Sci-Fi Art: A Graphic History

by Steve Holland, Alex Summersby, Toby Weidmann

Sci-Fi Art: A Graphic History traces the evolution of this popular art form from the earliest illustrations of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells through the classic cover art of pulp magazines from the 1920s and 30s, to graphic novels in the 60s and 70s, and right up to contemporary film posters, movies, and television shows.

Chapters bring to light the most groundbreaking and talked about sci-fi art in media ranging from comic books, movies, and TV programs to art, posters, toys, literature, collectibles, board games and video games. Sci-Fi Art is a comprehensive compilation that reveals fascinating background information, anecdotes, ideas, and inspirations relied on by iconic artists from Chris Foss, Jim Burns, and David Mattingly to Moebius, Albert Robida, and Frank Kelly Freas. Illuminating analyses of these sci-fi masters' use of technique, tools, materials, and media are also featured.

All images are richly illustrated and seemingly three-dimensional making Sci-Fi Art the perfect nostalgia book for sci-fi fans and collectors, as well as an inspiring resource for art lovers, designers, illustrators, writers and creative minds.

Genres: Art, Science Fiction, Graphic Novels

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 19, 2009

Reviews

[Johnny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some “coffee table books” are just something to peruse from time-to-time but Sci-Fi Art: A Graphic History is a time capsule delightfully curated by author Steve Holland. The best part of this “time capsule” is that Holland doesn’t dwell on one aspect of science-fiction artwork but moves from early magazine illustration (the first science-fiction or “scientifiction” stories were published in magazines after all) through book covers and the magazines of the late 20th century. He features a solid side excursion through comic books (including more modern anime and manga) and even recognizes the importance of concept art in bring film, animation, and video games to life. There is a short chapter on art designed to promote films and even a dive into science-fiction toy design. Even, as I’ve commented in looking at some other surveys of literature, comics, film, or art, some solid references to work from the U.K., Europe, and Asia.

Reading a book like Sci-Fi Art: A Graphic History means running across some old friends. I love the inclusion of Frank Reade Weekly Magazine and Amazing Stories from the Hugo Gernsback through the Ziff-Davis days [I was publisher of Amazing Stories in one of its last iterations]. I have to find some of those Jack Wright stories so similar to the Frank Reade stories which, in turn, must have inspired the Tom Swift and Tom Swift, Jr. series of juvenile novels. There was a terrific little article on Frank “Kelly” Freas with my favorite illustration by him, the cover of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction where Harlan Ellison is surrounded by little people [Warning: I might like this because Harlan and I had some “interesting” times during a feud that predated our respect for each other and I am amused thinking of how annoyed this cover might have made him. I never discussed it with him, so I don’t know. Just speculating! Nonetheless, I like it even better than some of the retro-sci-fi images Freas did for Computer Gaming World for a special story .]

I could have enjoyed a few more works by Frank Frazetta, but I loved the hardware of Vincent Di Fate, the alien concepts of H.R. Giger, the work of Wayne Douglas Barlowe in presenting eery aliens, and the animation scenes from A Scanner Darkly, one of the most haunting Philip K. Dick stories I can imagine (makes me want to see it again), and finally seeing Roger Dean recognized for some of that early Psygnosis video game art that creeped me out were some of the elements that made me enjoy this book so much.

[Sol · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mom always told you not to judge a book by its cover, but we all do. If only the contents lived up to the empty promises of those gorgeous covers a little more often...

Holland et al. deliver an expansive history of science fiction art, covering not just book and magazine covers, but comics, movies, games, albums, space art, and toys. Images are large colourful and well chosen. I could quibble with a couple of the selections and omissions (surely Luis Royo merits more than an offhand mention?), but they would be quibbles (though having a two page section on Final Fantasy entirely using images from Spirits Within and Advent Children has me questioning the sanity of whoever selected the pictures there).

The problem is the length. At 200 pages, the book needs to be at least twice as long even begin trying to do justice to the subject, even with up to 4 images crammed onto some pages. Worse, a large amount of page space is given over to text. The early historically-oriented parts of each section had some interesting details and overviews of artistic trends, but as the sections go on, especially the book/magazine portion, they tend to degenerate into lists of names and awards, with too few images and too little context for them to stick. This is an artbook, if there isn't a picture to correspond to something, it may as well not exist.

There's an interesting undercurrent regarding the V2 rocket's inspiration of British artist Frank Hampson, and its ex-nazi designer Wernher von Braun's collaboration with space artist Chesley Bonestell to champion the cause of landing on the moon. Von Braun also wrote a hard scifi novel about a manned mission to Mars. Other memorable moments include Frederick Pohl's designation of Frank R. Paul as "probably the first human being ever to make a living drawing pictures of spaceships", Harry Harrison publishing an artbook, Great Balls of Fire, covering the sexy-women dimension of scifi art in more detail, Chris Foss attempting to create an unpublished Barbarella-style comic, and there being a magazine of book cover posters, Science Fiction Monthly.

[Parka · Rating 5 out of 5]

(More pictures at parkablogs.com)

Sci-Fi Art: A Graphic History explores the history of art used in the popular science fiction genre more than 150 years ago — the Jules Verne and H.G. Wells era. The book focuses on the development of illustration and use of art from the 1920s onwards.

The work featured in the book comes from media ranging from magazines, novels, comic books, movies, TV programs, games and even toys. Many artists are prominently featured with their illustrations. Just to name a few, there are Chris Foss, Jim Burns, and David Mattingly to Moebius, Albert Robida, and Frank Kelly Freas. Several popular series are also highlighted, like Flash Gordon, Star Trek, 2000 AD, etc.

I've limited exposure to science fiction art from the past and most of the images in the book look absolutely retro to me. Still, you can see the evolution of style through the years. There's a generous amount of pictures included, all are pretty well scanned, and comes with captions.

The section on sci-fi art in movies and computer games are much shorter. Given the amount of titles churn out by major entertainment companies, there should have been more writeup in this area.

The bad part about the book is the binding. It uses the perfect binding style you see in most paperbacks. In this case, the glue became so hard it was unable to stick to the cover. It also cracks if you open the book too much. Just look at the picture of the book that arrived in my Amazon box below. Admittedly Amazon didn't wrap the books properly but the binding was bad to begin with.

Other than the issue with binding, this is book is nice resource into sci-fi art.

[Kendall Moore · Rating 4 out of 5]

An exemplary primer of SF art; it was my first introduction to the aesthetic traditions of the genre.

[Nicholas Gourlay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good documentary of sf/f artwork from novel covers, movie posters, and graphic novels. Some seperate articles on artists (i.e. H.R. Giger). I got numerous recommendations from it including:

- Rogue Queen - L. Sprague de Camp
- I am Legend - Richard Matheson
- A God Named Smith - ? (Amazinf Stories July.?)
- And Seven Times Never Kill Man - George R.R. Martin (Analog 7.75)
- Gentleman Junkie - Harlan Ellison (Pyramid, 1975)
- Blown - Philip Joes Farmer
- The Way of Cross and Dragon - George R.R. Martin
- Yragael - Philippe Druillet
- DragonBall Z - Akira Toriyama
- Akira - Katsuhiro Otomo
- The Illustrated Man - Ray Bradbury (GN)

[Michael Reilly · Rating 4 out of 5]

A neat overview of influential sci-fi art created for a wide range of different media over more than a century. The informative text talks about art, artists and their influences; improvements in digital technology and commercial printing; publishing shifts to create new markets; and changing consumer preferences – as well as many other important aspects that shaped the content shown. The reproduction of illustrations is good overall, and the simple layouts ensure that the book is easily enjoyed.

[jade · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sci-Fi Art: A Graphic History is largely an artbook that attempts to cover a 150-year-period of science-fiction art history, by showing examples of said art in different time periods and contexts. It succeeds mostly in this, keeping the informative text to a minimum, and the layout of the book has been designed in a manner that pulls most attention to the art, first, instead of to the (largely) unobtrusive text.

However, though the book gives information on different artists, styles, and other science-fiction phenomena, it leaves the interpretation of art development throughout the ages mostly up to the reader. There doesn’t seem to be an overarching theme of art evolution/development in the text, and the book itself is divided up into media instead of time periods, further upping the difficulty in seeing the universal shift of sci-fi art direction/themes in those 150 years of history. Especially to the layman (such as myself), this can feel as if something’s missing from the book – of course someone can identify a piece as old or new, but more textual information on this would’ve been nice.

Anyhow, the book contains six media-based chapters: (1) Foundations of SF art, (2) Book covers and magazines, (3) Comic books, (4) Concept art, (5) Cinema art, and (6) Other media (which includes video game design, CGI, and toys).

The chapter on book covers and magazines is most extensive, but that’s only to be expected in the science-fiction world, of course. The colour pages are of high quality, and there are often separate articles on famous and/or influential writers (i.e. Jules Verne), visual artists (i.e. H.R. Giger), and media phenomena (i.e. Star Wars, Star Trek, Flash Gordon, etc.).

It’s a good, solid book on science-fiction art history that provides the reader with many colourful, high quality examples, and information on different influences throughout time. It could’ve done better on the evolution/development of science-fiction art, but if you’re just here for the pictures, then this is probably a good book for you, and I would definitely recommend it in that sense. It has a great, minimalist layout, and looks very visually appealing, just like an artbook should.

One last end note: the binding of this book is horrendously awful. Though the pages of my particular copy are still glued together, they’ve completely dislodged themselves from the cover, and I fear for ending up with separate pages if I open my book too much.

[Artur Coelho · Rating 5 out of 5]

Diz-se, acertadamente, que não podemos julgar um livro pela sua capa, mas é inegável a influência que uma boa capa tem sobre a percepção do livro enquanto objecto para reverenciar. Capa estilisticamente bela, textos que repercutem na mente e ilustrações interiores que ajudam o leitor a visualizar interiormente as palavras da obra, eis a minha ideia de um livro que dá prazer não só pela leitura como pela sua posse e gosto de passear os olhos pelas estantes e recordar o seu conteúdo.

Mais do que simples adorno, uma capa remete o leitor para a temática do livro e ajuda-o a visualizar na sua mente aquilo que lê. Basta pensar nas influentes ilustrações de capa e interiores das obras de Tolkien para ver até que ponto a imagem se imbrica nas palavras. Peter Jackson mostrou perceber isso ao respeitar na trilogia Senhor dos Anéis a estética dos livros, o que ajudou ao sucesso entre os fãs das obras.

Na ficção científica, as ilustrações de capa ganharam força própria, com um cultismo indicativo da forma como estas visualizações ajudaram a definir a estética da FC. As imagens icónicas que associamos ao género surgiram nas capas de livros e revistas, e repassaram para o imaginário colectivo com uma força inegável, maior do que as palavras dos autores de FC. É também de observar que em muitos casos, particularmente nos primeiros tempos do género, as ilustrações valiam muito mais do que as palavras de autores felizmente esquecidos que ilustravam.

Sci-Fi Art: A Graphic History é um livro luxuriante, repleto de imagens que entram nos olhos e excitam os centros cerebrais de prazer visual. Traça uma história da ilustração em FC desde os seus primórdios nos pulps, sem esquecer antecessores quase feéricos do século XIX, até à época contemporânea. Sublinhando o papel da ilustração na FC, destaca ilustradores que criaram alguns dos ícones da FC, como Frank Paul, Richard Powers, Chesley Bonnestell, Chris Foss, Jim Burns ou Vincent di Fate, entre muitos outros. Não se limitando a capas, olha também para a BD, Animação, Cinema, Concept Art e multimédia, exemplificando com o melhor do que se fez e se faz nestes campos. Das ilustrações feéricas de J. J. Grandville ao traço preciso de Syd Mead, das naves espaciais realistas de Chris Foss ao preto e branco apaixonante de Wally Wood, esta obra traça o percurso alucinante da iconografia de ficção científica.

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this. The old stuff still holds up to today.