Science Fiction Cover Art

As you might have noticed from my "What I'm Reading", I've been zooming through David Drake novels, in particular the Leary-Mundy series. I'm on "Some Golden Harbor" now, and there was something about the book that bothered me. It wasn't the writing or the story, and it took me a while to figure it out.

It was the cover.


I was sure I had seen the girl before. And I couldn't place her.

I've only read the first three books in the series on the Baen Free Library, and I haven't paid much attention to the covers. And the cover of the 4th book in the series, "The Way To Glory", although drawn by the same artist, Stephen Hickman, used different models. Who was she?

Well, I've got it figured out.

It's Podkayne of Mars.


Stephen Hickman did the Baen cover for Podkayne back in 1994. And 12 years later, he did the Baen cover for "Some Golden Harbor". All I can say is that she has certainly aged well--she doesn't look a day older.

She hasn't even changed clothes. The beret, the turtleneck, the scarf tying back the hair, the hairstyle--it's all the same.

What's even funnier is the similarity in composition of the covers. Planets floating in the background, with a spaceship zooming by in the middle distance, and the protagonists in the foreground. I do think that 12 years has improved the execution of the subject.

I'm amused by the fact that I was able to identify two covers by the same artist, 12 years apart, from two studies of the same model. I'm even more amused that he USED two studies of the same model. It reminds me of all the Darrell Sweet covers that had EXACTLY the same model, with the same expression on his face. I think it was Darrell.