Publishers Weekly says my "obvious love for the form animates the volume." And I'll animate again! I'll never stop animating volumes.
The above quote has been my bio on Bluesky for the last few years. Finally, the time has come to make good on my promise: I'm animating another volume, folks.
I've signed a deal to produce an art collection that takes a broad look at the entire history of science fiction art. It'll be titled either The Art of the Future or The Art of Science Fiction ā tbd ā and it's coming out Fall 2027 from UK publisher Frances Lincoln.
It's a part of the "Art in the Margins" series, joining The Art of the Occult, The Art of Darkness, The Art of Fantasy, and The Art of the Unknown, all by my art book author friend S. Elizabeth (@ghoulnextdoor).
I'm excited! It's a lot of new territory for me: 1880s books, 1920s magazines, 1980s cyberpunk, 2000s video game concepts, and the coolest contemporary sci-fi artists of today, among a lot more.
Doug Andersen's 1991 cover to the Cyberpunk 2020 Night City Guide sourcebook will be in the book.
It's also a lot more work, so I'm restarting my two-issues-a-week schedule for my newsletter ā On paid-tier Fridays, I'll publish something connected to the book. Sometimes I'll do my Book Notes series where I collect quotes and art from a specific art book I'm researching, and sometimes I'll highlight a bunch of art from a specific artist.
So, I'm discounting my paid tier for the next two weeks: It's normally $5/month, but if you use these exact links any time before June 16, you get my writing-a-book special of $3.50/month or $40/year for life (or until you cancel). If memory serves, that's the cheapest I've ever gone!
I'm going to try to get this 1961 illustration in to represent Syd Mead - not confirmed yet.
Want a sneak peek at what an art-book-behind-the-scenes email might look like? Check out my latest email for a grab-bag of cool art and fun facts.
Brown was a really cool 1930s pulp sci-fi magazine artist. This one isnāt sci-fi, but it still might be my favorite work of his! Which is an odd thing to find myself saying, given that ā as longtime readers may have noticed over the 13 years Iāve run this blog ā I really like sci-fi art.
Hey, here's another entry in the "public domain magazine cover featuring an artist isn't science fiction but feels like science fiction" subgenre! It's a self-portrait by Elie Cheverlange for The American Weekly, Sept. 27, 1931.
In 1988, the Folio Junior collection for kids published "The Lord of the Rings" divided into six parts. Each of the traditional three volume was itself split into two.
And they are really funny. Christian Broutin had an interesting... perception of Middle-Earth.
I don't have high quality pictures of the first one (The Fellowship of the Ring, part 1) but you can see that it shows Gandalf escaping Isengard thanks to the eagle... With at the bottom what can be as much Gollum as the Watcher in the Water or some goblin. It is... hard to tell. "The Fellowship of the Ring part 2" meanwhile made the interesting choice to focus on the often-forgotten crebain.
Two Towers is divided between, on one side what I think is a depiction of Isengard but with the guy from the poster of Bakshi's Wizards that strolled in (plus random creepy eyes underneath) ; and on the other the cutest Shelob you'll ever see.
Finally you have The Return of the King, and while part 2 is a fairly traditional fall of Barad-dƻr scene, the part 1 is the best of them all... The Witch-King riding a giant fearthless chicken.
Hello! I know itās not much, and for all I know the art is already posted here somewhere, but Iāve had this novel for quite a while now after I picked it from a relativeās basement almost purely because of how cool the cover looked. I havenāt gotten around to reading it but it seems to be about the aggressively 80s concept of āThe Cold Warā¦ But In Space.ā I also looked up the artist and from what I can tell he did almost exclusively fantasy art, so this is one of presumably very few Sci Fi peices he did. (I also managed to find a crisper version of the original textless painting)
Oh yeah, Boris Vallejo! He did do a lot of fantasy, and a ton of human figures. For this cover, he's probably intentionally matching John Berkey's style - Berkey was the biggest science fiction cover artist in the US during the '80s and he would be copied a lot, since he was in too much demand to do all the covers.
