That's great!
The U.E.S.P.A. Series of books...
- Thread starter The Lensman
- Start date
That's great!
Been awhile since I've done a new cover but here you go.....Volume 5.
Normally this is where I post a blurb about which ship and captain did what.....I'll add that tomorrow.
Normally this is where I post a blurb about which ship and captain did what.....I'll add that tomorrow.
Bend it back so that the spine has creases? Now you tell us!
Anyway, a quick summation of the stories in volume 5:
Catspaw - Ron Tracy and crew visit a seemingly haunted world.
A Piece Of The Action - Matt Decker and the Armstrong visit a world to investigate cultural contamination caused by a previous crew.
For The World Is Hollow And I Have Touched The Sky - The people of Yonada are visited by potentially hostile aliens who claim their entire world exists within a spaceship. A tale of Steven Garth and crew.
This Side Of Paradise - Chris Pike visits a colony world who's inhabitants should be dead.
The Savage Curtain - Captain Jose Dominguez and his first officer are forced to participate in an alien experiment.
I always love these alternate takes. The 1960's was a golden era for sci-fi anthologies.
Am I correct in understanding that your take on "For the World is Hollow..." is meant to be told from the perspective of the Yonadans? That would be a pretty fun difference.
It's too bad no one is actually writing these versions!
--Alex
Am I correct in understanding that your take on "For the World is Hollow..." is meant to be told from the perspective of the Yonadans? That would be a pretty fun difference.
It's too bad no one is actually writing these versions!
--Alex
You are correct sir. I figured some of the stories may have different POV's to them. The same applies to "All Our Yesterdays" in volume 3.
Indeed! All I know is it won't be me. Aside from figuring out which captain, crew and ship did what and coming up with interesting blurbs, that's about as far as I've developed this. Well, and a few of the characters have a progression like Fitzpatrick, Mendez and Kirk.
Next volume!
That Which Survives - A mapping expedition on Starbase 11 discovers the remains of an ancient outpost and it's deadly protector.
The Mark Of Gideon - Beaming down to the planet Gideon, Robert Wesley instead materializes on a duplicate of his own ship, strangely empty except for a mysterious young lady.
Is There In Truth No Beauty - Christopher Pike provides transportation for an alien ambassador so hideous it's appearance can drive men mad.
The Deadly Years - On a remote science station on Starbase 11, a lethal virus is discovered which causes rapid aging and death.
Return To Tomorrow - On his last mission as captain of the U.E.S.S. Hood, Richard Barstow discovers the last survivors of an ancient conflict.
My homage to Lou Feck's cover of "Star Trek 6". Since I've already done homages to Vol. 8 (seen as the cover to "Redshirt!") and Vol. 5 (to be seen as the cover to a future UESPA volume), I figured I'd do one for 6. It's a much "looser" homage than the other two, and really only keeps the blue element and basic concept. May do a version with the dome in for laughs someday. And I'm trying to decide if I want to "repurpose" the cover to "Redshirt!" as a UESPA cover.
That Which Survives - A mapping expedition on Starbase 11 discovers the remains of an ancient outpost and it's deadly protector.
The Mark Of Gideon - Beaming down to the planet Gideon, Robert Wesley instead materializes on a duplicate of his own ship, strangely empty except for a mysterious young lady.
Is There In Truth No Beauty - Christopher Pike provides transportation for an alien ambassador so hideous it's appearance can drive men mad.
The Deadly Years - On a remote science station on Starbase 11, a lethal virus is discovered which causes rapid aging and death.
Return To Tomorrow - On his last mission as captain of the U.E.S.S. Hood, Richard Barstow discovers the last survivors of an ancient conflict.
My homage to Lou Feck's cover of "Star Trek 6". Since I've already done homages to Vol. 8 (seen as the cover to "Redshirt!") and Vol. 5 (to be seen as the cover to a future UESPA volume), I figured I'd do one for 6. It's a much "looser" homage than the other two, and really only keeps the blue element and basic concept. May do a version with the dome in for laughs someday. And I'm trying to decide if I want to "repurpose" the cover to "Redshirt!" as a UESPA cover.
Aging is the last step of the process so usually I'll have a .psd file of the cover saved before I add in wear. They don't look quite as "real" to me without the aging, plus if they were real, it would be incredibly rare to find one in 2015 that wasn't worn to hell.
But if you're really interested in what one looks like without aging......
Just for laughs, I add to this every time I finish a Bantam collected edition.
(The cover to 8 is the homage I did to Feck's cover for the real world book. Not sure if that will be the final cover, but right now I'm leaning towards it)
Unlike the real Bantams, mine have less stories per volume due to the fact that these are not adaptations, but collections of actual novels. Or books that were just over novella size as books in the 50's, 60's and early 70's were wont to be. So there's 16 volumes in my series.
IIRC, once I decided to do a series of books, the idea was to pick about thirty or so episodes, divide them up between captains and put "a captain______ adventure" or something on the cover. So there would be different series within the overall series.
Those thirty covers would've shown the evolution of the series with some early magazine covers, ACE editions, maybe a pyramid edition or two, Bantam editions and finally the collected Bantam editions that riffed on the actual Star Trek books from the 70's. The biggest headache for me was the ordering of stories and who did what. By focusing on the Bantams over the last half year or so, I finally.....finally....got all that nailed down after a decade of working on this off and on.
I've got a couple of individual fronts done from the later Bantam years and I may work up the backs and post them just for some variety.
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Thumbs up, and outstanding. 
So, any chance of adding the story list for vol. 5 on the deviantART version?
LOL! The sci-fi scene there would be interesting to see that's for sure.
No problem and thanks!
Yeah, I love old sci-fi myself (as I'm sure my name gives away). I prefer yesterday's vision of tomorrow. I'd have to say that when I think of the UESPA universe, the aesthetic of "The Cage" is what I think of first in my minds eye. As for writing these, especially old school, I'd definitely be interested to see that.
Thumbs up, and outstanding.
Thank you both!
Done! And a big thanks for reminding that I hadn't done that yet.
I don't have a regular internet connection right now, so I tend to be doing a lot in the little time I have.Here's a couple of covers that didn't make it into the "official" series.
This is the original version of "The Ultimate Computer".
The yellow just didn't work for me. I suppose I could use it as a UK version or something. Here's the final version for comparison:
Drawing heavily from my "Defend The Federation" poster, the following was the first cover concept that became "3 From Tomorrow". While I love this cover to pieces, I have a specific evolution of the basic shape of the series ships in mind: From a basically Daedalus look to ultimately ending up looking like the ship from the show.
Since this is obviously a 60's era ACE cover, it's too early for the ships to look like this. There's a second version where I used a cutaway of a Daedalus ship, but have since built my own 3D models of the "not quite right" ships that appear on most of the covers. This is why I'm thinking of redoing the ACE edition of "The Cage" even though I had a specific in-universe explanation for that cover looking that way.
Incidentally, this cover will probably be redone using side views of my own models and will most likely be a later re-issue of "3 From Tomorrow"....most likely.
Sadly, I realized that the cover of "3 From Tomorrow" and "More From Tomorrow" no longer jibe with the final order of stories, so I'll have to tweak the back of those covers as well.
Man.....this thing really got complicated didn't it?
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Thanks!!
Here's one from the ACE era:
Both "Forbes" and spelling Robert Bloch's name "Block" are from the first appearance of his story "Broomstick Ride", the basis for the episode "Catspaw".
Not part of the UESPA Series proper, something a little more "pulp" like. Enjoy!
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