Sunburst by Phyllis Gotlieb
Sunburst is the debut novel by Canadian science fiction novelist and poet Phyllis Gotlieb (1926–2009). The cover for the first edition (Gold Medal Books, 1964) was designed by Richard M. Powers.
While the synopsis and the author’s name are set in Alternate Gothic, the fractured letterforms used for the title are from a different condensed sans. The curved leg of R together with the dark bottom right part of N and the high waistline (see B) made me think of Walter Haettenschweiler’s Schmalfette Grotesk. That would have made this find a perfect companion to Nick’s contribution about the Abram Schlemowitz exhibition poster. Likewise created in the United States in the 1960s, it also features sliced up letters from an alphabet drawn by a Swiss designer – in that case Walter Käch (both Käch and Haettenschweiler were students of Ernst Keller in Zurich) – which circulated in the form of a source book. Other details like the thinning of the R’s waist and especially the apertures of S are different from Schmalfette Grotesk, though. Permanent Headline was issued in 1964, but is a tad more angular. My best guess is Inserat-Grotesk, or a phototype version thereof. Among typefaces that were available at the time, it comes closest for the mentioned details, cf. this specimen.
From the book’s back cover, via Joachim Boaz’s blog:
In the hideous aftermath of the atomic sunburst. The people of Sorrel Park had been written off. Now they were nothing but a kind of human garbage, festering and hopeless.
In the center of town lived the worst of the human garbage–and by far the most dangerous. They were a breed of terrible children, possessed by terrifying supernormal powers. They were a new race of monster bred out of the sunburst, and if they ever broke loose they would destroy the world…
The title compared to Inserat-Grotesk as shown in an undated specimen of foundry type by Adcraft Typographers, Inc., kindly scanned and shared by James Puckett (CC BY)
