Heritage Auctions has some wonderful high-res versions of Keith Birdsong cover illustrations from several early 90s Trek novels up at their site. It's great if you want to see the original art without the trade dress. There's stuff from TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, and New Frontier novels, including Doctor's Orders, Legacy, Traitor Winds, Recovery, Federation, Best Destiny, Vendetta, Reunion, The Captain's Daughter, Relics, and the first book of the Khan Trilogy. I particularly liked seeing the original cover art of Enemy Unseen, back when it was set in the era of "Where No Man Has Gone Before" instead of TMP. If you're interested, you can see the art over here.
Fantastic! Thank you! EDIT: These are truly wonderful - you can see the brushmarks and everything. The detail is just unbelievable. Also, interesting how some of them (Rogue Saucer, Station Rage were a couple I spotted) then get tinted and coloured for the final cover... I miss covers like this.
Yes! Srrawll Ktenten, a feline shape-shifter from Yagra IV, although on this earlier cover, it definitely appears to resemble a male(?) Caitian Starfleet officer (from TAS)! Wonderful! I recall Richard Arnold discussing this novel at a convention when it was due for release. He boasted that this was a story "that was better suited to being set during the movie era", and numerous plot details were changed as a result. Keith Birdsong's final cover makes obvious use of the same publicity photo of a particular Federation Council felinoid that the FASA "ST IV Sourcebook Update" also used - and identified... as a Caitian. This was also the cover parodied by MightyGodKing, "Attack of the Tiny Werewolf". See more hilarious changed titles at: http://mightygodking.com/2009/02/23/and-the-circle-is-complete/
It’s interesting to see some “What if” covers for “Into The Nebula” and even “Mosaic” had a major change before the final printing (if you look at the Janeway on the right, it’s a Season 1 ‘bun’ Janeway whereas the original art seems to have a cadet Janeway.) But you can also see just how cropped some of the covers are compared to the actual cover, like “The Last Stand”.
I think I got up to about a dozen, ones for books that I was really fond of or just good artwork in general.
Keith Birdsong is the reason I got back into pencil crayon illustration, most of these covers are a mixture of pencil crayon and acrylic paint. I was amazed by them, my art teacher wondered what had happened over summer break because my work went from ok to great purely down to seeing what was possible and striving to emulate it. Never did tell her why.
These are fantastic. Thanks for sharing the link. Uhura looks great on the cover of The Disinherited. He does a great Picard, too. Man, I miss these types of covers. Would anyone be surprised if they found out that Jeffrey Dahmer owned one of those Data collectible plates on page 4? Nightmare inducing. If Pennywise ever kills me I think "Weeping Data Squeezing a Cat" will be the form he takes. The cover of The Eyes of the Beholders makes me think that Q painted some shockingly graphic X rated graffiti on the back of Picard's head.
Birdsong was also consistently able to nail Shatner's likeness. As an artist who's drawn Shatner himself a few times, I can testify that that's no easy task.
Thanks, these are great. I never realized how beautiful the cover for Shadows on the Sun was; what an evocative piece of work. The Captain's Table: Fire Ship updated the Janeway picture, which makes sense since Janeway's haircut is a plot point(!), but it also changed what her hands were doing. Looks like Janeway's face was replaced on Invasion!: The Final Fury as well. Was Birdsong just bad at Kate Mulgrew? After seeing the original art for Foreign Foes, I feel like the joke that it looks like a collector's plate might not actually be a joke. Interesting that Pocket commissioned new cover art for Enemy Unseen-- they usually didn't seem fussed when the wrong uniforms were depicted on the cover during this era! (See The Better Man, where the crew ought to be wearing Wrath of Khan uniforms, for an example.) There's blood on the bat'leth on the cover of Enemy Territory that was removed for the printed cover. That's obviously the Nexus on the cover of Ship of the Line when you see the painting, but I never realized that looking at my paperback. Is it more obvious on the hardcover? (Also Picard was redone.) The series of collector's plates based on Generations scenes are kind of hilarious; few of these images deserved to be immortalized. (Data hugging his cat and doing Mr. Tricorder!) Also, who knew sexy ladies and vinyl was a genre of painting?
Yes, it was. Ship has a dust jacket with wraparound artwork, and I don't believe there's any text on the back. Usually, the hardcover dust jackets would have an excerpt from the book, but they also typically weren't wraparounds. I've sometimes wondered if Ship's dust jacket is an indication that the novel's story changed between the time of commission (and Ordover commissioning artwork from Birdsong) and the time of publication, since the Nexus doesn't appear in the novel at all.
HE DID THE COVER FOR CYTEEN?! I had no idea. That's one of my favorite books of all time. I'm also familiar with almost all of the TNG covers, since I borrowed and read almost all of them back in the day.
It is nice, isn't it? That was the second Trek book I ever bought, and I'm pretty sure the cover is a big reason I picked it up.