The man who showed me what spaceships look like

On September 23 2009 · 1 Comment · In Diary


Spice leaking from a ruptured pirate ship by Chris Foss

Have you heard of Chris Foss? If you’ve seen any of the major science fiction films of the last thirty years, you may have seen the influence of his work. He worked on visualisations for a never-produced film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune (no, not the David Lynch one), Superman, Alien, and Flash Gordon. He created conceptual art for the movie A.I for Stanley Kubrick – nearly ten years before the film actually came out.

The book 21st Century Foss was in my mum’s library when I grew up. Chris Foss showed me what spaceships looked like. I am now looking for the book again.

If that’s not enough, Foss did the illustrations for the original The Joy Of Sex.


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  • Iain

    I remember that Chris Foss was ubiquitous as far as SF book covers went in the 80s – to the extent that if a book was SF it had a Chris Foss painting of a spaceship on the front cover, even if the subject of the book had absolutely nothing to do with spaceships.

    That version of Dune you refer to is a film that I really regret was never made, with all of the various collaborators involved (including Salvador Dali playing the emperor) it could have been incredible. It might have been dreadful too, but it would have been fascinating to watch. I still think that there is scope for a decent screen version – I liked the look of the David Lynch version but thought that the story was dreadful (but partly well cast). The TV mini-series was largely faithful but very dull.