Friday 24 May 2013

Needle in Arm, Head Bursting into Flames

In chatting online with talented Swedish designer Magnus Häglund (see his excellent personal designs for H. G. Wells books, done as newspaper front pages, here), I learned of a book I can't believe I didn't already know about: a Swedish modern classic, a dystopian novel about a totalitarian future with the population kept under control through the use of truth drugs and the like. It's Karin Boye's Kallocain, from 1940, and my determination to read it made me thrilled to discover an English translation has been put online by the University of Wisconsin.

There's nothing like a real book, though, and in searching for covers, I found a beauty, from a Norwegian publisher, Lanterne.


The same publisher had some other, wonderfully psychedelic SF covers:













Many of these have a very David Pelham feel.

For more, see this Flickr page.

5 comments:

That Hank said...

I have a hard back copy that was sent to me when I was doing my dystopian blog, and if you email me at drunkonpabst at gmail dot com, I would love to send it to you. I've enjoyed your blog for quite a while, and it's well worth reading.

JRSM said...

Thank you! An email is on its way...

Stan said...

A fine and very striking selection. I like this one too.

JRSM said...

That's lovely!

Stefan Rusinov said...

i recently posted about the covers of a sf series from the 70-80s in bulgaria. they're all drawn by the same artist. check them out if you're curious. http://chetohkniga.blogspot.com/2013/06/blog-post_9.html