Science Fiction Poster Art edited by Tony Nourmand and Graham Marsh (book review).
Now, ‘Science Fiction Poster Art’ is a big book, even when released in 2023. A2 size is big. It is loaded with 148 science fiction posters used in film promotion from the earliest to 2003. It’s by no means complete for all SF films, but you get samplings from foreign countries, some that were never used and a lot that were. Quite how its two editors, Tony Nourmand and Graham Marsh, decided what to use probably depended on what they could lay their hands on and getting permission.
From a text point of view, you get mini-biographies of some of the artists and a timeline of our reality’s events in context to the subject matter. What it doesn’t do is keep them in historical order so you can have something from the 1950s compared to something from nearer our time. Not all of these posters have an art credit, although some might simply not have been available at the time. There are some absences.
Only the first ‘Alien’ film is covered. The same with ‘Back To The Future’, where it would have been good to show how it developed over the three films. There are probably other missed SF films if I thought about it. I did note a couple films I hadn’t seen, and I suspect you will do the same thing if you get this book. Many of the posters fill a complete A2 page, while others take up a third, so there’s a lot packed in here.
More importantly, it is still relevant twenty-two years later and worth considering for your collection.
GF Willmetts
December 2025
(pub: Aurum, 2003. 192-page A2 softcover. Price: varies, but I did pull mine for £10.00 (UK), so look around. ISBN: 1-85410-946-4).
