Vintage Sci Fi: Book No.8
8 January 2016
Filed under Book Reviews
Tags: Book Covers, Little Red Reviewer, Vintage Sci Fi
No.8 Second Foundation by Issac Asimov (No.3)
As part of Vintage Sci Fi month being hosted by Little Red Reviewer I’ve given myself a small challenge to post a vintage book each day – one that I’ve read – and to highlight some of the covers. Today’s choice is Second Foundation by Issac Asimov. This was also read as part of a readalong with Stainless Steel Droppings. Now. I must say that this particular book has one of my favourite covers. Anyways:
First Edition 1953
I kind of like the next one – the words ‘beam me up’ just spring to mind!
Grafton 1988
I love this next cover by Michael Whelan, there are probably better higher res pictures out there which really show the colours – but this is my favourite of all three books:
Del Rey 1989
That’s all my Foundation books! A good series to look at covers for sure.
Books and travelling with Lynn 
I like all of these covers 🙂
Yeah, for some of these posts I’ve been mixing it up with covers I liked, didn’t like and loved but for this one I just went purely with the ones I Liked.
Lynn 😀
One thing that fascinates me about book covers is the way they can change over time. It’s fascinating to see trends in publishing and what is emphasized on one cover or another.
I know – that’s why Vintage Sci Fi is so perfect for this because most of these books have quite literally tens/or even hundreds of covers. In fact it can become a task in itself looking through them all. But, I think over the course of the month you start to see the difference in styles for each particular era – which is why I was sort of trying to jump up in decades for each one. It’s really fascinating to look at the difference in graphics and colours or how one era would love to have really (I think quite off putting) chunks of satelites or spaceships but another will go for something more abstract.
Lynn 😀
Have you considered doing ‘The Left Hand of Darkness’? That’s had a really interesting range of covers over the years.
[Although straying out of SF, my current reigning champion for covers is Chesterton’s “The Man Who Was Thursday” – the combination of spy-thriller paranoia, comic surrealism, and the Edwardian era has made for so many great covers in so many different styles]
I will go and have a look at those – just because I’m really curious. Unfortunately with this particular challenge (self induced) I’m only using books I’ve read – which makes it more of a challenge for me as Sci fi isn’t my comfort zone and I’m sticking to vintage so the aim is to see if I can reach the end of the month. I might just make it – we’ll see.
Lynn 😀
love the lettering of Asimov on the second cover. computer fonts just don’t have the same feel.
Yeah, the graphics and fonts are definitely one area thats making this really interesting to me. The second cover font definitely stands out doesn’t it!
Lynn 😀
I love the look of vintage sci-fi books. They were so epic. I’m actually selling a few (including Asimov) in my Etsy store. Sorry for the shameless plug but if you’re interested it’s here: https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/LipsyLostandFound?ref=hdr_shop_menu. Sale’s on and everything 😉
No problem! I must take a look.
Lynn 😀
I like the ’88 cover quite a bit.
It seems you’re a fan of the Del Rey covers, particularly? For some reason they’ve all been my least favourite. I think it has something to do with the shape and font of the lettering…
I also like the second one! The vintage covers that have a look of surrealism are always my favorites 🙂
As someone who grew up reading fantasy (and Asimov – mine was the second cover on the list here), I really regret how much… well, fantasy has gone out of book covers. When I look at the bizarre, otherworldly, stylised imagery of, say, the Pern novels, or the David Eddings books, or the Covenant novels, they’re just so evocative. A child can’t look at them and not imagine a world – even if the covers do, in technical terms, have sod all to do with the content of the books. Whereas the modern trend is for increasingly mundane covers – a guy in a hoodie, or a sword…
I can understand the desire for more inoffensive covers – the blacks and whites, the small symbols, something an adult can read on the train without people staring. And there are some really beautiful covers made along those lines these days. But if they’re going to have overtly fantasy (or SF) covers, why not go all the way and have something magical, rather than just ‘guy in hoodie holding a sword in front of some trees’ or whatever?
Yeah, the world of covers has really changed hasn’t it. You still get a few good ones but the Whelan covers – which he also (I think) was the illustrator for Pern – are so expansive. You start off with an image and then as you look at it you really how deep it goes. For example the ones for Foundation – he usually has a character at the front but then when you look beyond there’s a whole world beautifully illustrated in great detail. I love his work – in actual fact, now I think about it, he also was responsible for the covers for the Brandon Sanderson Way of Kings books – and I really do like those, plus they’re images that wrap around the jackets – so clever.
Lynn 😀
Whelan did the US covers (or many of them, at least), but I’m actually thinking of the UK covers, by Steve Weston. For instance, Dragonsdawn:
(complete with traditional Fantasy Rock Formations)
Seconded on the wrap-arounds, btw. Old covers used to be paintings that covered the whol book – you can sometimes buy copies of the painting without the name, title etc. Now they generally seem to be assembled from clip-art…
That’s a great cover – I’ve not seen that one but, I hold my hands up I’ve only read the first book in the series so far! Thanks for sharing.
Lynn 😀
To be honest, although I’ve read a bunch of the books, I’m not sure I’d recommend Pern to anybody. Its appeal is probably greatest to teenage girls, really (the dragons are just big mind-reading ponies). The thing is, though, it’s one of those series that had Character, which means that it may have been character-building at the time but you might not want to recommend it to children these days because of Issues…
[books with Issues, that are Problematic, are sort of like mortal danger. Very character building and isn’t it great we had that sort of thing when we were young and isn’t it a shame the cotton wool generation of today aren’t confronted with them, but it feels hard to actually foist them onto specific unsuspecting children when you don’t actually have to…]
Well, I read the first one as part of a readalong – I must admit we did have quite a bit of discussion about a certain aspect of the book and I’m sure you’ll know only too well what I’m referring to there. The overall feeling was that, like you say, this was written in a different era so you have to read it with that in mind I suppose. “big mind-reading ponies’ – made me laugh!
Lynn 😀
It’s a good example that one – this book actually had less covers produced than the others I’ve used so far and yet I liked the covers best and thought they really represented the period the way I was expecting.
Lynn 😀