The Planet Buyer

In honor of Cordwainer Smith’s 100th birthday today, here's John Schoenherr’s cover for The Planet Buyer, published by Pyramid Books in October 1964.

This was job #303 in Dad’s work log, and he was hired to do it for $300 on April 3, 1964. That same month he and the family moved from Long Island City to an old farm in rural New Jersey, so The Planet Buyer was probably one of the very first things he finished in the new house (built in 1871 by a Confederate Civil War veteran turned Old School Baptist minister, incidentally - but that’s another story). Before he was able to start renovating the old barn on the property, Dad used a tiny (about 7 x 10 feet) upstairs bedroom as his studio - its low, seven-foot ceiling still bears the scars from the top of his easel scraping against it.

City Under the Sea

Here's a paperback cover my dad was commissioned to do in December 1964 for Paul W. Fairman's City Under the Sea (Pyramid Publications, Inc., R-1162, April 1965). The novel wasn't connected to the City Under the Sea movie of 1965, but was a TV tie-in to the Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea series on ABC, which, in turn, was based on the 1961 Irwin Allen movie of the same name. Instead of coming up with his own submarine, Dad had to follow the movie/TV design of the Seaview.

The Impossibles, 1963

Great color, concept, and composition. This was used on the paperback cover of The Impossibles by Mark Phillips (Pyramid Publications, June 1963). I'm pretty sure it's gouache and casein white on illustration board, but I haven't seen the original in person. Love, love, love it.