With mushroom-clouds looming on the horizon—and considering a certain October anniversary from sixty years ago—the time seemed right for a look back at Robert Adams’ post-apocalyptic ‘Horseclans’ series, specifically the classic covers painted for it by the late, great Ken Kelly.

I've dropped the ball twice on Robert Adams in the past couple of years. The thirtieth anniversary of his death fell in 1990 and he would've turned ninety this August just passed. I missed both. Also, I didn't get around to doing a memorial post for Ken Kelly in June, partly from busy-ness and partly due to the fact that Dave Ritzlin and Brian Murphy both crafted such great tributes. So, consider this post as a bit of a make-up for both lapses.

The majority of the Horseclans tales take place in the twenty-seventh century AD, mostly in what is now the American South. Nomadic horsemen from the Great Plains—the Horseclans—have invaded from the West. They encounter Mediterraneans who settled the region in the wake of the nuclear holocaust centuries earlier. Warfare ensues. Basically, Adams created his setting in a Howardian fashion, allowing him to have analogs of Crusader-era knights fight Byzantine cataphracts and Scottish schiltrons. All this, plus hidden super-science and telepathic saber-tooths!

When the series debuted with The Coming of the Horseclans in 1975, the cover artist was Carl Lundgren. He also painted the original cover for the follow-up novel, Swords of the Horseclans, in 1977. Both covers were serviceable, but not particularly impressive. However, it appears that the art director at Pinnacle finally wised up and snagged Ken Kelly, who was hot off doing great covers for Lin Carter’s ‘Callisto’ books, the Berkley Conans and two classic covers for KISS. I look at that period here and here.

Ken would do his first Horseclans cover, Revenge of the Horseclans, in 1977. There is a gap in 1978, but then he was back with a vengeance in 1979, painting at least five more covers as the series changed hands from Pinnacle to Signet. Signet then had him do new covers for The Coming of the Horseclans, Swords of the Horseclans and Revenge of the Horseclans in 1981. Mr. Kelly would ultimately paint twenty-one Horseclans covers. His run ended in 1990 upon the death of Robert Adams.

Feel free to peruse the complete gallery of Ken Kelly’s Horseclans covers below, sword-brothers.

The Undying High Lord, Milo Morai, and his consort, Lady Mara. It’s the first novel in the series, but this was possibly the seventh or eighth Horseclans cover that Ken Kelly painted. This replaced the original cover by Carl Lundgren from the 1970s.

This is another ‘replacement’ cover, done in 1981. Ken Kelly was always great at painting elephants.

Ken’s first Horseclans cover, painted in 1977. A little bit crude, but powerful.

Kelly’s ‘redo’ of his own 1977 cover. This one has great composition and I love Kelly’s use of various red/red-adjacent hues to really make it pop.

Ken Kelly’s second Horseclans cover, from 1979. Filled with brooding menace and very much in his 1970s style.

The fifth novel in the series, this was the third cover that Kelly painted (1979). This is a great, dynamic cover somewhat reminiscent of Frazetta’s Berzerker.

The sixth Horseclans novel. The cover was painted in 1979. This was the first Horseclans book I ever read, courtesy of a high school buddy who really wasn’t into SFF except for the Horseclans series. Thanks, Wade!

Painted in 1980, this is a good example of the ‘slicker’ style that Kelly adopted for the rest of the decade.

This novel introduced the popular Horseclans hero, Bili the Axe. The next several Horseclans novels would feature his bloody adventures.

In 1985, Plume/New American Library published a trade paperback omnibus of the first three Horseclans novels, complete with a new Kelly cover. The Horseclans novels were selling like hotcakes at that point.

The Horseclans series was so popular in the ‘80s that it spawned two anthologies filled with Horseclans tales by the likes of Andre Norton, Harry Turtledove and George Alec Effinger. The first one was published in 1987 and the second in 1989, shortly before the death of Robert Adams.