Rayguns and rockets! Spacesuited heroes caught in the tentacles of evil insectoid aliens! Who could resist such wonders? Science-fiction paperbacks exploded over the 1940s and '50s literary landscape with the force of an alien gamma bomb. Titles such as Rodent Mutation, The Human Bat vs The Robot Gangster, Dawn of the Mutants and Mushroom Men from Mars appeared from fly-by-night publishers making the most of the end of post-war paper rationing. They were brash and seductive - for around a shilling the future was yours. The stories were often conceived around a pre-commissioned cover and a title suggested by the publisher, and the writers were paid by the word, and sometimes not paid at all. Titles were knocked out at a key-pounding pace, sometimes over a weekend, by authors now lost to literary history (plus a few professionals who could spot an opportunity) who were forced to write under pseudonyms like Ray Cosmic, Steve Future, Vector Magroon or Vargo Statten. Despite the tight deadlines and poor pay, the books' cover artists still managed to produce works of multi-hued, brain-bending brilliance, and collected here is an overview of their output during an unparalleled period of brash optimism and experimentation in publishing.

Toy ray guns conjure a wealth of meanings & associations. Their outlandish shapes & fanciful colors evoke fond childhood memories of Buck Rogers & Captain Video, of backyard spaceships that blasted off for the endless reaches of space. Toy ray guns are intended to protect us from our deepest fears of the dark unknown. The first toy ray guns were produced in the 1930s, part of the Buck Rogers craze that swept the U.S. This volume provides an intro. to the development of these toys, with vivid color photos of ray guns & their ephemera, such as ads, movie posters, comics, badges & buttons, up to the 1970s, when the toy space guns made in America, Europe & Japan were replaced by high-tech electronic ray guns made in China.

From deep in the heart of imagination, where galaxies grow, robots rule, and Martians cause mayhem, comes Worlds of Tomorrow: The Amazing Universe of Science Fiction Art. Teeming with gigantic insects, spaceships, and scantily clad heroines, the science fiction pulp and paperback covers of the 1920s through the 1960s represented a generation's vision of the future. New military technology and increased information about space travel fuelled the minds of artists and writers to new heights. Predictions of planetary doom stood side-by-side with visions of Utopia on bookshelves and magazine racks worldwide. Written by lifetime science fiction collector, fan, and B-Movie icon Forrest Ackerman, more than 300 beautifully displayed science fiction covers come back to life in text and chapters grouped by theme. Explore the creative geniuses that moulded our vision of the great unknown into what it is today.

The tranquility of Mars is disrupted by humans who want to conquer space, colonize the planet, and escape a doomed Earth.

A "massive work of dizzying originality" (Boston Globe), XX is an inventive and boldly designed science-fiction epic by acclaimed graphic designer Rian Hughes—now in paperback The battle for your mind has already begun. At Jodrell Bank Observatory in England, a radio telescope has detected a mysterious signal of extraterrestrial origin—a message that may be the first communication from an interstellar civilization. Has Humanity made first contact? Is the signal itself a form of alien life? Could it be a threat? If so, how will the people of Earth respond? Jack Fenwick, artificial intelligence expert, believes that he and his associates at tech start-up Intelligencia can interpret the message and find a way to step into the realm the signal encodes. What they find is a complex alien network beyond anything mankind has imagined. Drawing on Dada, punk, and the modernist movements of the 20th century, XX is assembled from redacted NASA reports, artwork, magazine articles, secret transcripts, and a novel within a novel. Deconstructing layout and language in order to explore how ideas propagate, acclaimed designer and artist Rian Hughes's debut novel presents a compelling vision of humanity's unique place in the universe, and a realistic depiction of what might happen in the wake of the biggest scientific discovery in human history. Propulsive and boldly designed, XX is a gripping, wildly imaginative, utterly original work.

The story of a secret, privately funded, late 60's space mission as told by the science fiction writer who was aboard. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.