Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn (1958) and covers gallery

 

This is the Ballantine/Del Rey Books 1984 edition with cover art by Darrell K Sweet.  I've deleted the original post which featured this artwork but big thanks to Britt Reid for identifying the piece and leading me to the whole series and turning one post into six.

Steve

Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury (1956) and covers gallery

Cover artist unknown (1956)

 

Cover by Don Maitz (19??)

Cover in detail

 

Cover by Darrell K Sweet (19??)

 

Steve

David Starr, Space Ranger (1952) and covers gallery

Lucky Starr is the hero of a series of juvenile/young adult SF books by Isaac Asimov, writing under the pen name Paul French.  The British editions of all six novels omitted the Lucky Starr prefixes and went out as the Space Ranger series, which is what I'm going to use as an excuse for my own ignorance about these books.  Now I'm up to speed lets have a series of cover galleries although obviously it will only be those editions that feature spacesuits.

Cover by Bob Pepper (1972)

 

Darrell K Sweet (19??)

 

 

Steve

Lunacon (1987)

Another D K Sweet rendered spaceman and another treat for the imagination.

Though a black and white image, there's some lovely close up detail of the spacesuit design on show here.  We've got the usual 2001 look but there's a touch of the real world Mercury program spacesuits in there as well.  Does any one know if this is an original for Lunacon or a section from previously existing work.

 

Steve

Fencon III (2006) Darrell K Sweet

I do love a Darrell K Sweet spaceman.  There's something very son-of-2001 about them.  Its a suit that looks futuristic through the 1970's and plausible enough to carry on beyond that date. 

 

I think this piece was original for Fencon III but if any one knows different be sure to let me know.  Clean image below.

 

 

Steve

Inherit the Stars (1977)

Inherit the Stars by James P Hogan was published in 1977 and was the first book in the Giants trilogy, which then became the Giants series when a further two more books were added a few years after.

The artwork here is by Darrell K Sweet who has done yet another fantastic cover inspired once again by the design of the 2001 A Space Odyssey costumes.  I'm becoming a big fan of DKS. So much so that he gets his own label here on  my blog.

You will of course have noticed that the image has been flipped for use on the book cover....or not!  The other image is a scan from a sci-fi mag and I'm actually unsure which is the original version.  Ah well!  Either way works for me.

Steve

Space Cadet (1975)

Robert A Heinlein's Space Cadet was first published in 1948 and has been reprinted many times since.  The very nature of the book and the title dictates that we're going to get a space-suited chap or two on the front of nearly every version.  This is going to be interesting because its going to reflect suit design through the decades as each publisher reflects the technologies of their time. 

This cover is painted by Darrell K Sweet and its a bit of a peach.  The suit has a 2001: A Space Odyssey vibe which is from six years earlier but remains even now one of the seminal suit designs for a number of very good reasons which I'll go into when we cover that film

Steve