The Science Fiction Book
(1975 - Thames and Hudson)

(by Franz Rottensteiner) (Subtitled "An Illustrated History") A mid-1970s review of the genre, with enough art to make it up on The List (but hard to recommend for *just* the art). 76 pages of this 160-page book could be said to be dominated by the art, and only 45 of those are large reproductions (a number of those are color pieces, usually covers). Other than the text, almost a third of the book is lost to photographs, charts, bad double-page spreads, black-&-white presentations of color works and even a scattered handful of drawings that are presented as negative images. The text is 50-odd essays on dominant SF themes, geographical contributions and standout authors (and a couple of artists . . . ). Captioning is very haphazard, sometimes with a reference tagged-on about a related piece elsewhere in the book (which is then not captioned . . .). Some of the older woodcut illustrations are understandably uncredited, but there are even modern examples from foreign publications that remain unidentified. The well-presented artists are: Nicolai Abraham Abildgaard, Walter M. Baumhofer, Hannes Bok (3), Howard V. Brown, Dick Calkins, Edd Cartier, Gustave Doré, Serge Drigin, Ed Emshwiller*, Virgil Finlay (6), John Howitt, Hegedüs István, Henri de Montaut, Jordi Paris, Hugh Rankin, Albert Robida (2), Hubert Rogers, Norman Saunders ('Blaine'), Hans Leonhard Schaüffelein, Charles Schneeman, Frank W. Small, Andrei Sokolov (2), Lawrence Sterne Stevens (3), William Timmins, Wally Wood, Almos Zaschik and UNKNOWN (13).