DaviesH. AlbrechtJohnny BruckStanley Meltzoff

That delightful ’60s/‘70s intersection of pop-psychedelic surrealism and space-age futurism produced some of the most awesome book covers the world has ever seen, with illustrations that often far exceeded in greatness the pulpy sci-fi genre novels they’d adorned. While some of those artists achieved renown, too often, those covers were the works of obscure toilers about whom little is known. Davis Meltzer, alas, fits deep into the latter category. My best search-fu yielded so little biographical data that I’m not even able to determine if he’s currently alive. A 2014 Gizmodo article alluded to the fact that Meltzer was still living as of its publication, and offered up some résumé data as well: Davis Paul Meltzer was born in 1930, in Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania, and attended school in Newtown, Pennsylvania. Both his parents, the late Arthur Meltzer and Paulette Van Roekens, were highly respected fine art painters—and he inherited their great talent. During his career as a freelance artist he created stamps for the U.S. Postal Service, painted dozens of sci-fi book covers, worked for NASA, and worked as a scientific illustrator for 30 years at National Geographic. Enjoy this gallery of Meltzer’s...

A remarkable black and white illustration by Frank R. Paul. Hailing from Austria, pulp novel and comic book artist Frank R. Paul (born Rudolf Franz Paul in 1884), only attended school until the eighth-grade. At the time, affluent members of Austria received formal education beyond that, but Paul’s family were not a part of that world. So, when Paul turned fourteen, he got his first job working in a paper mill which he kept until the age of seventeen when he left Austria to avoid being drafted into the military. Paul ended up in Paris where he studied art which then led him to pursue studies in architecture in London. Finally, Paul would find himself and his first success as an artist in New York (after a short pit stop in San Francisco) where he was hired by Hugo Gernsback, the editor of The Electrical Experimenter, to create artwork for the monthly magazine in 1914. Known today as the “Father of Science Fiction Art” Paul’s vivid work has appeared in and on the covers of a wide variety of magazines and pulp novels, most notably Amazing Stories who published a painting done by Paul on their very first issue...

What did the future look like from the '60s? See some modernist-style retro futuristic home concepts that captured the midcentury era's sleek style and space-age optimism.

Artist Vincent Di Fate's art pays tribute to his love of sci-fi movies.

Fantastic selection of work by Syd Mead, a renowned American neofuturistic artist famous for the concept art behind iconic movies such as Blade Runner, Aliens …

Science fiction on TV in the 1970s was a tough sell. While Star Trek: The Original Series was wildly popular in syndication, that level of success eluded other series, including a few produced by Trek’s creator, Gene Rodenberry. Here is list of lost sci-fi TV shows from the 1970s.

“Robert McCall”

artist- Charles Schridde

Explore Atomic Scout's 585 photos on Flickr!

Thanks for putting up with my Weekly Reader posts, now back to cool space art. Not reading Japanese I can't tell you much about this thin "board" book. It seems to be part of a pictorial encyclopedia series. This volume is about our future in space! You are looking at the back cover. Since I ended scanning most of the illustrations I will break this post into 2 parts. My readers rescue me again! Chris says: "The title of the book is uchu-u ryoko (travel/trip in the universe). It's a picture book for the 3-5 years old kids (the numbers in the right). It's for the kids before the primary school (maybe "kindergarten" ?)." My friends over at Project Sword Toys will appreciate this one. It reminders me of Thunderbirds vehicles. Someone was familiar with the Cape Kennedy "crawlers" but guessed how space shuttles might use them. Here are some beautiful painting of dramatic re-entry procedures. There is also a beautiful painting of the space station and how the space shuttle would be using it. The book seems to follow the "space progression" so the next step is landing on the Moon. I will be back next week with the moonbase, mission to Mars and some cool space graphics.

WARPED SCI FI music audio clips

Chris Foss

Those of a certain age and a certain bent can’t fail to look at this depiction of a space station without a sense of 70s nostalgia. Easy to mistake as speculative fiction, such images are the fruit of the collective brains of NASA, Princeton and Stanford. Here’s some of what they came up with …