Journeyman: The Art of Chris Moore

'Journeyman: The Art of Chris Moore'

Chris Moore (b. 1947) is an English illustrator and artist; his first commission for a paperback cover came in 1972, when he had just finished college. He began to take on more assignments for sf covers in the 80s, and by the 90s he was one of the more sought-after artists in the genre.

‘Journeyman’ (Paper Tiger, UK, 2000) is an overview of Moore’s work from the early 80s through the late 1990s. The book intersperses reproductions of Moore’s work with text; the latter is a combination of a narrative of several  visits to the artist’s studio in East Lancashire by author Gallagher; as well a lengthy interview with Moore generated from these visits. 

While in most art books the text is something of a superficial overlay, in ‘Journeyman’ it’s actually quite interesting. As an interviewer Gallagher touches upon a variety of subjects, and Moore seems quite happy to respond, with anecdotes about producing album covers in the early 80s for UK bands and artists such as Rick Wakeman and Rod Stewart. (One of Moore's album cover paintings for Wakeman was so unusually life-like the record company staff thought it was a photograph).

In addition to discussing his painting techniques, Moore also comments on the business aspects and financial realities of being a commercial artist. 

Anyone interested in sf art, and commercial art in general, will want to keep an eye out for ‘Journeyman’.

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The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick, 1989

Tygers of Wrath by Philip Rosenberg, 1991

Buddy Holly (poster), 1985

Dark Wing by Richard Herman, 1993

The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells, 1998

The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester, 1998

 

We Can Remember It For You Wholesale by Philip K. Dick, 1990

 Emphyrio by Jack Vance, 1998

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, 1998

The Weight by Allen Steele, 1994

The Sentinel by Arthur C. Clarke, 1986

The Illustrated Harlan Ellison

'The Illustrated Harlan Ellison'

edited by Byron Preiss, Baronet Publishing, 1978

 

‘The Illustrated Harlan Ellison’ (1978) was one of several trade paperbacks, in a groundbreaking graphic format, released by Baronet Publishers in the late 1970s under the auspices of ‘Byron Preiss Visual Publications’. The other volumes were ‘The Illustrated Roger Zelazny’, 1978; and ‘Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination, Volume One: The Graphic Story Adaptation’, 1979.

Being long out of print, copies of ‘The Illustrated Harlan Ellison’ can have high asking prices from online vendors. If you do decide to invest in a copy, MAKE SURE you are getting the trade paperback published by Baronet, and NOT the abridged mass market edition issued by Ace Books in 1980 !

As indicated on the back cover of the book, ‘Ellison’ featured 8 chapters / sections. Some of these were traditional comics, and some had been excerpted in early issues of Heavy Metal magazine: ‘Croatoan’, ‘The Discarded’, and ‘Shattered Like a Glass Goblin’. Other chapters were text stories with accompanying illustrations: ‘Deeper Than Darkness’, ‘Riding the Dark Train Out’, ‘I’m Looking For Kadak’.

There is a brief portfolio of paintings by Leo and Diane Dillon, Ellison's favorite artists.

The chapter devoted to an illustrated version of ‘“Repent, Harlequin !”, Said the Ticktockman’ is unusual in that Jim Steranko provided 3-D images, which the reader viewed with the aid of a pair of crude spectacles, with red and blue cellophane lenses, which were inserted into the book’s binding much like a detachable subscription renewal card. The 3-D effects genuinely work, and are another example of Steranko’s genius as an artist and designer. An article on Steranko's design process is available at this website dedicated to the drawings of the artist.

By and large the contents of ‘Ellison’ will appeal to fans of that author’s work. The ‘Croatoan’, ‘Discarded’, and ‘Glass Goblin’ pieces are outstanding, and ‘Dark Train’ also stands out.

The only real dud in this collection is ‘Kadak', which comes across as a too-contrived effort by Ellison to recover his Jewish Roots by working up a humorous fable heavily littered with Yiddish words and phrases.

Unfortunately, the high production costs of books like ‘Ellison’ were difficult to recoup through sales. The result was that Baronet went defunct in 1980. Back in the late 1970s the major retail outlets for books were the shopping mall-centered chain stories like Waldenbooks, and these retailers were just beginning to contemplate devoting precious store space to something as seemingly juvenile as paperback compilations of comics.
 
Indeed, if Baronet had started its line in the mid 80s, the chances of success would have been much higher. As is stands, they remain one of the early innovators of the graphic novel format that is widely represented in retail sf and fantasy commerce nowadays.

Book Review: The Third Omni Book of Science Fiction

Book Review: 'The Third Omni Book of Science Fiction', edited by Ellen Datlow

 

3 / 5  Stars

‘The Third Omni Book of Science Fiction’ (479 pp.) was edited by Ellen Datlow and released in April 1985 by Zebra Books. The cover artist is Tim White (as per David in the Comments).

This anthology contains short stories published during the interval 1978 – 1985; some originally appeared in Omni magazine, or in earlier anthologies (‘The Best of Omni Science Fiction’, 1980) associated with the magazine.

The first story, Alfed Bester’s ‘Galatea Galante’, is the worst in the collection. In the early 80s Bester began to get increased praise as the cyberpunk movement recognized the before-its-time quality of 'The Stars, My Destination'. Much is made in the back cover blurb of his inclusion in this collection

Unfortunately, 'Galatea' is a lame re-telling of the Pygmalion theme, a theme already heavily overworked in the sci-fi literature. Bester attempts to add satiric humor and New Wave-style mannerisms (including the insertion of musical notations into the text) but they fall miserably flat.

‘Number 13’, by Stephen Robinett, deals with a lone crewman’s angst. ‘Men Like Us’, by David Drake, is an entertaining look at post-Armageddon Earth and the suspicion of the Outsider. ‘I Am the Burning Bush’, by Gregg Keizer, is a downbeat, original tale of a mutant and his unique abilities.

‘Farmer on the Dole’, by Frederik Pohl, is another of the weaker entries. Pohl recasts the struggle of the Lumpen Proletariat for liberation, but with robots as the protagonists. The story goes on too long, and runs well out of steam, before it struggles to an ending.

Jack Dann’s ‘Blind Shemmy’ is one of the best stories in the anthology. It is set in a near-future Paris, where an amoral reporter decides to engage in a high-stakes, ‘virtual reality’ game of chemin de fer (the ‘Blind Shemmy’ of the title). Featuring some disturbing imagery and a suspenseful duel between desperate antagonists, this is a gem of an early cyberpunk tale.

Roger Zelazny contributes ‘The Last of the Wild Ones’, set in his universe of intelligent, self-aware automobiles. ‘Prairie Sun’, by Edward Bryant, deals with time travelers and the fateful decisions regulating interaction with the Past.

Robert Silverberg’s ‘Amanda and the Alien’ is a humorous tale of a California Valley Girl and an escaped ET.

Gregory Benford and Marc Laidlaw provide ‘A Hiss of Dragon’, a well-written tale of an adventurer who makes a hazardous living on a low-grav planet. ‘Executive Clemency’, by Gardner Dozois and Jack C. Haldeman II, is another of the better entries in the collection; in a near-future, post- World War Three USA, an elderly man struggles to come to terms with the changes to his world.

Philip K. Dick’s ‘Ruatavaara’s Case’ is a satiric look at the collision of human and alien theologies. ‘Adventurer of the Metal Murderer’, by Fred Saberhagen, mixes his Berserker theme with proto-Steampunk.

‘Borovsky’s Hollow Woman’, by Jeff Duntemann and Nancy Kress, features a spacesuit governed by an empathic AI, a troubled steelworker, and murderous rivalries on a massive space station construction project. It’s a labored tale that could have benefited from being shortened in length. Gene Wolfe’s ‘The War Beneath the Tree’ is a blackly humorous take on Christmas toys; perhaps because of its shorter length, it is one of his more accessible stories.

‘Webrider’, by Jayge Carr, is a middling tale of a mutant gifted with the ability to travel the galaxy through teleportation. This involves great risk; there is predictable angst on the part of the ‘webrider’. ‘Ringtime’, by Thomas Disch, deals with virtual reality, risky behavior, and a paying audience; it suffers from an oblique prose style that shows too many signs of hanging on to New Wave affectations.

William Gibson and Bruce Sterling provide ‘Red Star, Winter Orbit’, a passable, if not particularly exciting tale of a seedy Soviet space station and its rebellious crew.

The anthology closes with a novelette by Dan Simmons, ‘Carrion Comfort’, which the author later expanded into a novel.

‘Comfort’ deals with a group of mutants who are able to bend others to their will. This novelette starts off very slowly, and the powers wielded by the mutants are more than a little contrived. While the ending eventually takes on some momentum, it was too long in coming to make me interested in possibly trying the novel. 

All in all, the Third Omni Book of Science Fiction is a reasonably good snapshot of SF writing in the early 80s, at a time when the cyberpunk movement was in ascendancy, bringing with it greater attention to composition, plotting, and narrative as compared to the defunct New Wave movement it was replacing.

Heavy Metal magazine November 1979

'Heavy Metal' magazine November 1979

 

November 1979. The FM rock stations are playing ‘Dirty White Boy’ by Foreigner and “Sara’ by Fleetwood Mac. The AM stations have ‘Babe’ by Styx, and ‘Escape’ (‘The Pina Colada Song’) by Rupert Holmes, in heavy rotation. And the latest issue of Heavy Metal magazine is on the stands at Gordon’s Cigar shop off Main Street. The wrap-around cover is 'Fetch' by Joe Jusko.

The proprietor, a paunchy, taciturn middle-aged man, never raises an eyebrow or smirks when I come in to pick up Heavy Metal or any of the PorPor paperbacks on his shelves (I didn’t know it at the time but he earned most of his revenue from selling smut books from under the counter !). In fact, one time when I was short the wretched New York State sales tax by a nickel or so for a purchase of a Doc Savage book, he simply waved it off.

The November Heavy Metal is a bit of a letdown after the fine October ’79 issue devoted to H. P. Lovecraft. Still, there is the opening part of Corben’s new serial ‘Rowlf’. There are some black and white strips from Chantal Montellier (‘Shelter’), Moebius (“Airtight Garage’), Voss (‘Moon Flight’), and Luc Cornillon (‘Jim’). There are illustrated text excerpts from books: Moorcock’s ‘Elric’, Bester’s ‘The Stars My Destination’, and Wayne Barlow’s interesting ‘Barlow’s Guide to Extraterrestrials’.

One of the better color comics in the issue is Phil Trumbo’s ‘Egg-Stained Wine’, which I’ve posted here. While ‘Wine’ is clearly derived from undergound funny-animal comix like Crumb’s ‘Fritz the Cat’ or Armstrong’s ‘Mickey Rat’, it works in a bit of Winsor McCay’s ‘Little Nemo’ imagery as well. Needless to say, ‘Wine’ was best read while stoned, and perhaps with ‘Tusk’ playing in the background on your stereo system…..