Psychedelic Sci-Fi Round-up: In The Kingdom of the Beasts by Brian M. Stableford (Quartet, 1971)

Yes folks, after his novel ‘To Challenge Chaos’ appeared in our last Psychdelic Sci-Fi Round Up, young Brian Stableford is back to bamboozle us again with more headache-inducing, order/chaos themed science fantasy hullabaloo… but thankfully on this occasion, illustrator Patrick Woodroffe has a suitably retina-punishing cover design on hand to help get our poor minds softened up in advance. Pretty freakin’ far-out.

A specialist in this sort of thing, Woodroffe went on to bestride the ‘70s with a wealth of similarly intense fantasy/sci-fi artwork, as well as creating a handful of stone-cold classic prog era LP covers, including Greenslade’s Time & Tide (which I bought as teenager based solely on the artwork), Budgie’s Bandolier (which I WISH I’d bought as a teenager) and Judas Priest’s Sad Wings of Destiny.

Sadly, Woodroffe passed way in 2014, but a wide variety of his artwork (and a terrific photo of the great man in the early ‘70s) can be found here.

(The faded colours on the above scan are accurate to the appearance of my copy of the book by the way, in case you were wondering. God only knows how mind-flaying this thing looked when it was fresh off the presses.)

Psychedelic Sci-Fi Round-up: To Challenge Chaos by Brian M. Stableford (DAW, 1972)

Here, a young Brian Stableford (25 years old in 1972) presents one of what seems like about a million ‘70s science fiction/fantasy books about the forces of galactic order rather abstractly battling the forces of chaos, and that sort of thing. Did Michael Moorcock popularise this notion, or was there just something in the air? Either way, presumably best enjoyed with the accompaniment of a Camberwell carrot and a copy of the latest Hawkwind LP, whilst skiving off an engineering lecture.

To be honest, just trying to read the back cover blurb on this one gives me a headache, but the cover art by Frank Kelly Freas (“known as the Dean of Science Fiction Artists”) is very nice. By which I mean, swirly and purple. Lovely detail here if you look closely... which no doubt you will after about half an hour in the circumstances described above. Far-out, etc etc.

As a bonus, here's another rather superb Freas cover for a DAW Stableford book that popped up on a quick google image search.