Type of bind: Hardcover
Format: Bargain Price
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 176
Printing Date: August 01, 2004
Sale Popularity Level: 980267
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From deep in the heart of imagination, where galaxies grow, robots rule, and Martians cause mayhem, comes WORLDS OF TOMORROW: THE AMAZING UNIVERSE OF SCIENCE FICTION ART. Teeming with gigantic insects, spaceships, and scantily clad heroines, the science fiction pulp and paperback covers of the 1920s to 1960s represented a generation’s vision of the future. Wartime technology and increased information about space travel fueled the minds of artists and writers. Predictions of planetary doom stood side by side with visions of Utopia on bookshelves and magazine racks worldwide. In WORLDS OF TOMORROW, more than 300 beautifully displayed science fiction covers come back to life in text and chapters grouped by theme. Explore the creative geniuses that molded our vision of the great unknown into what it is today.
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Rated by buyers 
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TOMORROW! Forrest J. Ackerman and Brad Linaweaver take us on a tour of tomorrow from the book covers and science fiction art of yesteryear. Giant bug, ugly aliens, lovely heroines, flashy spaceships and well armed heros fill the pages of this book. It is so much fun, they talk about everything from rockets to Mystery Science Theater 3000.
Rated by buyers -
Back more years ago than I want to admit when I was very first getting interested in science fiction the main source was a series of magazines and paperback (or as wee called them at the time pocketbooks) with fantastic covers designed to attract the eye to the contents.
Modern book covers just don't seem to convey the same feeling. They are more modern, they realize that bug eyed monsters, sleek space ships (that all look surprisingly like the German V-2), cities on the moon, rainy jungles on Venus don't and even can't exist. The new covers certainly don't have the same feel as the old ones.
This book brings back the images from the past. And these were the books/magazines where the very first of many of the classic writers Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, H. G. Wells, Robert Heinlein and more. Here is the very first illustration of Ae van Vogt's 'The Weapon Shops of Isher.'
It's a fascinating book to look through, over and over. Oh yes, there's some text here too, but frankly I haven't read it. I've tried, but I get so distracted by the pictures that I'm soon just looking. I'll read it one day.
Rated by buyers 
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It's an interesting book with some rather humorous comments and great sources of information. Has a good collection of comic/pulp art. While it is still going to be kept in my collection, I was hoping for a lot better book. It does offer some interesting artwork, but the work doesn't have a great variety of artistic styles. I have this as well as a couple other pulp on my coffee table at home and in my office for people to see. Everyone that has picked up the book says it looks interesting but "the pictures all look kinda the same" is the typical response to it. The best image out of the entire book is the cover art (which does make sense...but), and that was the one that seemed to be the most unique. They did discuss some of the artists, but the authors develed greatly into L. Ron Hubbard for a handful of pages and discuss his work rather fervently. Which didn't seem to be the case with other author/artist from previous eras. These consisted of blurbs here and there of other talented artists. The way this portion sort of popped up 3/4 way through the book started to make me kinda wonder if one or both of the authors are followers of Scientology. It's a good average book. I don't see it winning any awards.
Rated by buyers 
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This is a book that is wonderful to look at and painful to read. As for the pictures, they are well chosen and beautifully reproduced. They might have been shown in bigger sizes, but this would have been at the expense of the volume's design, which is artful. The present arrangement is a good compromise. The division of the book into four visual categories (rockets, creatures, etc.) is useful.
If, however, one turns one's eyes to the text, there is nothing but disappointment. First of all, the editors did not bother to connect the text to the accompanying illustrations. Their remarks refer to pictures elsewhere in the book, but they don't say where, so one is left to look ahead and back without a clue. As to the quality of the remarks, there simply isn't any. Vague blather about how the (unidentified) artists managed to foresee the future is about all there is, except for Linaweaver's gushing praise of his adored "Forry." Ackerman himself appears to have phoned this one in, saying almost nothing specific about the illustrations (which would have required some work), but only vaporing vaguely about how the future is coming. Visually, this is a well-wrought book, but its text is lazy, empty, and dull.
Rated by buyers -
"Worlds of Tomorrow" is a truly wonderful and nostalgic look back at science fiction art of the golden age of pulp magazines and science fiction books. Written by Mr. Sci-Fi himself, Forrest Ackerman, along with Brad Linaweaver this is a dazzling look into the past at the wonderful art of the 20's through the 50's that graced the covers of those early sci-fi books and pulps such as Amazing Stories, Startling Stories, Astounding Stories, Galaxy, and many more. No one knows Sci-Fi like Uncle Forry and many credit him with coining that term in the very first place. It was the very very first issue of Amazing Stories that inspired Ackerman's life-long love of the genre and set him on his pace to accrue one of the most fabulous collections of memorabilia ever assembled.
The book reprints hundreds of these classic pulp and book covers along with running anecdotes from both Ackerman and Linaweaver. We look back at these great covers and discover just how visionary the artists were sixty plus years ago. Their works had a perhaps over-spectacular flair to them, but they foreshadowed much of the technology we use yesterday like computers, cell phones, atomic power, spacecraft, and robots. Frank R. Paul was the very first star of pulp art as his work graced many covers of Hugo Gernsback's amazing stories and now sells for thousands of dollars today.
Each chapter takes on a different subject such as chapter two's look at space travel with all manner of fantastic rockets, and ships and saucers. It's interesting to see how designs changed from the earliest pulps of the 20's to the 1950's when actual space programs were able to provide inspiration to the artists. One can even see our present day space shuttles in the works of these early talents.
Chapter three covers robots and again these covers don't disappoint as they imagine robot designs both functional and sublime. There are humanoid robots, insectoid robots, even robots that look incredibly like the Transformer robots so popular today. One great cover to Galaxy from September 1954, shows a scientist working on a female android who looks entirely human, but with her skin peeled away over one arm and shoulder showing her internal circuitry, inspiring views of The Terminator, some thirty years before that film came out.
It is then interesting to see how when we move to the 1950's, aliens become the one of the main subjects for covers. With no limits but their own imaginations we are treated to a veritable treasure trove of scaly, hairy, slithering beasts and it's clear that many of the "B" filmmakers of the 1950's used the pulps as their inspiration in creating their latex monsters.
It's truly a magnificent book and I was especially captivated by the covers of the old Sci-Fi novels as you so rarely encounter them these days. A must have for Sci-fi collectors and fans! And as a side note, this book, like all of the Collector's Press books are well made using thick, coated stock, heavy covers and bound beautifully with the collector in mind.
Reviewed by Tim Janson
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