Unlike The Other Side of The Moon (1959) and A Treasury of Science Fiction (July, 1957), two late 1950s science-fiction anthologies published by Berkley Books, August Derleth’s 1958 Worlds of Tomorrow takes a different approach to cover art. Rather than a single illustration spanning the entirety of the book’s cover, Richard Powers’ three compositions – small, larger, and largest – are situated in the cover’s corners, leaving much room free for the book’s title, the names of story authors, and, August Derleth, the editor.
Why did Berkley choose this approach to cover design? (I have no idea.) Perhaps Berkley sought a diversion from a routine single-image cover art format, with multiple scenes suggesting multiple stories. Or, maybe artistic compositions of different sizes implied the idea of windows looking upon different themes and ideas. Or, maybe it was just a random whim. (I have no idea.)
Regardless, even two of these diminutive paintings (okay, there’s a really tiny third, but we’ll ignore that) have the hallmarks of Richard Powers’ 1950s illustrations. The largest depicts a city set within brightly colored desert dunes, underneath a sky that ranges from white to orange to gray to black. Two enigmatic figures stand upon a rocky foreground. One’s human (okay, it looks human), and the other… Well, it looks like a stylized representation of a human head and shoulders, but it’s hard tell for sure. (Maybe it’s supposed to be hard to tell.)
And, one of Powers’ wirey biomechanical objects floats nearby.
As for another painting – the small one, at the upper left? It looks like Jupiter, with a nicely asymmetrical spaceship passing by, a feature in many of Powers’ ’50s paintings.
As far as the book’s contents go, the stories – nine of the nineteen that featured in Pellegrini & Cudahy’s March, 1953 hardback edition of the same title – span the mid-thirties through the early fifties, with most from the latter time range. Like the other two books, they’re representative of the Golden Age of Science Fiction, but certainly not the era’s most impactful stories. Of these stories, I’ve only read Fritz Leiber’s “The Enchanted Forest”, a tale not too spectacular but still entertaining, thought-provoking, are nicely done.
As for the book’s title – Worlds of Tomorrow? It’s unrelated to the pulp magazine by that name, which commenced publication in April of 1963. Then again, was the magazine’s title inspired by the title of the 1953 hardback, or, this 1959 paperback?
(I have no idea.)
Inside What Resides?
“The Dead Planet”, by Edmond Hamilton (from Startling Stories, Spring, 1946)
“McIlvaine’s Star”, by Tex Harrigan (August Derleth) (from If, July, 1952)
“The Great Cold”, by Frank Belknap Long (from Astounding Stories, February, 1935)
“The Fires Within”, by Arthur C. Clarke (from Fantasy No. 3, August, 1947)
“Brothers Beyond the Void”, by Paul W. Fairman (from Fantastic Adventures, March, 1952)
“The Gentleman Is an Epwa”, by Carl Jacobi (specifically for this book)
“The Enchanted Forest”, by Fritz Leiber (from Astounding Science Fiction, October, 1950)
“The Business, As Usual”, by Mack Reynolds (from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June, 1952)
“The Martian and the Moron”, by Theodore Sturgeon (from Weird Tales, March, 1949)
“Null-P”, by William Tenn (from Worlds Beyond, January, 1951)
A look closer…
A reference or two…
Worlds of Tomorrow, at…
… March 1953 Hardback, at Internet Speculative Fiction Database
… Berkley 1958 Paperback, at Internet Speculative Fiction Database
August Derleth (August William Derleth), at…
