via Torque control comes The Art of Penguin Science Fiction, whose raison d’etre is as follows:
This curious linkage of modern art and sf is at the heart of this website, and is made all the more intriguing by the subtle and often ingenious connections between the artworks and the stories within. Following on from this, Penguin continued to publish sf as a number of mini-series, with covers that reveal the influence of Pop Art and to some extent Op Art. But to put these later developments in perspective it is necessary to go back to the first sf titles that Penguin published in the 1930s, for these early covers, now celebrated on a stamp, have come to be regarded as artworks in their own right.
I have a hunch that having science fiction in Penguin editions, especially once the modern art covers started to show up, has done a lot to enhance the respectability of the genre in the UK. To this day any sort of abstract arty looking cover has me looking to see if it’s science fiction. The sort of science fiction that was available behind those covers — Ballard, Aldiss, Moorcock, Vonnegut undsoweiter — also fits in well with that whole post-war modernism that went on at the same time.
Until recently the history of Penguin sf and its cover art has been largely overlooked. This website, along with a series of articles on the subject, attempts to rectify this. But what the articles convey with words this website does with images, and thereby offers what words cannot: over 150 Penguin sf covers, and the ability to trace their evolution at the click of a button, as titles were reprinted and different covers came and went. As such this website complements the articles, which focus more on the science fiction and its linkage to each book’s cover art. Here, however, it is the covers themselves that light the way along the multiple paths that weave through the history, and art, of Penguin sf.
Which also makes for a nice parlour game: look to see how many of those Penguins you have on your bookshelves yourself. There are a lot of science fiction fans who collect publishers as much as they do writers; about the only one I could see myself do that with would be Penguin (and perhaps the old DAW imprint).