At the Tobacconist's.

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 08:02:27 GMT

The Kneifels.

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 08:01:03 GMT

The story of the Raumpatrouille Orion novels is actually a rather long and complicated one. Which has got nothing to do with what I'm on about, but then why not; let's submerge ourselves into literary SF history.

The novelisations of the 7-episode TV Series were written by the SF author Hans Kneifel and the first paperbacks were published in 1968 by Moewig Verlag. Here's the front cover of Planet außer Kurs:

After that, it went on and on. Kneifel wrote 35 of those paperbacks, all of them published with Moewig. Then it all stopped.

Booklets ("Hefte") were published in the early and mid-seventies, all within the Terra Astra series, again by Moewig. Exactly 145 of those, written by various authors, although Hans Kneifel was still involved:

And in 1990 the first seven episodes appeared as books again, this time published by Haffmans Verlag in Zürich. Fabulously done — a new design, Hans Kneifel himself went through all the old typescripts, added paragraphs where necessary, deleted paragraphs where necessary, inserted more humour; he almost rewrote the old books. What a great edition this was:

Anyway, all of those covers refer back to the television series. Boring. Living in the late sixties, early seventies, what would a book designer have done without using photos or illustrations? So here's my take on those book covers.

The full set can be seen over at my posterous website.

The Advertisement.

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:42:34 GMT

From 1964.

Postcards from Dortmund.

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 17:53:42 GMT

Over at flickr.

A Guide to investigating UFOs.

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:39:15 GMT

Free download at the Fortean Times.

25 Illustrations inspired by Film.

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 09:00:34 GMT