Homo superior n the hypothetical successor species to Homo sapiens, the members of which have acquired super- human physical or mental abilities. The term was coined by Olaf Stapledon in his novel, Odd John (1935).


Allen Lane's idea of selling paperback reprints of other publishers' hardback books became reality in 1935, when Penguin Books was launched as an imprint of The Bodley Head. Lane wanted the books to be cheap but not look cheap, so he priced them at sixpence and asked an employee named Edward Young to design a cover for the books and draw a penguin logo. Young was only twenty-one years old at the time but, undaunted, he rose to the challenge and created the classic cover based on three horizontal bands that has made Penguin one of the world's most recognisable brands.

The first ten titles in the Bodley Head's "sixpenny series" of Penguin Books were published in July 1935, with a further ten following in October. Of these, Penguin Number 20 was Samuel Butler's Erewhon, a science-fictional story of life in a backwards 'nowhere' land where the sick are punished and criminals are hospitalised.

All the early Penguins such as Erewhon came wrapped in dust jackets like traditional hardback books. The jackets were more or less identical to each book's cover except for the price, which was absent from the cover but printed one or more times on the front, back and spine of the jacket, or alternatively on its front inside flap. The latter was also used for a small amount of promotional copy, while the rear flap carried a photograph of the author and a brief biography.

Initially THE BODLEY HEAD was printed down both sides of each book's front cover and dust jacket, but in January 1936 Penguin made the transition from an imprint to a separate publishing company and The Bodley Head's name was dropped.

Then in May 1937 Penguin launched an imprint of its own, with pale blue bands instead of orange on the cover and a new bird logo by Edward Young. Pelican Books was intended as a non-fiction imprint for the 'intelligent layman' so it is curious that the third title to appear was an sf novel by the English philosopher, Olaf Stapledon. Why the book was not published as a Penguin is a mystery, made curiouser by the almost palindromic fact that Last and First Men was the first and last novel to be published as a Pelican book.

The appearance of The Invisible Man in the Penguin Crime series saw sf change colour again: first orange, then blue, then back to orange and now green. This confusion about sf reflected the fact that its emergence as a genre had yet to spread beyond America, where the term 'science fiction' had been coined a decade or so earlier. However, in England such stories were simply fiction, albeit of a fantastic kind, and Penguin sf went on changing from green to blue to orange.

Although Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men was the only novel to appear as a Pelican book, it was not the only fiction or, indeed, the only science fiction. For in 1939-40 it was joined by two anthologies of Great English Short Stories and in the second of these was a cautionary tale that had first been published in 1896. The Plattner Story by H G Wells des- cribes how an explosion during a school chemistry experiment blows a hapless teacher clean out of three-dimensional space and into a twilight zone inhabited by ghostly Watchers of the Living. There he remains, watching the watchers, until another explosion deposits him back where he started. Well, almost, though his sudden re-entry on top of the head- master sends the latter sprawling across his strawberry plants. Then Plattner discovers he is now left handed and his writing is back to front. A medical examination reveals that his entire anatomy has been transposed and for this there can only be one explanation. Plattner has been to the fourth dimension and returned as his own mirror image.

The outbreak of hostilities in September 1939 saw Penguin turn its attention to the war effort, and among the 'books for the troops' that it published during the Second World War were two novels that highlight a not uncommon feature of sf, which is the prescience of its subject matter. The first was The War in the Air, a lesser-known novel by H G Wells that foretells of aerial warfare and cities bombarded by air raids. Penguin published it in the aftermath of the Blitz, an eight-month campaign of bombing raids by the Luftwaffe that rained destruction on London and other British cities, ports and towns. As prophecy the novel is all the more impressive since its original publication in 1908 was only a few years after the first powered flights by those magnificent men, the Wright brothers, in their heavier-than-air flying machines.

The second though no less visionary novel was The Iron Heel which had first been published in 1907 (a year before The War in the Air) and is widely regarded as initiating the sub-genre of modern dystopian fiction. Jack London's polemic on the evils of fascism seen from seven hundred years in the future offered a timely reminder, if one was needed, when Penguin published it in 1945. By now, however, the war had taken its toll on all aspects of life, and books were no exception. The introduction of paper rationing early on in the war had quickly put an end to dust jackets, so the price was now printed directly on the front cover. The books were also of a poor, flimsy quality with tissue-thin pages, papery covers and stapled bindings. The appearance of advertisements inside the books and on their back covers saw The Iron Heel paradoxically promoting rubber heels, as well as Horlicks, Mars Bars and Greys cigarettes.

In September 1946 Penguin published a commemorative set of ten H G Wells titles to mark the author's 80th birthday, which coincided with Allen Lane's 44th birthday. The set included a reprint of The Invisible Man in Penguin Crime plus The War of the Worlds, The Island of Doctor Moreau and The Time Machine in the main orange fiction list. Sadly the celeb- ration proved to be a little premature, as Wells died five weeks before the books were published.

The outbreak of dancing penguins on some of the books published in the years prior to, during, and immediately after the war may have been intended to inject some levity and lift readers' spirits but not everyone saw it that way, and to some the creature was an undignified eyesore. Looking back later, on the occasion of Penguin's twenty-first birthday in 1956, William Emrys Williams would write in The Penguin Story that the bird appeared to be "in the throes of appendicitis".

By 1947 it was clear to Allen Lane that the quality of the books being produced had fallen some way short of Penguin's reputation. On the covers and internally they looked somewhat amateur, with inconsistencies creeping in from one title to the next. To restore discipline and raise standards Lane hired Jan Tschichold, a Swiss typographer who was widely regarded as the best in his field. Tschichold arrived in March 1947 and immediately set about refining every aspect of a Penguin book, from the covers and page layouts to the typefaces and even the letter spacings. Nothing was overlooked, not even those dancing penguins which under Tschichold's command fell squarely to attention.

Tschichold documented his changes as the Penguin Composition Rules, which set out precise instructions and a standard format – the house style – to be used for every book that Penguin published. Then in December 1949 he was off again. He had been at Penguin for less than three years but had, he felt, achieved what he had come to do, and comparing the books above with those below it is hard not to agree. For judged by their covers alone, the later books show a marked improvement over those that predated his arrival. The results of Tschichold's reworking brought the covers sharply into focus and gave them an unified appearance which had previously been lacking.

Cover illustrations were nothing new to Penguin but they had not featured on many books since the preference was for purely typographic covers. But a few books got a picture, and one was The Day of the Triffids, with a drawing based on sketches that Wyndham himself had provided. The drawing was somewhat misleading, however, for the tubby little triffid on the cover was considerably cuter than the homicidal plants that stalked the pages of the story.

E M Forster's Collected Short Stories are mostly fantasies, but one is a celebrated piece of dystopian sf that first appeared in 1909. The Machine Stops tells of a future where people live alone in identical underground cells which they never leave unless it is absolutely necessary. It rarely is, as the Machine provides everything they need, including a medium for communication and social interaction with others anywhere in the world. Until, that is, the Machine stops.

Forster described the story as "a reaction to one of the earlier heavens of H G Wells", though today it has acquired the status of a prophecy and a warning. The rejection of physical society and withdrawal into virtual communities – of isolation, alienation, and life lived through the Machine – echoes current concerns about the dehumanising effect that computers and the internet are having on people. One hundred years after the story was written, science fiction is once again becoming science fact, and Forster's famous leitmotif of "only connect" is taking on a whole new meaning.

In 1953 the BBC screened a groundbreaking sf series about a scientist called Professor Quatermass. Written by Nigel Kneale, it was the first of its kind to be shown on British television and it took the nation by storm. Quatermass became a cult classic and two more series followed in 1955 and 1958. The scripts were then published as three Penguin books.

Like The Invisible Man in 1938, the publication of A Scent of New-Mown Hay in Penguin Crime was another case of mis- taken identity, for Blackburn's tale of murderous mutant mushroom-women must have perplexed more than a few fans of Agatha Christie et al. However, it did show how Penguin's crime covers had changed over the years. The title and author's name were no longer in block capitals, and the symmetry of the old covers had been replaced by a new layout in which the typography was aligned down the left-hand side and the quartic and logo were offset to the right, leaving room for a short blurb in the top-left corner.