Korero Press launches kickstarter for Hughes sci-fi celebration

London-based publisher Korero Press has launched a crowdfunding campaign to publish Rian Hughes' Rayguns and Rockets, a title celebrating and showcasing vintage British science-fiction paperback cover art.

Organised through Kickstarter, a first for the indie press, the book will feature a hardback cover design by Ron Turner and publication is slated for April. 

"Rayguns and rockets! Spacesuited dames caught in the tentacles of evil insectoid aliens! Who could resist such wonders?," the publisher said. "Science fiction paperbacks exploded over the 1940s and ’50s literary landscape with the force of an alien gamma bomb. Titles such as Rodent Mutation!, Beyond the Galaxy, Dawn of the Mutants and Mushroom Men from Mars appeared from fly-by-night publishers making the most of the end of postwar paper rationing. They were brash and seductive – for a shilling the future was yours. The stories were often conceived around a pre-commissioned cover from an artist, and a title suggested by the publisher." 

"The story writers were paid by the word, and occasionally not paid at all; titles were knocked out at a key-pounding pace, sometimes over a weekend, by authors now lost to literary history (and a few slumming professionals), some of whom hid behind pseudonyms such as Steve Future, Volsted Gridban, Brian Storm and Vargo Statten. Despite the punishing deadlines and poor pay, the books’ cover artists managed to produce artworks of multihued, brain-bending brilliance, and collected here is some of the best of their output during an unparalleled period of brash optimism and opportunism in book publishing."

Hughes is an award-winning graphic designer, illustrator, comic artist, writer, and typographer who has worked for the British and American advertising, music, and comic book industries. Previous graphic novels include The Black Locomotive and XX, published by Picador. 

Rayguns and Rockets will include a foreword by Anthony Award-nominated author Steve Holland, who has published more than 30 titles under the Bear Alley Books imprint. It will also feature an afterword by non-fiction author and Vision of Tomorrow science-fiction magazine editor Philip James Harbottle.

Korero Press focuses on pop culture, street art, erotica and horror titles, and has published contemporary artists including Ron English, Patrick J Jones and Derek Yaniger.