Gazing at Alien Skies
Have you ever wondered what it might be like to look at an alien sky? The sky of a planet whose atmosphere has a different chemical composition to that on Earth, resulting in entirely different […]
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The Art and Science of Spaceship Design I: The Xiezhi from Revolution 60
Here at Giant Spacekat Productions, we are a little company making a big videogame. Thus, we all wear many hats. I am, inter alia, Executive Producer, Second Line Texture Artist, the entire Legal Department, and […]
The Monster Makers
The spotlight last month fell on the special effects wizards who make SF monsters come to life. The crowning glory was the award of the Best Picture Oscar for Argo. This spy drama focuses on […]
John Carter Through the Years
In light of John Whalen’s review of Michael Seller’s John Carter and the Gods of Hollywood, I thought it might be instructive to take a look at the different artistic depictions of the world’s first […]
Why Sorcerers Have Long Grizzled Beards
Ever notice that fictional sorcerers always seem to have long, grizzled beards? Ever wondered why? Well, probably you haven’t, but you’re about to find out. The sorcerer “look” originally comes from a real-life sorcerer named […]
Now with more Pulp!
Pulp… no, wait… it should be written like this: PULP! What I am referring to is not what you find in your orange juice. It refers to a type of low grade paper that was […]
Dynamo – Unsuccessful Wooing, Decrees from Rashmon & A Silent, Bearded Man
If there’s a recently popularized term that leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, it’s “webisodes.” This demeaning and fun-sized determination of quality stems from the misconception of tacked-on extra content pumped out in the […]
The Artful Collector: Collecting Strategies Part 2 “Whatever It Takes”
Rich men (I am going to fall back on the male gender because most of the collectors in the field of illustration art and books are male) don’t let scarcity stop them from getting what […]
Women in Armour vs. Chicks in Chain-mail
One of the more common tropes of fantasy illustration is depictions of women in armor, but this is not necessarily unique to fantasy illustration. Armored women have been depicted in art throughout the centuries. Most […]
The Chocolate Teapots of the 21st Century
Looking back at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear disaster of 3/11/2011, I ask more questions about Japanese robotics. Baudrillard and M. John Harrison are roped in to help. Also, we bought a Roomba.
Sequential Wednesdays #1 – Rockwell’s Masked Heroes
Let’s get one thing straight: I go weak at the knees because of some colored pigment on a stretched cloth surface – often and regularly. Somewhere I know my parents got it right […]
The Artful Collector: Collecting Strategies Part 1 “The Completist”
I came to my role as dealer in SF art in a very old-fashioned way….as a fan. And I’ve still got ‘fandom’ in my blood. I mention this only because dealers in many collecting arenas […]
The Art of the Shaver Mystery
The Shaver Mystery is part of the history of Amazing Stories Magazine, but it is certainly not considered one of the magazine’s shining moments. Barry Malzberg touched on it briefly in his first blog post […]
Halo Jones Interview with Ian Gibson
Before From Hell, before Watchmen, before The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, there was The Ballad of Halo Jones. Co-created by writer Alan Moore and artist Ian Gibson, Halo Jones was a space opera about a young woman who is swept up in […]
How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Manga
The Japanese manga Planetes reminds us that it’s not always about destroying the Death Star Sometimes, I tell people that it’s my brother Nick’s fault. Back in those dim, dark days before home video, Nick gave me […]
When Hollywood Attacks!
There was no movie in 2012 that I looked forward to seeing more than Prometheus. It was being produced by Ridley Scott, the same man who produced Alien and Blade Runner. Unfortunately it wasn’t really […]
The Artful Collector: To Have and to Hold
Young children collect sea shells, older children collect dolls, action figures, trading cards and comic books, and grown up children . . . well, they still collect dolls, action figures, trading cards and comic books. […]
Painting With Pixels: Digital Artists
So, a couple weeks back I began talking about current fantasy artists. I want to continue with that theme this week, but I want to talk about digital artists. Specifically about digital painters. Photoshop began […]
Art + Fandom ≠ Fan Art, part II: Images of Galadriel
Well it looks like I put my foot right into it in my previous post! Several people objected to my definition of the term “Fan Art”. They felt that it was not in accordance with […]
The Artful Collector: Living in Interesting Times
May you live in interesting times. So goes the curse…. Last year at IlluxCon, a convention devoted purely to the buying, selling and showing of painted art – I overheard a young artist saying to […]
Dress for the Occasion 2: The Decked-out Heroine
Previously I blogged about that favourite trope of SF & Fantasy illustration: The Scantily Clad Female. That topic generated a lot of comments, so let’s look at the opposite end of the spectrum and see […]
Judging A Book By Its Cover (Art)
The old axiom about not judging a book by its cover notwithstanding, I am going to judge the merits of various book covers that wrapped editions of heroic fiction. This is not a scholarly article, […]
Art + Fandom ≠ Fan Art: Definitions
Before I get properly rolling with this blog, I thought it might be worth taking a moment to stake out the territory I plan to cover. This website, and these blogs, are all about fandom, […]
Loving the Alien
Human beings have always had a fear of and, at the same time, a fascination with the “other”. Almost as soon as humans were able to make art on cave walls depictions of strange and […]
Steve Stiles A Retrospective
Steve Stiles is a living double entendre: not only does he draw icons of the field, he is an icon of the field. If brushing twilltone off your lap after reading is a familiar experience, […]
Dress For the Occasion: The Scantily Clad Female
So, here’s a question: Say you’re a beautiful woman (I assume some of you reading this actually are women. Please believe me when I say that in my eyes all women are beautiful. If you’re […]
How SFX Can Ruin a Horror Film
It recently struck me how most of the films that, IMHO, were truly scary were the ones that had little or no digital special effects. The reason is simple: what makes something scary is mostly […]
Attention Grabber
The single most important step for a reader is the initial act of choosing what to read. After that, everything else is just a formality of literary cultivation. You read, you absorb and you grow. But it’s that first step that determines who you are as a reader. So, what books grab “your” attention?
NEW! MODERN! CONTEMPORARY! HIP!
I have spent a lot of time in previous posts dwelling in the past. I have been like an old man suddenly lost to the present, the memory of times past reeling behind his eyes while he absently stirs his tea. Well, I think perhaps I should bring this topic into the present and talk about some of the science fiction and fantasy artists working today.
There has been an explosion of fantastic art. In the past fantastic art’s only reason for being was as illustration to fantastic literature. That changed and today fantastic art is it’s own reason for being. You can find fantasy art on posters, tee-shirts, coffee mugs. You can find it on the internet almost as easily as you can find pornography or lolcats.
About Author
M. D. Jackson has been drawing since he could first hold a pencil. He has been writing for so long that he has, in fact, developed an alternate personality named Jack to handle the fiction.
His work has appeared in numerous magazines and on the front covers of many books as well as in the pages of Amazing Stories Magazine. You can also see a lot of it at his gallery.
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