The Best Sci-Fi Album Covers, Part 4

Yes, Fragile—1971

Progressive Rock and Roll very nearly owns the sci-fi album art category. This whole list could be made up of album cover art by just Yes and Asia. I’ve decided to narrow my choices to just one album by each band. The cover art for Yes' Fragile is just stunning. What an idyllic planet we’re looking at here. A simple white road traverses two "continents." Huge trees rear up from the surface along with monolithic rock formations (or maybe handmade towers?) The scale sort of reminds me of the planet from The Little Prince. There’s no greater or fragile spaceship than the planet you are on. That seems to be the message here. On the albums front cover, we have a top-down perspective. In the aether above the planet, some sort of crazy wooden ship orbits.

The back cover art shows presumably the same planet in the process of breaking apart. This apocalyptic turn of events underscores the idea of fragility, but also forces us to consider the purpose of the spaceship, which we can see now is fish shaped. What is its purpose. Is it here to rescue the inhabitants of this world or did it come here to destroy the planet This might be my favorite album cover of all time. Roger Dean is the artist responsible for this and many other Yes album covers. He also painted covers for Asia, Uriah Heap, and many others.