You've probably admired the work of award-winning artist Yuko Shimizu before — her art has adorned some covers of Vertigo Comics' The Unwritten as well as some great book covers and illustrations at Tor.com. But when you see a bunch of her gorgeous work all in one place, it's pretty mind-blowing.

Classic science fiction is full of weird imagery and tropes — including the trope of the woman inside the glass tube or case, which The Fifth Element played with a fair bit. And there's a whole blog devoted to "Sci-Fi Women in Tubes." Check out some of the weird and titillating tube art below.

Did you ever admire the amazing typography of classic science fiction book covers? The strange wavy writing, the electrifying typefaces? Over at Color + Design Blog, there are some fonts you can download to make your own.

In 1953, Ballantine released a limited edition run of Ray Bradbury's book-burning novel Fahrenheit 451 that might survive a visit from the firemen. Two hundred numbered and signed copies of the book were bound in Johns-Manville Quinterra, a chrysolite asbestos material. The copies are much sought after by collectors;…

Check out this weird timeline of book covers, showing which colors dominated on their Penguin book covers over the years. It looks like War of the Worlds had a long yellow period, while Journey to the Center of the Earth was cream-colored for decades. Arthur Buxton created this graphic to honor Jules Verne's 185th…

What possessed four of science fiction and fantasy's superstar authors to strip down to their skivvies and gather around Hugo-award-winning writer Mary Robinette Kowal? It's not just to skewer the skin-baring cover illustration of Poul Anderson's Young Flandry (although that was certainly part of it). It's all part of

We'll be seeing a lot of strange versions of L. Frank Baum's Wizard of Oz this year, including Sam Raimi's Oz: The Great and Powerful, and possibly the long-delayed Dorothy of Oz movie with the voice of Patrick Stewart. But these might just be the strangest visions of Oz you'll see for quite some time.

It feels kind of mean to laugh at the covers of self-published and indie books — but some of the DIY covers out there do lend themselves to a kind of delightful head-scratching. There's a tumblr devoted to mocking Lousy Book Covers, and not surprisingly it's becoming insanely popular. (And Shumate also runs a site…

Over in The Atlantic, there's a great quick-and-dirty history of the science fiction book cover, courtesy of the folks at SF bookstore Singularity & Co. Starting with the pulpy artwork of artists like Frank R. Paul and others, the covers progressed into some fairly cartoony images of aliens and rocketships in the 1950s, …

We totally love the Vintage Science Fiction Book Covers gallery over at Classic Scifi Books. Especially when they seem to group the covers together into a random theme - like all of these chess-themed covers they posted in a batch. Check out tons more at the link.