover of this book and over a dozen black-and-white plates represent the book illustration debut of Ralph McQuarrie, known worldwide as the most influential designer of science fiction films. He has been responsible for the look of such movies as STAR WARS, THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND and STAR TREK IV. Among the stories included in this collection are many hard-to-find classics as well as Asimov's famous "The Martian Way," "Sally," "The Feeling of Power," and "The Ugly Little Boy," which the author considers among his best."

The cover of Ace's first U.S. trade paperback edition of Isaac Asimov's Caliban was all font and very little art. For this later 1994 U.K. reprint edition from Millennium, McQuarrie's cover illustration was restored to it's fullest, making this, for art fiends like myself, the definitive edition to own. The only problem is I'm in the United States and this edition is only available in the United Kingdom. The novel, the first of a three book series dubbed Isaac Asimov's Robot Mysteries, was written by Roger MacBride Allen. It was inspired by Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics," and his conception of a robot named Caliban who is considered a "No Law" or "New Law" robot. The second book in the trilogy was Isaac Asimov's Inferno, and it was reprinted by Millennium in 1995. The third volume, 'Utopia, was assigned a different cover artist.

"When an experiment with a new type of robot brain goes awry, the result is the creation of Caliban, a conscienceless robot that is not monitored by the Three Laws of Robotics that keep humans safe."

Ace published this paperback reprint of Philip K. Dick's 1964 novel in 1972. The robot is a simulacrum, who is being manipulated by its human master to commit a heinous act. The cover artist is Davis Meltzer. Meltzer (1930-2017) is probably not be a household name to most science fiction fans, but he should be. He had a potent, surreal imagination and a stark, posterized style that lent itself well to the genre. The problem was Meltzer only produced SFF covers for eleven years, from 1970 to 1981, hardly enough time to establish himself as one of the best, which of course he was. Among his other clients outside of paperbacks were the U.S. Postal Service, NASA, and National Geographic, where he was gainfully employed for 30 years.

"Holding a precarious liberty as the result of an interstellar stalemate, the human survivors of Alpha Centauri's hospital moon readied themselves for their war of independence. Naturally, the Pares, always suspicious and cunning, assumed the leadership, leaving it to the Manses to provide the super weapons out of their sheer love of violence. Propaganda and other details would have to be left to the Skitzes, the Heebs, the Polys, and the Ob-Coms. But when the Earth expedition arrived, everything turned out to be different... because they too were divided among themselves, and some of them weren't really human at all!"
 

Invariably, almost any artist assigned to produce a cover for Clifford D. Simak's classic novel about robots and dogs (among other things), will place a dog in the illustration, and a robot too for that matter. It is refreshing though to see that Meltzer conceived his cover for this 1973 Ace paperback reprint as a kind of collage, cleverly incorporating various ingredients of the fix-up novel into his robot bust framework: a dog, a farmhouse, some ants, and the planet Jupiter. Bravo, I say!

"A masterful tale of an Earth overrun by ants, a series of parallel worlds ruled by dogs, and a Jupiter where the human race finds its Golden Age---if human it could still be called."

In his early years Ron Miller (1947- ) provided the frontispiece illustration on a series of Jules Verne paperbacks published by Ace (with covers by Jerome Podwil), then he went on to represent modern science fiction and fact where he's been producing cover art ever since, interspersed with consulting, film and theater production designing, and non-fiction editing and writing. To date he has written or edited nearly sixty science, science fiction or art related books, most if not all of them featuring his paintings. The cover art Miller produced back in the 1980's proper, like here on Richard A. Lupoff's novel Galaxy's End (Ace, 1988), is in my opinion the best work of his exceedingly storied career.

"Daniel Kitajima was a creature of mind and machine. His artificial limbs were endowed with superhuman strength, his perceptual abilities enhanced with telescopic vision, radar and infrared. With proper care, he would live forever---except for one grim and inevitable fact... The solar system was about to be destroyed. The sun was heating up, scorching Earth's deserts and transforming its polar icefields into quagmires. The entire galaxy was in danger. And nothing human could halt the oncoming disaster. But Daniel Kitajima is not exactly human..."

Charles Moll is biographically an enigma. We know he produced SFF covers between 1971 and 1982 before moving on to mystery/crime and mainstream covers, and he also produced movie posters and magazine illustrations throughout the late 20th century. However, his birth, training and age are all unknown quantities. His style though was unique, both surreal and psychedelic, but stark and clearly delineated. The first paperback I bought with his artwork was Ted White's Star Wolf, published in 1971 and ostensibly the second cover he ever produced. Man, how I loved looking at that cover! He used to push the boundaries of sexiness too with his beautiful covers for SF paperbacks such as The Deep Gods, Virgin Planet, The Strange Gods and Wandering Stars. This edition of Adam Link Robot by Eando Binder (aka the brothers Earl & Otto Binder) was published by Warner in 1974. In The American Robot: A Cultural History (Chicago Press, 2020), author Dustin A. Abnet says that Adam Link was the "most popular science fiction robot of the era."

The robots of famed British artist Chris Moore are always elegant and sometimes playfully ornamental. This cover art for Henry Kuttner's and C. L. Moore's short story collection, The Proud Robot (a variant title of Robots Have No Tail), also reflects rather well against the largely humorous contents of the book. Hamlyn (U.K.) published this paperback edition in 1983.

Chris Moore (1947- ) is one of science fiction's most prolific cover artists. He began producing cover art in 1979 (his first cover was an awesome wraparound on Clifford D. Simak's Way Station), and has since showed no signs of slowing, even branching out into other literary genres on occasion. He's also produced art for record albums and concept art for both Stanley Kubrick and George Lucas. Apparently though in the 21st century, Moore made the decision to switch over to computer technology to create his images, much to the disappointment of old-school purists like me.  

"*Meet Gallway Gallegher---genius inventor and drunk. Correction---genius inventor when drunk. In fact Gallegher's only reason for ever inventing anything is to raise the cost of getting drunk. And when he's thoroughly plastered, his subconscious takes over, and invents as required... Almost. Being as lazy as Gallegher sober, his subconscious has a nasty habit of combing all his clients' machines into one---leaving Gallegher with the problem of working out what exactly his subconscious has produced. *So, meet Galloway Gallegher, genius inventor when drunk. *And meet Joe, the Proud Robot, who won't do anything but admire himself---but surely must have some purpose... or purposes? The role model for Marvin, the Paranoid Android?"

Special Deliverance by Clifford D. Simak (Methuen, U.K., 1984) was written late in the author's career and as such is considered to be one of his lesser works (though that may be debatable by some including me). It's essentially a quest novel, with several characters including a robot named Jurgens (painted beautifully on the paperback cover by Chris Moore), finding themselves searching an alternative Earth to find answers to questions that have barely been posed, and follows very much in line with my preferred type of novel reading, and, if I just had the skills and time to do it, preferred type of novel writing. In fact, the trials and tribulations that the characters go through in their quest are not too dissimilar to what I have roughly outlined in my perfect imaginary SF novel that I of course will never write, except now that Artificial Intelligence exists I could simply enter my story outline into an AI computer and have it do all the dirty work for me, ha ha!

"They were six ill-assorted players of the strangest game ever devised. Set on a strange planet, they knew neither its rules or its aim. There was the giant blue cube, the ruined city, the singing tower, the roaring wall of Chaos---all deadly dangerous, all part of the challenge that the unwilling travelers must confront. But what was it all for---and would they survive to find out?"

Del Rey published Clifford D. Simak's Project Pope in hardcover 1981, and then in the above paperback edition in 1982. Both books share the same striking cover art by Rowena Morrill (1944-2021), who at one time was exceedingly popular in the science fiction and fantasy world (especially with me who back in 1983 bought her first portfolio, The Art of Rowena, and her first art book, The Fantastic Art of Rowena, without hesitation), producing literally hundreds of mostly gorgeous covers from 1977 until her retirement in the early 2000's. Though I do believe that this is the only robot picture she ever painted for publication.

I'm in the process of re-reading this novel, which I remember as being one of my all time favorite books, and the book that made me a Simak fan. Really though, I'm not sure if it will hold up as well as I would like it too. But so far, knock on wood (my thick head), at twenty-five pages in and counting I'm just as enthralled with it as I was when I read it the first time, some 43 years ago!

"Vatican-17... On the Rim planet fittingly called The End of Everything, a bizarre society of robots and humans toiled for a thousand years to perfect a religion that would create a new and all-embracing faith--no novelty in a galaxy crowded with religions. But one project was hidden from the hordes of pilgrims welcomed at Vatican-17. Trained human sensitives were sending their minds ranging through all of time and space, gathering all the information could exist. With that information, a computer of infinite knowledge, wisdom and infallibility was being constructed in secret--the ultimate Pope. But now, the project is being threatened by a young woman journalist on the trail of a sensational story... and, even more incredibly, by one of the searcher sensitives who, while drifting in unsuspected dimensions, claims to have encountered Heaven!"

Gray Morrow (1934-2001) produced more than a 100 covers for the Perry Rhodan science fiction adventure series published by Ace Books. There's some pretty cool covers among that lot, but this particular one for Power's Price (1976) is the coolest of them all. Morrow started in comics and magazines before moving into SFF proper, and for a stretch was very popular with fans, nominated three times for the Hugo Award for Best Professional Artist in 1966, 1967, and 1968. He also produced covers for dozens of other books, as well as illustrating poster art, educational filmstrips, children's books and television animation art. Many folks still remember him respectively for his exceptionally fine work on the 1978 trade softcover graphic novel, The Illustrated Roger Zelazny. 

I was about to say that this cover of L. Frank Baums's Tik-Tok of Oz was an illustrative masterpiece, but then I realized---ta-da!---that every Oz cover that artist John Rea Neill (1877-1943) produced was a masterpiece. This hardback first edition, with its paste-down cover art, was published by Reilly & Britton in 1914. Neill did all of the interior artwork as well.

Tik-Tok was second robot created in all of literature (well, techically the third if you count Baum's Tin Woodman), preceded only by Edward S. Ellis' "Steam Man of the Prairies," which was featured in several adventure stories for teens, beginning in 1868. Tik-Tok is an all mechanical man made of copper, that runs on clockwork springs which periodically need to be wound, like a mechanical clock or an automaton. According to Baum, Tik-Tok is not alive and feels no emotions, but incongruously he talks like he was imbued with artificial intelligence. 

I told myself I would never post one of those ridiculous looking feline-faced, bi-pedal alien type creatures that seem to be so prevalent in SF on my blog. So, I ask you, does this robot cover art by Bruce Pennington still count as one?

Earthworks by Brian W. Aldiss was published in paperback by New English Library in 1972. British artist Bruce Pennington's (1944- ) first cover art assignment was for Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, way back in 1968, which pretty much tells you that as far as the cover art business goes, you've started at the top and can only plummet from there, which of course Pennington never did. Demand for his cover art never waned until digital creations started muscling its way past him and everyone else who was a traditional painter. 

"The world had degenerated into a disease-ridden, over-populated rubbish dump. Chemicals had poisoned the landscape and reduced most of the people to the edge of starvation. Ecology has become a meaningless word from the past. The planet earth speeds on its collision course with disaster. There is a solution but it is so frightful that man cannot conceive of it ever being put into operation. Only one man, Knowle Noland, ex-convict, ex-traveler, and captain of the tram freighter Trieste Star, is prepared to try. He alone is prepared to fire a shot that will throw the world into hideous war, but may leave a brave new world for the survivors. If there are any survivors."

Richard Powers (1921-1996) has been celebrated for his groundbreaking surreal art, both in and outside of the science fiction community, since practically the very beginning of his career as a cover artist (in 1950), which went on unhesitatingly until his career in publishing wound down to a close in the early 1990's. Though some of his unique covers are quite amusing in their abstraction, such as here on the very first paperback edition of Clifford D. Simak's City (Perma, 1954).

"The year was 1990... Everywhere men were fleeing the cities, abandoning the ancient huddling places of the human race. Cheap atomic power was a reality. Hydroponics had replaced dirt farming. At last humanity was free. And left behind---in the dead and empty cities---man's memories remained as symbols of the childhood of the race. The Golden Age had come at last after generations of turmoil..."

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Ahead of Time, a collection of ten SF short stories and an essay by Henry Kuttner, was first published in paperback in 1953 by Ballantine Books. When Ballantine issued a reprint of it in 1966, seen above, they wisely kept the same absurdly amusing cover art by Richard Powers, which has since gone on to be construed as Powers' most infamous piece of art.

"A brain in a box fights a criminal plot. A visitor from the future turns out to be peculiar even for his society. An eternal hillbilly family survives the centuries and gets into political trouble. A sick electronic calculator catches a psychosis from its operator.... These are some of the highly original and vividly written stories you will find in this selection of a master's work.   Science fiction and fantasy grow constantly in popularity. Writing of this quality and imagination is the reason. Henry Kuttner demonstrates again in this book why more and more readers are becoming devotees of that intriguing fiction which is not content to stay in the world as we see it and know it, which takes us to the farthest reaches of space and time, to the farthest reaches of the human mind."

That really isn't a robot on the cover, but it does depict a giant, all powerful data-absorbing computer, so it sorta fits in loosely here with my robot/AI theme. Year of Consent by Kendell Foster Crossen was published by Dell in 1954, and to my knowledge it has never been republished. It is however an interesting albeit now dated view of the dangers of relying too much on technology. The cover art has been attributed to Richard Powers by SF art historian Jane Frank, however, one of my PB price guide books claims it's by Robert Stanley. Of course, you can decide for yourself, but I'm sticking with Jane.

"It is only 36 years from now. The streets, the buildings, the fields look just as they do today. And the people look the same--until you get close enough to see the bland, vacant stare in their eyes, to hear the empty guarded quality of their voices. They are victims of a gigantic con game. Free will, the right of dissent, have been washed away in a sea of slogans coined by the public-relations manipulators who have taken over the government. The rare ones who momentarily forget they are no longer individuals have their symptoms recorded by an enormous mechanical brain in Washington. The real dissenters, the incorrigible rebels, have their "sickness" cured by a simple surgical operation... This is the year of consent. And this is the story of a man who fought back."

Artist William Michael "Mike" Presley passed away in 2020 at the age of 67. Apparently he had some health issues prior to his death, but we all know any serious health issue and a nudge in 2020 would push you on your way. That was a bad year for all of us, and so was 2021 and some of 2022, and I'm so glad they're all in the rear-view mirror ((but man oh man did we lose some good people during that stretch of road including one of my beloved brother-in-laws). Presley, in addition to being an excellent, all-around commercial illustrator (with too many clients to list), was captain of his high school football team, a recipient of an athletic scholarship from the University of Texas, and a teacher of advertising illustration at East Texas State University. He cut his illustrative teeth as a young man working at Don Punchatz's studio Sketch Pad, where he was fortunate to have learned from one of the best. He was known by his family and friends for a very specific, particularly menacing look in his eyes (for laughs he proclaimed himself "The Prince of Darkness"), an obvious absurd sense of humor, and a captivating streak of rebellion. Presley enjoyed building model airplanes, hosting Dallas Cowboy football fellowship watch parties, movies, painting, novels, and writing drunken haiku's. He also frequented Half Price Books and Hobby Town, which aided in fueling his addictions to reading and constructing model airplanes.

This 1971 softcover was Presley's first stint with Jack Williamson's The Humanoids, and robots in general. Later of course he would do a great followup for the novel's 1980 reprint (featured immediately below). Equinox, an imprint of Avon, published a series of trade softcover editions (digest sized really) of more or less famous works of science fiction, both novels and anthologies, under the label "SF Rediscovery." There were 27 titles in all, utilizing about a dozen different cover artists. The design layout by Milton Glaser and George Leavitt, with its shaded all-caps font and box, was not a not a good selling point to a cover-art enthusiast like me; it tended to marginalize the mostly good art and just looked lousy overall.

This 1980 Avon reprint of The Humanoids has an even better cover illustration by Mike Presley than the first one he did. Presley, like all dedicated professional artists, continued to improve his craft as time went on. One of his best paintings, which was used on the cover of Terry's Universe by Terry Carr (Tor, 1988), was picked up by author Harlan Ellison, who was nobody's fool when it came to recognizing worthy artwork, and worthy artists.

"From far beyond Earth came a generation of benevolent robots whose sole purpose was to serve man by ending wars and easing his bodily and spiritual ills. Dr. Clay Forester, brilliant scientist and citizen of the distant future, had been recruited by a band of dissidents to stop the fledgling "brave new world." But why should he try to kill humanity's only hope for everlasting peace? A vagabond band of psychic anarchists are determined to defeat the invincible robots. And Clay Forester must discover the secret of the Humanoids and make an agonizing choice: fight for mankind's freedom to struggle and despair... or yield to the Humanoids' implacable imperative of total peace and pure bliss."

Now we move on to Mike Presley's mentor in all things commercially illustrative, Don Punchatz, who was himself mentored by Burne Hogarth, the famed illustrator of the Tarzan comic strip. This paperback cover for Neanderthal Planet (Avon, 1970), Brian W. Aldiss' collection of 4 novelettes, perfectly illustrates (pun intended) what Punchatz was all about: sophisticated conceptualization combined with aspects of surrealism. Don Punchatz (1936-2009) started producing cover art in the 1960's and in the next thirty plus years became a hot commodity for not only science fiction, fantasy and horror book covers, but magazine art, advertising art and even teaching. In 1970, he founded SketchPad Studio in Arlington, Texas, where a number of young illustrators including Mike Presley began their careers. Punchatz also taught illustration at Texas Christian University for more than 35 years.

"Tales of Wonder and Terror!:  On "NEANDERTHAL PLANET the beings were both less than human and more than human. Now they had to decide which way to go!;   If you fall into the wrong matrix of the past, present, or future you must beware of the choices you face. The sign is clear: DANGER-RELIGION!;   INTANGIBLES, INC. could not be seen, but it ruled the lives---and deaths---of a couple and their children;   SINCE THE ASSASSINATION a drug granting immortality is conceived; then moon visitors find that time is distorted. Would earth withstand such pressures?"

I know there must be an explanation for why the Tin Woodman's head is set backwards, but it's been 43 years since I read Philip Jose Farmer's seriously unique, scientifically reasoned Oz pastiche, A Barnstormer in Oz, and I just can't remember what it is. But I do remember how much I enjoyed reading the novel---no, make that loved reading the novel. It's a book I thought I would re-read too, but as of this late date I haven't. But that could all change after I finish with my re-reading of Simak's Project Pope (I'm halfway thru now!). Punchatz produced the cover art on this trade softcover edition published by Berkley Books in 1982.

"Hank Stover had a feeling he wasn't in Kansas anymore.  Hank Stover was one of the two people in the world who knew that Oz really existed... but he never expected to go there. He never expected his plane would be forced down by a green cloud that April day in 1923. Nor that he would meet the witch who had befriended his mother, Dorothy. Nor that she would be so beautiful..."

A raptor robot? Sure, why not, what could be more awesome than that? Well, a GIANT raptor robot perhaps, but I'm not sure if that's what Mark Salwowski has created here for Iain M. Banks' saga of the far-future Feersum Endjinn. It might just look that way because of the perspective we're given. Orbit published this novel in 1994.

British born artist Mark Salwowski (1953- ) has had some serious health setbacks in his life, but has managed to overcome them through a combination of smarts and determination. As for his talent, well, it's the envy of many a poor boy, like me for instance. Salwowski can move across genres quite easily, whether it be fantasy tropes or the hard lines of SF hardware. His early cover art from the 1980's is for me his most memorable stuff---it's filled with strange and sometimes startling surrealism, but also startling beauty.

Scottish writer Iain Banks published 27 books, two of them posthumously after his premature death at the age of 59 in 2013. The British newspaper The Times named Banks in their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945." Banks wrote mainstream works but enjoyed writing SF the most, creating a series of popular novels that he called the "Culture Series." He has been the frequent subject of both radio and television in the U.K., and he has been known to act in theater and spoken word audio. 

"Count Sessine is about to die for the very last time... Chief Scientist Gadflum is about to receive the mysterious message she has been waiting for from the Plain of Sliding Stones... And Bascule the Teller, in search of an ant, is about to enter the chaos of the crypt... And everything is about to change... For this is the time of the Encroachment and, although the dimming sun still shines on the vast, towering walls of Serehfa Fastness, the end is close at hand. The King knows it, his closest advisers know it, yet still they prosecute the war against the clan Engineers with increasing savagery. The crypt knows it too; so an emissary has been sent, an emissary who holds the key to all their futures."

In the 1980's I was very much into prognosticating the future, just like today. Back then I practically predicted the recent coronavirus pandemic, only I expected it to be much worse: at minimum five-hundred million deaths (always the optimist aren't I, ha ha). In Other Americas (Bantam Spectra, 1988), Norman Spinrad gives us four different very dark scenarios that could easily take place in America's uncertain future. In "Street Meat", my favorite of the four, New York City streeties, zonies and subway cannibals are locked in a nightmarish scrabble for existence; In "The Lost Continent" a group of African tourists visit the ruins of Space Age America, a surreal landscape of empty skyscrapers, streets and dead, rusted machinery; In "World War Last" the hashish addicted Sheik of Koram is formulating a plan to trick America and Russian into war (funny how fiction can almost mirror life); In "La Vie Continue" an exiled Norman Spinrad must contend with a lucrative, but dangerous bidding war between the CIA and the KGB for film rights to one of his most popular stories.

Before reading this grim but very good collection, I had never read anything by Spinrad, not his classic's Bug Jack Barron and The Iron Dream or even one of his many supposedly lesser novels. I still haven't, but it's not for lack of wanting to.

Todd Schorr produced the cover art on Other Americas. If I had to describe Schorr's artwork in the 21st century it would be absurd, surreal and sometimes nightmarishly comic and dark--but I'm pretty bad at describing art and illustration other than by saying I like this piece better than that piece, and I happen to like quite a bit of Schorr's pieces, including and especially the ones he produced for books and magazine covers in the 20th century (mainly because they're more direct looking and less cluttered).

I, Robot by Isaac Asimov is one of the most famous books in all of science fiction. This first paperback edition, with its iconic robot illustration by Robert Schulz (1928-1978), was published by Signet in 1956. I've searched high and low for an image of the original painting, and have come up empty. Schulz though was a painter's painter, and highly revered by his peers. Either someone who knew him has this original painting in their crib, or else one of his descendants does, but it would be nice if they would share it once in a while in an art exhibition for the rest of us to see. This piece is too cool and important to be hidden away forever.

"Here is a whole panorama of strange and thrilling tales about the Earth in the years ahead when robots--man-like machines--threaten to control the world. Here are the headline stories of tomorrow when... Robots help man reach the stars, run for political office, out-think humans, rule the world, revolt against their human masters."

This could easily be me when I was youngster, staring in guarded amazement at an awesome metal robot. I even wore my hair that way. Az Acelember (aka The Steel Man) was a Hungarian juvenile science fiction novel written by Havas Zsigmond (1900-1972). It was published in softcover in Budapest in 1938. The cover art and interior illustrations were produced by Imre Sebok (1906-1980), himself a noted Hungarian comic book artist and painter.

I know I sound like a broken record with this, but Darrell K. Sweet (1934-2011) was to me a better science fiction illustrator than a fantasy illustrator, though in all honesty he was pretty capable at doing both genres, and usually with stunning effectiveness. This painted scene for Clifford D. Simak's Shakespeare's Planet (Del Rey, 1982) is one his best SF images, though the beast's ridiculously elongated fingers and fangs make me question the very reasoning behind such extravagances. But Simak would've been the person to ask about that, because Sweet always based his cover art on actual descriptions found in the author's manuscripts. 

"Carter Horton was the last of his kind. His three companions died in hibernation during the thousand-year journey from Earth. But Horton's beautiful new home held all sorts of wonderful surprises. There was an alien named Carnivore who claimed to have learned English from Shakespeare, a defective tunnel from the stars that allowed people---well, creatures---one-way access to the planet, a dragon in aspic... and a very odd, curved hill. And, of course, there was the terror that froze all minds at regular intervals."

I love this robot cover by Darrell K. Sweet, but unfortunately I've not been able to find a larger image of it, or for that matter, the actual book in a bookstore. Never stop looking though---that's my motto---which we all know is the motto of someone that's hopelessly addicted to book collecting.

Isaac Asimov wrote Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury in 1956 using the pseudonym Paul French. It is the fourth of six volumes in Asimov's Lucky Starr series, all of them written for the juvenile market. The series may have been written in response to the success of Heinlein's juveniles, but it never resonated quite so well with fans. Supposedly as the series progressed it became more of a detective type of story, with the two leads practically mimicking Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Del Rey published this paperback edition in 1984.

"The barren crust of Mercury lay covered by a network of wire designed to harness the dazzling blaze of the sun and send it sizzling through hyperspace. But someone, or something, on the airless world was sabotaging the top secret mission. Where no life was said to exist, impossible "ghosts" had been seen, and murderous snakes of alien rock had condemned the innocent to death. It is to this troubled planet that Lucky Starr is sent by the powerful Council of Science. Who or where the enemy is... no one knows. And in order to find out, Starr must face the most deadly---and insane---opponent of his young career!"

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Was Abraham Lincoln America's greatest president? He certainly managed under extreme duress to keep the "United" in the United States, so I would have to say yes, he is. And when artist Paul Swendsen depicted Abe kneeling beside a robot that appears to have been shot in the head on the cover of the 1990 anthology What Might Have Been 2: Alternate Heroes, it almost felt like an acknowledgement from him as well. Actually, ha ha, Swendsen was only doing what Darrell K. Sweet used to do, that is, adhering to the exact description in the book's manuscript, in this case a short story by James Morrow titled "Abe Lincoln in McDonald's." This Bantam paperback was the second of four anthologies edited by Gregory Benford and Martin H. Greenberg, which were all devoted to Alternative History, a sub-genre of science fiction whose roots in the 20th century go all the way back to H. G. Wells and his 1905 novel A Modern Utopia. I've never went out of my way to read this particular sub-genre, real history is captivating enough, but Swendson's awesome cover art may well have convinced me to read this particular cover story.

Considering how professional looking they all are, and how most of them represented one of the biggest names in science fiction, Arthur C. Clarke, I was rather surprised to find that Paul Swendsen (age unknown) produced less than 20 book covers. Turns out Swendsen spent most of his time working as a matte artist and visual effects supervisor in the film industry, both here and abroad, for major studios such as George Lucas's Industrial Light & Magic, and Babelsberg, in Berlin, Germany. Apparently, the book covers only got created in between film gigs. 

It was paperback covers like this in the 1950's, and more than a dozen similarly drawn SF magazine and digest covers, that led some to proclaim that Ed Valigursky was the "Dean" of modern robot illustrators. Though Ed Valigursky (1926-2009) was actually a master at painting any kind of gadget, from space-suits, space-ships and space-stations to earthbound hardware such as planes, trains, ships and automobiles. The latter was something he pursued with equal vigor on non-SF paperbacks and in the pages of Popular Mechanics and Popular Science, and for advertising clients such as Avco, Bell Telephone, Piper Airplane, Goodyear, Esso Oil, Shell Oil, The U.S. Air Force and The Air National Guard. Valigursky had a clean and direct painting style that lent itself well to this type of imagery. For those gadget artists who followed in his wake, he was no doubt a major influence if not an inspiration.

This Ace edition was published in 1958, and it is the 2nd paperback appearance following the first one in 1954. That one of course had the infamous Richard Powers cover art that I've already featured. 

"Here is an utterly enthralling science-fiction novel that spans 10,000 years of future adventures, human hopes, and super-human achievements. The story of one family, the Websters---and also of the Webster dogs and robots---it is narrated in the form of eight long sequences, each showing a further and more wonderful development. Humanity moves from the culture of the super-city of the near future to the sprawling spaces of a robot-run society, and finally finds its Golden Age on the mighty planet Jupiter---leaving the Earth as heritage of man's best friends.

Here's another great robot cover by Valigursky---but what's up with the pincers? Wouldn't digits be better for limbed robots to have? They've certainly served humans well throughout history. But I guess it's all about the menace factor. Conquest of the Space Sea by Robert Moore Williams was published as an Ace Double in 1955, sharing flip-side space with Leigh Brackett's The Galactic Breed. Lost-World fans know Williams well, he was the creator of Jongor, a kind of muscled knockoff of Tarzan, who Frank Frazetta helped pushed paperback sales of in the 1970's. But Williams (1907-1977) published at least 20 books that stood more clearly under the science fiction umbrella, and although none are remarkable in any real sense, they are all competently written, and are for the most part fun to read.

"Had man reached the last uncrossable barrier? Planet after planet had succumbed to Earthmen's spaceward drive. Now there remained only the great unknown that existed beyond the Solar System. What Earthmen did not know was that outside Pluto another terrible force lay in wait---determined that man had conquered his last world. Jed Ambro's job on Pluto was supervising the training of robots for the great day when man would push out into the Space Sea. But that was before he found himself suddenly transformed into a flesh-and-blood robot manipulated by an "alien" power."

Cast of characters:
Jed Ambro:  He was a hero who had to use the words and voice of a traitor.
Pop Ridgeway:  A master mechanic who understood the music of the spheres.
Mr. Konar:  No man knew the fullness of his secret power---and those who suspected could not talk.
Gail Tempe:  Because she wanted the freedom of infinite space, she made herself the slave of a tyrant.
Ef:  He was considered and idiot because he could only play chess in four dimensions!
X-81:  A thing of polished metal and wires, it came along for more than the ride.

Here's another classic cover by Valigursky (and naturally more pincers) that helped cement his reputation as an absolute master of robot imagery. The 13th Immortal was published as an Ace Double in 1957, sharing flip-side space with James E. Gunn's This Fortress World. It was the third novel that Robert Silverberg wrote, and although strong with typical science-fiction tropes, it came across as no more than a fledgling genre exercise for the soon to be great SF author. 

"Unable to remember his past, Dale Kelsey believes that the answer to his life's riddle is in Antarctica--the now-forbidden continent--and, with a price on his head searches for the one person who can help him find the truth."

Here Valigursky is squeezing out of us any resistance we might have had towards AI with his powerful robot tentacles. The Changeling Worlds by Kenneth Bulmer was published in 1959 as an Ace Double together with Brian W. Aldiss's Vanguard From Alpha. The London born Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1921-2005) wrote over 160 novels and scores of short stories, both under his real name and dozens of pseudonyms such as Adam Hardy, Alan Burt Akers, Manning Norvil, Dray Prescot, Andrew Quiller, and Tully Zetford. He flourished in  a variety of genres too: swashbuckling adventure, fantasy, science-fiction, space opera, pirates and espionage.

"On the gold-symbol world of Beresford's Planet, Richard Kirby lived in total luxury. As a member of "The Set" his life was a nerve-ending round of planetary party-hopping. The only restriction imposed on him--that he never put down on any world marked with a red or black symbol--was something that he always accepted without question. That is, until his brother Alec was murdered in cold blood! Alec had been an undercover agent to those forbidden planets, and in order to avenge him, Kirby had to find out for himself what was really happening there. But with the start of his investigation, Kirby found out quickly that the authorities meant business when they said "hands off!" The secret they were protecting was of vital importance, and it now became a matter of life and death, not only to Kirby, but to all the inhabitants of THE CHANGELING WORLDS."

This fearsome robot creation by Valigursky, with its immense height and large seeing-eye bubble (and pincers of course!), was one that Valigursky felt compelled to use again, on a magazine cover for the May, 1958, Amazing Stories (seen immediately below). It might just be Valigursky's signature robot, and just maybe his signature piece, period.

The Cosmic Computer by H. Beam Piper was published in paperback by Ace in 1964. I've never read any books (or stories) by Piper, most of which were reprinted by Ace after his death by suicide in 1964, but by all accounts his fiction leans towards Libertarianism.

"Is there really a Merlin?" Everybody on the war-torn planet Poictesme believed it existed. And they all believed that when this super-gigantic computer was located amid the mountains of surplus equipment that was the planet's sole source of revenue, it would mean Utopia for everyone. Conn Maxwell knew different. He had studied the records on Earth and he thought he knew the true facts about this cosmic computer. To tell them would be to panic Poictesme, so instead he set about a new search in his own way---with starling results."

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It's strikes me as funny that Valigursky placed slot screws all over his robot head instead of crosshead screws. The Android Avenger by Ted White was published as an Ace Double in 1965, sharing flip-side space with John Brunner's The Altar of Asconel. This was the first novel that White wrote by himself and it's a fairly exciting one even by today's tougher standards. Although Ted White (1938- ) published more than 15 science fiction books, he was mostly known as a SF fan writer, SF convention organizer, fiction editor, and most importantly, a musician and music critic. I'll never forget the day I stumbled on his essay, "The Bet," a memoir of a tense day in 1960 when a dispute over a jazz album prompted his writer friend Harlan Ellison to bet his entire record collection against a single record in White's collection, which of course Ellison reneged on after losing. Hilarious, but also disturbing in the details of its outcome.

"All of a sudden I was moving faster than usual. The other passengers standing on the subway platform seemed rooted to their places. It took me only seconds to reach the top of the six flights of stairs, and then I was out of the station and moving down Fulton Street at better than forty miles an hour! What was happening to me? It was as though I were the helpless passenger in a runaway car. Something else had assumed control and was guiding me. My body turned into an office building and raced down the corridor to a room where a man was sitting at a console. He'd begun to swing around in his chair when my mouth opened, and a thin, blood-red ray shot out, cleaving the man from head to abdomen. Then it was over. My mouth closed, and I stood there, stunned. Up to today I was Bob Tanner, an average, sane Citizen. Now what was I, man or murder machine?"

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I'm very glad Phantasia Press gave Ed Valigursky the opportunity to represent Jack Williamson on this special limited edition hardback of The Humanoid Touch, the sequel to the author's now classic novel, The Humanoids. It was published in 1980, and it would appear to be one of the last science fiction book covers that Valigursky produced. If that is true, which I believe it is, then Ed went out with a well deserved blastoff!

"Jack Williamson first created the Humanoids in 1947 in the novelette "With Folded Hand," which appeared in Astounding Science Fiction. The sequel, "And Searching Mind," followed in 1948. Now, after more than thirty years, the Humanoids have returned with that same sense of wonder and magic which has for so long characterized the fiction of Jack Williamson. The tattered remnants of mankind have fled to the distant parts of the universe in hopes of eveading the psychological imprisonment of the sleek robots. Driven only by their Prime Directive, "To serve and obey, and guard man from harm," they have patiently searched the stars for centuries to find those who hide to preserve their freedom. In THE HUMANOID TOUCH the human race is again confronted by, what were thought to be mythical creatures of colorless metal and ultimate power."

Michael Whelan (1950- ) has proven again and again to be the most popular illustrator in modern science fiction. He has produced so many great covers that picking just one favorite can be difficult for any fan. But my favorite Whelan cover is one in which I was fortunate enough to see its original painting in person, a rather simple but glowing composition showing a male and female astronaut stepping through separate bulkhead doors (Distant Stars, 1981). Sometimes the less grandiose illustrations can be the most memorable, like here again with Whelan's haunting cover for Brother Assassin. This paperback edition, derived from an expanded 1969 novella, was published by Ace in 1984. It is the second volume in Fred Saberhagen's long running Berserker robot series, which totaled nineteen volumes.

Here's an interesting side note: a fellow artist named Andrew Rhodes copied Whelan's painting nearly verbatim and sold it to Arbor House in 1985 for use on Roger Zelazny's Trumps of Doom (gawd how that title is damningly prophetic for American Democracy right now!). Whelan sued Arbor for plagiarism and the publisher was forced to make restitution. None of the other science fiction related covers that Rhodes produced seem to be plagiarizations though, or for that matter any of the other dozens of covers he produced prior to this infamous one, but what he did and where he went after this scandal broke is not really known.

"The Berserkers... the ultimate weapons, remnants of an ancient war. They roam the universe, programmed to seek and destroy all life. On the planet Sirgol the death machines have a unique and subtle mode of attack--for in all the galaxy only on Sirgol is time travel possible. Now, fought to a standstill in the present, they have turned to the past in an attempt to destroy the very roots of life. The time and place of the next attack has been pinpointed: the berserkers will try to eliminate Vincent Vincento, an early genius whose loss will cost mankind a hundred years of progress in the physical sciences. Derrod Odegard, one of the elite corps of Time Operatives, has the toughest assignment in Sirgol's history: protect Vincent at any cost."

Whelan proves that you don't need pincers to be imposing---just size. The Ultimate Enemy happens to be a prophetic title from Fred Saberhagen, in that as much as we all know that robots will undoubtedly improve our lives going forward, at least in the short and mid term, they will also undoubtedly threaten our very lives in the long term---at least potentially. When asked about his 1979 painting in 1983, Whelan had this to say: "I'm betting on the plant. Whether humanity will be around to view the outcome, though, is another question."

The Ultimate Enemy was published in paperback by Ace in 1979, the fifth volume in Saberhagen's Berserker robot series.

"For countless millennia the dreadful Berserker fleets have ranged across the galaxy in a relentless war against all things living. Great irony is it indeed in this war of life against mechanism that while the purposes of Death are carried out by ultimately sophisticated devices, the cause of life is represented by one of the least evolved of intelligent species. For of all the starfaring  races, only Man has brought with him untamed the heritage and instinct of battle; only Man can face The Ultimate Enemy."

This is certainly an odd stance for a robot to have, but it looks like Whelan was determined to make his robot mimic a human's natural posture, adhering to the very designation that Asimov gave the robot,  "humaniform." The Robots of Dawn was published for the first time in paperback by Del Rey in 1984. It is basically a detective novel set in the future, the third in the Elijah Baley series which began with The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun, and it became a huge bestseller for Dr. Asimov, garnering nominations for both the Hugo and Locus Awards. I have no doubt that the excellent cover art, carried over from the hardback edition, helped immensely.

"A puzzling case of roboticide takes New York Detective Elijah Baley from Earth to the planet Aurora, where humans and robots have, till now, always coexisted in perfect harmony. Only the gifted roboticist han Fastolfe had the means, the motive, and the opportunity to commit the crime---but Baley must prove the man innocent. For the murder of Jander Parnell is closely tied to a power struggle that will decide sho will be the next interstellar pioneers in the universe. Armed only with his own instincts, his sometimes quirky logic, and the immutable Three Laws of Robotics, Baley set out to solve the case. But can anything prepare a simple Earthman for the psychological complexities of a world where a beautiful woman can easily have fallen in love with an all-too-human robot?"

And now, from American emigrated British artist Stephen Youll, a final wave goodbye from our final painted robot in this article (well, almost)---or is its gesture more like "Bring it on you puny humans!"  Like I said, only time will tell whether humanity will truly benefit from the controlling aspects of artificial intelligence and robotics, or suffer negatively because of its massive, world altering proliferation and almost certain autocratic grip. Have you forgotten the 2008 animated film Wall-E? If you have then go back and watch it again, it's certainly telling.

Stephen Youll (1965- ) and his twin brother Paul knew that they wanted to be artists at a very early age, and so they set about to make it happen. By the time they were 22 years old they were showing their artwork at the World Science Fiction Convention in 1987, which quickly opened the doors to the SF publishing world. Stephen's first cover assignment was for the American publisher Bantam, in 1988. In just a few years he was elevated to producing covers for Asimov reprints, of which this 1991 Bantam reprint edition of I, Robot was one of. Since then he's barely had time to catch his breath.

"Isaac Asimov changed our perception of robots forever when he formulated the classic laws governing their behavior. In I, Robot Asimov chronicles the development of the robot from its primitive origins in the present to its ultimate perfection in the not-so-distant future---a future in which humanity itself may be rendered obsolete. Here are stories of robots gone mad, mind-reading robots, robots with a sense of humor, robot politicians, and robots who secretly run the world, all told with the dramatic blend of science fact and science fiction that has become Asimov's trademark."

Isaac Asimov's THREE LAWS OF ROBOTICS:



1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.


If there is a loophole in Asimov's three laws, it is the development of the Zeroth Law, which directs a robot to look out for all of humanity, in preference to one person.

Interestingly enough, for the 1986 tribute anthology, Foundation's Friends, Harry Harrison wrote a story entitled, "The Fourth Law of Robotics." This Fourth Law states: "A robot must reproduce. As long as such reproduction does not interfere with the First or Second or Third Law."

 

"Unfortunately robots capable of manufacturing robots do not exist. That would be the philosopher's stone, the squaring of the circle."

                                                                        --- Ernst Junger (The Glass Bees, 1957)

"Robots capable of manufacturing robots will eventually exist, and sooner than any of us might expect. That will be the philosopher's stone, the squaring of the circle."  

                                                                       --- Jeffersen (The Paperback Palette, 2023)

 [© July, 2023, Jeffersen]