Via Photoshop Disasters, I stumbled across a romance novel whose cover promises a little more than is delivered. Behold Christina Dodd’s historical yarn, Castles in the Air. From the blurb: What man would have her once he discovered her secret…?

Ms Dodd’s publishers have subsequently fashioned a corrected – and, alas, less intriguing – jacket.

A brief taste.

Morten Postrup has a rather fine collection of patterned Swedish book covers, 1950 -1962.

Related. Via Coconut Jam. 

Here’s a little something for fans of the outlandish and uncanny. BBC4’s documentary series on British science fiction, The Martians and Us, can now be viewed online. Part one, Apes to Aliens, takes evolution as its theme and traces a brief and entertaining history, from H.G. Wells’ anonymous time traveller to John Wyndham’s unearthly schoolchildren. The three-part series covers the obvious and the obscure, the inspired and the unhinged, and teases out what has often made British science fiction different from, and darker than, its American cousin.

Here’s a taste.

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Part 2, Trouble in Paradise, and part 3, The End of the World as We Know It, are also online. Well worth watching. (h/t, The Thin Man.) Related: The original 1960 trailer for Village of the Damned. And here’s George Sanders having trouble keeping secrets.   

Browsing this website’s visitor stats, I discovered two posts that continue to attract an unexpected level of interest. One is a short item on the phenomenon of superhero pornface, which remains a search engine favourite. The other involves a fleeting reference to the hilarious controversial subject of Japanese tentacle porn. I do, of course, feel obliged to cater to my readers’ appetites, even the ones they don’t admit to publicly. Thanks to the wonderful people at Coudal, I stumbled across what cephalopod enthusiasts may well regard as a tentacle pornfest: Poulpe Pulps – Vintage Octopus Pulp Covers. The site, hosted by Francesca Myman, is quite possibly the place to find “hard-to-locate images of science fiction, fantasy, and adventure pulp and comic covers featuring the wily octopus.”

More tentacles at the Octopia blog. An extensive video archive of cephalopods in action can be found here. Related: this, this and this. Knock yourselves out. You know who you are.

The New York Public Library collection of Russian book jackets, 1917-42.

Also, the Museum of Russian Posters and the Socialist-Realist art of North Korea.

Caution: realism aspect somewhat doubtful. (H/T, Coudal.)

Update: I’ll be away for a couple of days. Back Friday with more ephemera.