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Cover art © Ed Emshwiller

This is the April 1960 Ace Double edition of Earth's Last Fortress. The artwork is by Ed Emshwiller.
This painting well conveys the mood of the novel, and is probably the best cover on any Ace book I've seen. Everything about it is outstanding, detailing the horrors of the ceaseless, vicious war described in the book — The ruined city in the distance, the frantic battle in the air, the pile of bodies to the side, and the new batch of reconditioned soldiers unwillingly lined up, ready to be sacrificed. The loosing side knows defeat is inevitable, but continues battling merely to postpone it. Futility and hopelessness permeates every element.
This war is best described in a single passage from Chapter 8, and perfectly fits the cover:

> Forty feet of city conquered every day. What a murderous war of attrition. What a bankruptcy of strategy. Or was it the ultimate nullification of the role of military genius, in that each side knew and practiced every rule of military science without error? — and the forty feet was simply the inevitable mathematical outcome of the difference in the potential in striking power of the two forces.
> Forty feet a day. Wonderingly, Garson stood finally with his troop a hundred yards from that unnatural battle front. Like a robot he stood stiffly among those robot men, but his eyes and mind fed in undiminished fascination at the deadly mechanical routine that was the offense and defense.

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