A Pictorial History Of Science Fiction
(1976 - Hamlyn)

(by David Kyle) I'd say that this book is a bit of mixed bag - 170 pages with 96 that could be said to be more art than not (37 of those with a featured large reproduction), which is quite adequate to not fall off the bottom of The List, but allows a number of other Sci-Fi art-books to rank better. A lot of pages of this volume are given over to pictures or text about the genre, but it should be noted that almost half of those do have some small image or two on them as well. There are more black-&-white drawings than color book & magazine covers and to its credit, all the images that cross over the central gutter do so acceptably (a majority of them utilize the portfolio centers to good effect). The chapters found here, set in rough chronological order, are: The Wood And Feather Milleniums [sic], The Iron Age, The Steel Generation, The Silver Years, The Golden Years, The Uranium Decade, The Plastic Zenith, Isotopic Moments, The Alloy Now, and The Future Future. The captions throughout are usually each a short commentary about the exhibited image, but there seems to have been a strong effort to ensure that the artist was always identified when known. Those artists being 'well-presented' here are: Louis Biedermann, A.K. Bilder, Margaet Brundage*, Ed Emshwiller**, Virgil Finlay (3), John Grossman, R.E. Lawlor, Lynx, Angus MacDonald, Forest Ages McGinn, Frank R. Paul (11), M. Pelin, Walter Reimann, Albert Robida, Rod Ruth, Arthur Thiele, Wesso, and UNKNOWN (4).