Ex Libris Wotanicus: Mechanismo

A number of things recently have suggested this post and a couple of further ones this week. Firstly, I received a gift of a book of artwork from the classic book and pulp cover artist Frank R Paul. Also I have had a little time this week to sit down and actually read, which is a rare thing lately. I've been meaning to look at a couple of books I have in the marsbase library and their relevance to the space toy field.

Back in 1977, as Star Wars took off, sci-fi art books suddenly appeared on bookshelves everywhere. Nowadays, Its commonplace to see a huge coffee table volume accompany the release of a film, with the attendant 'Making Of' and other spinoff books. In the late seventies, Paper Tiger released a series of books featuring sci-fi book cover artwork and later a series of books featuring the artwork of one particular artist. I loved these books and spent most of my college grant every term, trying to buy them all in.

One of the first ones I came across was Mechanismo, a volume by Harry Harrison of Stainless Steel Rat and Deathworld fame, which looked at the sci-fi genre in detail. Ordinarily, I wouldn't have looked at such a book as the remit is quite broad and my tastes very specific. What attracted me to this particular book was the cover, which showed a fantastic painting of a futuristic heavy space fighter and a security robot hovering in front of it. This was at the time when the revolutionary shapes of X-Wings and Tie Fighters were just becoming evident, but this ship was something different. Sleek and aerodynamic, but bristling with weapons and as the interior text explained, also carrying 'parasite' fighters on the wings. The concept of a Parasite fighter wasn't new to me as i'd seen the Boeing XF-85 Goblin before, but the inclusion in a sci-fi theme was new to me. Inside the book was a cool cutaway of the fighter too, by a favourite comic and sci-fi artist of mine, Brian Lewis. The detail lavished on the painting meant it became and immediate favourite of mine and the artist, Jim Burns could often be found illustrating sci-fi book covers from then on.

The trouble with the format of the book is that the style of binding does not allow it to be opened out fully without cracking the spine, so it was a number of years later when I bought a volume of Jims work, 'Lightship' when I found the painting laid out in a full double page spread and I could appreciate it better.

Mechanismo was one of the first books to take existing sci-fi cover art and 'build' a new story around it. the Terran Trade Authority series of books took this to a new level some years later, but Harryhausen was one of the first to use original and previously published artwork and write a 'history' or a background detail around them to great effect.