#Jack Gaughan

[70sscifiart]

For 2024, I’m doing Space Crowd Saturday! Every Saturday, I’ll post a retro sci-fi illustration featuring a bunch of weirdos at a party, pub, wretched hive, you get the picture.

First up is a classic scene by Jack Gaughan, for 'Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction,' March-April 1978

[humanoidhistory]

Jack Gaughan's cover art for The Long Twilight by Keith Laumer, 1969.

[gameraboy2]

"The Shaker Revival" Galaxy Magazine, February 1970 Cover by Jack Gaughan

[pop-art-sixties-seventies]

Jack Gaughan, Galactic patrol, 1970

[spacenoirdetective]

Jack Gaughan, cover art for "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, 1960s

[sandmandaddy69]

Jack Gaughan

[retroscifiart]

Jack Gaughan - Eyes of the Overworld (Jack Vance, 1966)

[thefugitivesaint]

Jack Gaughan (1930-1985), ''The Prism'' by Emil Petaja, 1968

[science70]

Clifford D. Simak, Tid och evighet (Time and Again) (Delta edition, 1973).

Cover art: Jack Gaughan

[vermilllionsands]

Jack Gaughan

[geekysteven]

[70sscifiart]

Jack Gaughan’s cover art for the unauthorized 1965 paperback editions of 'The Lord of the Rings'

[humanoidhistory]

Jack Gaughan's cover art for S.O.S. from Three Worlds by Murray Leinster, 1967.

[gameraboy2]

Five Way Secret Agent & Mercenary From Tomorrow, paperback cover by Jack Gaughan, 1975

[misforgotten2]

A book you very likely don’t have on your shelf #699

Cover by Jack Gaughan -- 1966

[vintagerpg]

Fantasy paperback week (mostly)! What a wonderful, musty week indeed.

This, my friends, is one of my favorite things. It is a set of Ace Books’ unauthorized publications of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy (1965). The story here is tortured (and you can find a fuller accounting on Kirkus Reviews). Basically, Donald A. Wollhiem approached Tolkien about producing an American edition of the books in paperback and was snootily turned down (Tolkien apparently saw paperbacks as “degenerate”). Offended, Wollhiem hunted around and found an apparent loophole in copyright law at the time (I do not pretend to entirely understand this) that had allowed the trilogy to fall into the public domain in the US. He quickly published these books, beating Ballantine’s revised editions to shelves by five months. Tolkien and Ballantine waged a war against Ace in the papers, accusing them of pirating the trilogy — eventually Ace relented, gave Tolkien royalties and let their (still popular editions) go out of print.

The cover art is by Jack Gaughan, who was featured on many Ace books. I feel like I know him primarily through covers for Jack Vance novels, but he has a distinct sort of mid-century medieval style I really enjoy. I love these covers, with their bright colors. They actually reflect the content of the books better than the covers on the Ballantine editions — Barbara Remington’s strange triptych evokes some of the books, but because of the Ace edition, she didn’t have time to read the books before she commenced painting.