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This cover is for A for Andromeda by Fred Hoyle and John Elliot, which was based on the BBC series of the same name. Though the book was initially published in 1962, the edition we’re showing here was published by Crest in 1964.
Professor Fred Hoyle, who had created the television series, was a cosmologist by trade. Some of his opinions were fairly controversial, such as his staunch rejection of the Big Bang and the idea that life originated in space rather than on Earth. In fact, he even wrote a book (with Chandra Wickramasinghe) titled Evolution from Space. Hoyle was knighted in 1972.
John Herbert Elliot was a far less controversial figure. He was a British television producer who did a lot of work for BBC in the late 1950s and early 1960s. While he’s credited as a co-writer for both the A for Andromeda television series and the novel, Elliot attributed the core idea of the series to Hoyle while claiming credit for many of the finer details, such as dialogue and plot structure. It seems the novelization was mostly the work of Elliot.
Though he’s uncredited, this edition’s cover art was created by Richard Powers, who is elsewhere credited as Dick Powers or Richard M. Powers. Powers created covers for hundreds of books, mostly in the science fiction genre, including Pebble in the Sky by Isaac Asimov and the short story anthology Tomorrow, the Stars, which was edited by Robert Heinlein.
in 2010, Andy Partridge of the band XTC released an album of songs inspired by the art of Richard Powers, simply titled POWERS. The album was a limited release — 500 copies were published by APE House Records. POWERS was reissued on CD in 2017.