Worlds beyond time

A visual history of the spaceships, alien landscapes, cryptozoology, and imagined industrial machinery of 1970s paperback sci-fi art. In the 1970s, mass-produced, cheaply printed science fiction novels were thriving. The paper was rough, the titles outrageous, and the cover art astounding. Over the course of the decade, a stable of talented painters, comic book artists, and designers produced thousands of the most eye-catching book covers to ever grace bookstore shelves. Curiously, the pieces commissioned for these covers often had very little to do with the contents of the books they were selling, but by leaning heavily on psychedelic imagery, far-out landscapes, and trippy surrealism, the art was able to satisfy the same space-race fueled appetite for the big ideas and brave new worlds that sci-fi writers were boldly pushing forward.