Though the artist’s name appears neither on the cover, nor within the title or copyright pages, the distinctive style of the cover art of Fred Hoyle’s October the First Is Too Late is an immediate “key” to the identify of the compositions’ creator: Paul Lehr.
Paralleling the cover of the Berkeley Medallion edition (August, 1972) of Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris, a small number of human figures, all diminutive; all indistinctive (though distinctly garbed?!), appear in the foreground, and at distance.
With the human presence minimal, it’s the book’s theme, as in the art for Solaris, that provides the basis and center of the cover art: In this case, the central concept is nature of time, albeit distorted time; albeit parallel time.
An asymmetrical, Salvador-Dali-like clock occupies the center of the image, beneath which stand architectural symbols of both past (two pyramids, at left – one Egyptian and another Meso-American) and future (a futuristic city, composed of ovoid buildings, at right). Above, going to and fro, are two spacecraft. And, imparting a sense of detachment, a flock of unconcerned birds hover above the landscape. (The same birds as on the cover of Solaris?)
In terms of color, Lehr’s composition akin to the art for Solaris (and, to my knowledge, his other works) in intentionally limiting range of colors to create a distinctive mood and “feel”. While Solaris was limited to shades of green, blue, gray, and violet, the palette of October the First Is Too Late is limited to tones of yellow, orange, violet, and ochre.
I like this one.
From rear cover:
October the First Is Too Late unfolds the incredible adventures on a planet twisted by time splits. The familiar world of the 1960s has vanished everywhere except in England. In Western Europe World War I is still raging. Greece is in the Golden Age of Pericles, America is thousands of years into the future, while Russia and Asia are nothing but a glasslike plain incapable of sustaining life – the final phase before the end of the earth as we know it.
Against this macabre backdrop of co-existing time-spheres, two young men risk their lives to find the truth. But the truth is in the mind of the beholder. And who is to say who are the dreamers and who are the dreams? You and I, dear reader, may indeed be shadows, existing solely in the mind of some traveler through time…