A Fuller Feast of Foster

A Wilderness of Stars, edited by William F. Nolan (Dell, 1971).

Seven years ago on this page, I presented an assortment of paperback covers by the artist Robert Foster. I did not cease being interested in his extraordinary work after finishing that post, though, but kept my eye out for more paperback fronts he’d painted over the years. I now have in my computer files twice as many additional Foster creations to present here as I did the first time.

More than half of these qualify as science fiction, either novels or short-story collections. They often combine nude or semi-nude bodies with gears and rigid industrial machinery, becoming collages of the sensual and the soulless. Other images gathered below are of general fiction releases, spy yarns, suspense tales and mysteries. As was true, too, of my previous round of Foster fronts, a number of examples in this batch feature prolific paperback model Steve Holland. I’m especially drawn to The Human Zoo (Dell, 1971), a non-fiction study by British zoologist Desmond Morris; Sexmax, by Hughes Cooper (New English Library, 1969); Harlan Ellison’s Over the Edge (Belmont Tower, 1972); the 1969 Dell edition of John le Carré’s A Small Town in Germany (its original Foster painting shown here); and the 1969 Pocket issue of The Narrow Corner, by W. Somerset Maugham, which might have found a place in our 2017 gallery of paperbacks showing women exposing themselves to men.

Click on any of these images to open an enlargement.