The science fiction book cover is a hard one to get right.
Go too far and it risks descending into cliché and general ridiculousness; too subtle and no one will get too excited about the incredible stories, worlds and characters that lie beneath.
We've picked 40 of the very best sci-fi book covers: exciting, clever, vivid and unforgettable. Click on the first image to get started and see if you agree with our choices.
Fahrenheit 451
Author: Ray Bradbury
Artist: Joseph Mugnaini
A design classic for a giant of the genre, Mugnaini's cover of Bradbury's dystopian, book-burning vision has won plaudits ever since the book's release in 1953.
The Rings of Saturn
Author: Isaac Asimov
Artist: Chris Foss
Chris Foss is a legend of the sci-fi design world, creating a host of instantly recognisable images in his distinctive style. This is our favourite, with Saturn morphed into a skeleton head - the great Iron Maiden album cover that never was.
Rendezvous With Rama
Author: Arthur C. Clarke
Artist: Unknown
Taking inspiration from the book, with its tale of a cylindrical alien starship, this cover subtly hints at what lies within, with a minimalist flourish.
1984
Author: George Orwell
Artist: Shepard Fairey
1984 has had a host of classic covers over its many years of publication; Shepard Fairey's effort is our pick, taking inspiration from Soviet socialist realism with the all-seeing eye at its centre.
Flowers For Algenon
Author: Daniel Keyes
Artist: Unknown
A beautifully simple design for the sad tale of Algernon, this is minimal and clever, with the use of bright red and blue making it stand out from the crowd.
I, Robot
Author: Isaac Asimov
Artist: Ed Cartier
A hugely influential book and a brilliant cover to match; when someone says the word robot to you, this is basically the image that springs to mind - a darkly gleaming metallic body and two small, penetrating lights for eyes. It's not a million miles away from what RoboCop ended up looking like 37 years later.
Clans of the Alphane Moon
Author: Philip K. Dick
Artist: Davis Meltzer
Utilising a classic style of sci-fi art, the gun-weilding robotic skeleton figure is truly creepy.
Oryx and Crake
Author: Margaret Atwood
Designer: John Gall
Illustrator: Erich Lessing
A novel where humans play god is illustrated with a Garden of Eden reference; eye-catching and clever.
Jurassic Park
Author: Michael Crichton
Artist: Chip Kidd
A cover that is so familiar, it's easy to forget just how brilliant it is. Just a T-Rex silhouette - and boy does he look hungry.
Neuromancer
Author: William Gibson
Artist: James Warhola
A design classic, this first edition cover is pretty much defines the image that many people see when they hear the words 'sci-fi'. Black background, white mathematical lines, sloping back (a la Star Wars), a strange mystical image in the middle and a classic no-nonsense typeface. Copied a thousand times over by 80s computer games.
Brave New World
Author: Aldous Huxley
Artist: Leslie Holland
Like 1984, a host of great covers have seen the light of day for Huxley's dystopian classic; the first edition is our personal favourite: elegant and stylish.
The Brief History of the Dead
Author: Kevin Brockmeier
Artist: Archie Ferguson
Clever, and creepy: a perfect combination when it comes to sci-fi cover art.
Altered Carbon
Author: Richard Morgan
Designer: Emma Wallace
Art Director: Lucie Stericker
In a world where human personalities can be digitally mapped, then installed into new bodies, who wouldn't give themselves a nice muscly leg like this one? A beautiful anatomical image creates a truly distinctive cover.
Démons et Chimères
Author: Natsuki Takaya
Artist: Unknown
This surrealist cover has everything: a half-man, half alien in a futuristic space suit, surrounded by a hundred colourful flowers. We're not really sure what's going on here, but we like it a lot.
Babel 17
Author: Samuel R. Delany
Designer: Evan Gaffney
A classic staple image of sci-fi, the all-seeing eye is employed to startling effect with a little stardust and a cool text layout in the lower third of the page. Very nice indeed.
Make Room! Make Room!
Author: Harry Harrison
Designer: Jamie Stafford-Hill
An influential 1966 novel exploring the prospective dangers of overpopulation, this cover was incredibly effective due to its context: one would naturally assume that this was a fictionalised shot of a dystopian, overcrowded city of the future; instead it is simply a well-chosen stock photo of a modern-day Manhattan. The future is already here.
Schild’s Ladder
Author: Greg Egan
Designer: Emma Wallace
Art Director: Lucie Stericker
A book incorporating some pretty extreme physics and mathematics, set in a collapsing universe where the only escape is to head for ever more distant stars. A strikingly simple cover depicting purely those stars - and escape - is, therefore, just perfect.
2001 (A Space Odyssey)
Author: Arthur C. Clarke
Artist: Unknown
There have been many great covers for Arthur C. Clarke's classic, but this is our favourite: beautiful typography, the ghostly illuminated edge of a barren planet, and a red semi-circle to add a touch of colour. Minimal and superbly executed.
Journey to the Centre of the Earth
Author: Jules Verne
Artist: Mort Künstler
The tiny figures bravely navigating the hellish chasm create an incredibly vivid image, setting the scene for Verne's famous novel perfectly.
The Left Hand of Darkness
Author: Ursula K. Le Guin
Artist: Alex Ebel''
A strikingly beautiful image of a frozen ice world, with a jutting shard sculpted with a female and male face; this referenced the story beneath of a world with genderless inhabitants, save for two days a month, when they would assume male or female, and mate with others. We even like the garish pink lettering, which adds that extra bit of kitsch.
War of the Worlds
Author: H.G. Wells
Artist: Richard Clifton-Dey and Roger Dean
Another title where we could have chosen any one of a number of fantastic covers, this one stands out for us: a bleak, apparently lifeless landscape, but lurking, partially hidden, in the foggy distance, looms two ominous figures...
The Forever War
Author: Joe Haldeman
Artist: Unknown
A lone soldier walking off into a jungle, to face his destiny - it's a common war book cover, but with a twist - that's no normal military backpack he's got there. No, as this is an interstellar war, he's got a few more tricks up his sleeve. Subtle, but very cool.
The Sands of Mars
Author: Arthur C. Clarke
Artist: Armand
Clarke's first published science fiction novel so, again, a great many contenders for coolest cover, but this one, for a Spanish translation, takes the prize. A beautiful use of colour, a classic illustration style and it features Mars, Earth, the moon and an awesome rocket. You can't really ask for much more from a sci-fi cover.
Double Star
Author: Robert A. Heinlein
Artist: Unknown
The first edition cover of this book, and the best, this is just so quintessentially 'science fiction', it hurts. An elegantly-shaped rocket, a background of a sea of stars, and two pioneering spacemen dressed in dapper yellow outfits. Wonderful.
After The Rain
Author: John Bowen
Artist: Unknown
Copied a million times over by Hollywood disaster movies, this artwork for Bowen's 1958 novel is a classic science fiction image - a stricken Statue of Liberty with arm aloft above violent and energetic waters.
Dune
Author: Frank Herbert
Artist: John Schoenherr
Like the Journey To The Centre of the Earth cover earlier on this list, a stark image of two tiny figures, battling through a vast landscape immediately conveys the scope of the novel beneath, that's waiting to be read and explored.
Dahlgren
Author: Samuel R. Delaney
Artist: Dean Ellis
A gorgeous, but ominous vision of a post-apocalyptic landscape, this cover sees a decaying city bathed in light from a terrifyingly huge, low desert sun. A great image which complements the epic and complex work by Delaney contained beneath.
Armor
Author: John Steakley
Artist: James Gurney
While this is a serious and respected science fiction book, it's great to see a cover that playfully uses some classic sci-fi imagery. Two alien figures engage in a bloody battle to the death with, naturally, another giant planet in the background.
Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?
Author: Philip K. Dick
Artist: Unknown
This is the sort of cover that we imagine Salvador Dalí would have created had he been commissioned - vivid, surreal and almost cartoon-like, creating an instantly recognisable and classic cover.
The Silver Locusts
Author: Ray Bradbury
Artist: Unknown
Another fantastically vivid cover - a small, lone figure walks along a landscape with strange, giant, balloon-like constructions, while an array of nuclear weapons fire off towards their target. Strange and unsettling: a very good job.
Kallocain
Author: Karin Boye
Artist: Peter Haars
A surreal and disturbing cover, this fantastic cover contains a range of illustrative styles, loud and garish colours and stands out a million miles. What could it mean? Read the book and find out.
A Clockwork Orange
Author: Anthony Burgess
Artist: David Pelham
This iconic cover was actually designed ten years after the first edition of Burgess' dystopian classic came out. Designed in just a single night, it would go on to become one of the book and movie worlds' most instantly-recognisable images.
Spacebase 2000
Author: Stewart Cowley
Artist: Unknown
There has to be room on this list for a gloriously, brilliantly clichéd sci-fi cover, and this our pick. Slanted 'A's, a properly 3D rendering of '2000' and a massive spaceship blasting off into the ether - what more could you ask for?
The Drowned World
Author: J.G. Ballard
Artist: Richard Powers
The steaming, humid lagoons of Ballard's drowned earth are fertile ground for strong imagery; out of a great number of excellent covers, this one gets our vote, as one man stands atop a building, gazing at the endless creep of tropical vegetation engulfing his world. You can almost feel the humidity.
From The Earth To The Moon
Author: Jules Verne
Artist: Unknown
A beautiful, old-style book cover, you can literally see the care and attention that was put into this. Simple and elegant.
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy
Author: Douglas Adams
Artist: Unknown
Cartoonish, silly, irreverent: this matches the tone and style of Adams' classic book quite perfectly.
The Handmaid's Tale
Author: Margaret Atwood
Artist: Unknown
A deceptively simple, but hugely effective cover for this modern classic, with two identikit women dressed in regulation red towered over by a huge circular brick wall - a nod to the panopticon prison elements contained within the book's pages.
The Road
Author: Cormac McCarthy
Artist: Nick Lowndes
The bare, skeleton-like trees dominate the landscape in this minimal image for McCarthy's post-apocalyptic classic, as the tiny figures of the unnamed father and son slowly continue their journey unto the unknown.
Man Plus
Author: Frederik Pohl
Artist: Peter Gudynas
Quite simply a brilliant illustration of a terrifying-looking alien organism, complete with what looks to be robotic additions to its arms and inner organs. Huge fly-like eyes complete the package; unsettling, but classic sci-fi imagery.
The Mysterious Island
Author: Jules Verne
Artist: Dom Lupo
A spooky illustrated cover from the legendary artist Dom Lupo, this utilises an unorthodox purple and green colour palette, with the object of intrigue just out of shot: just what is everyone staring at? Very cool.
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