Friday 1 July 2016

Psychedelic Sci-Fi Round-up:
The Uncertain Midnight
by Edmund Cooper

(Coronet, 1971 / Originally published 1958)




Cover illustration unaccredited.

Well, it seems I blew my stash of ‘British apocalypse’ paperback posts a few months early. If I’d read the runes a bit more accurately, maybe I could have saved a few of them up to provide oblique commentary on the wretched events “our nation” has endured over the past week or so… but I didn’t, so we’re all out of eerily plausible catastrophe scenarios for the time being I’m afraid.

Escaping instead into the realms of fantastical abstraction then, now seems as good a time as any to update you on some of the latest additions to my seemingly ever-growing collection of psychedelic sci-fi cover art, beginning with this curious little number.

Whilst ‘The Uncertain Midnight’ doesn’t exactly sound like the most thrilling SF novel ever to see print, I absolutely love the singularly weird cover illustration used for this Coronet edition. The pleasing shade of green, nicely chosen font and neat, right-aligned text all serve to sooth the rough edges from the painting’s freakiness too, making for a really nice design all round.

Not sure the mushroom cloud on the back does it any favours, but hats off to the anonymous artist & designer here nonetheless.

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