Tags
1960s, 1970s, Ace Science Fiction Specials, art, book covers, book design, Harlan Ellison, Leo and Diane Dillon, New Wave SF, science fiction
Leo Dillon (March 2, 1933 – May 26, 2012) and Diane Dillon (née Sorber; born March 13, 1933) created some of the most iconic SF illustrations of the 1970s. Within 50 years they had illustrated over 100 book and magazine covers, nearly all of them joint efforts. While they are most associated with science fiction, the range of their work is vast—they did everything from cassette tape covers, to traditional literature (Tolstoy and Dickens for example), to children’s books. It was for their children’s book illustrations that the Dillons won the Caldecott Medal in 1976 and 1977, and were twice nominated for the international Hans Christian Andersen Award.
Maybe I associate the 1970s strongest with the Dillons because they created covers for some of the decade’s most important books. They seemed to singlehandedly illustrate Ace’s original Science Fiction Specials line, which featured groundbreaking works like The Left Hand of Darkness, Pavane, Why Call Them Back From Heaven?, Rite of Passage, and titles by John Brunner, D.G. Compton, and Joanna Russ. Similarly, just about every Harlan Ellison collection from the period had a Dillon cover. This post focuses more on their science fiction art, particularly some of my favorites from Ace’s first SF Specials series, with a few of their horror covers as well.
I own a good number of these books, but there are a few that have eluded me (The Lincoln Hunters comes to mind), and I plan to read several of these this year.
Battered, Tattered, Yellowed, & Creased 
Love. This. Post. As soon as I saw the first few covers, I knew exactly which Le Guin cover to expect. The Dillons have a very distinct style.
I need more cover art education, but it’s not really something I can cram. Regular exposure helps. I pay attention if I notice a recurrence of a particular style that I’m drawn to.
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haha, thanks! Yes, a very distinct style — several of these are like psychedelic stained-glass paintings. There’s supposed to be 2-3 Le Guin covers on here, but I’m having trouble finding them as the image mosaic randomizes itself when the page refreshes.
Relevant: This post. I’ve featured several of these illustrators, and plan to feature several more. One of several good places to get the foundation for a cover art education.
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Most of my favourite Harlan Ellison books have artwork by the Dillons – marvellous stuff, thanks Chris. Truly something of a lost art now …
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Thanks Sergio! I agree, a lost art… they don’t make book covers like they used to.
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Truly excellent post Admiral, I love the Dillons’ work and have quite a few of these covers in my collection. It’s so tough to pick a favourite here that I’m not even going to try! Wonderful, gentle psychedelia now lost to time.
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Thank you! I am similarly stuck trying to pick favorites, as there are too many excellent covers to choose from. They’re so evocative of 1970s SF… so much better than most covers these days.
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I definitely agree, much better!
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I collect Sci-Fi books mostly for the cover art. This past weekend, my long suffering, and very patient wife, was helping me catalog part of the collection. In amongst the stacks of Lehr, Powers, Schoenherr, Freas, and just two or three Dillon covers, I came across a book that i did not know the cover illustrator of – the Simak listed above. So thanks for saving me a search on the internet !
Pavane was recently reprinted in hardcover, I was ahppy to see that they were able to use the original Dillon artwork.
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Glad to be of help 🙂 Good timing, and an odd coincidence that it was the Simak cover as I just finished reading that one two nights ago!
Glad to hear that the original Pavane art was kept for the reprint, it’s a brilliant cover. I’d say it’s one of my favorites, but almost every Dillon cover is one of my favorites…
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It was just one of many covers that I have to look up. I always find it annoying when I can’t see a credit for a the cover artist. Even some Powers covers are not credited, but he’s usually easy to recognize. It probably shows how most publishers thought genre books, especially paperbacks, were not worth the little added effort.
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I associate their cover for ‘Left Hand of Darkness’ with the book – I can’t imagine why anyone would want to publish it with any other cover.
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Looking at your images I realized that I completely forgot to include at least four of those in my twitter image I posted in honor of her birthday…. Alas….
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I think I missed a few too, didn’t include all the ones like Lincoln Hunters and Synthajoy where there’s just a small square of art on a big block of color.
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