If you’ve ever wandered through the Sci-Fi aisle at your local bookstore, you’re probably familiar with the work of Chris Foss, even if you don’t know it. His artwork has been featured on so many classic and modern Sci-Fi novel covers that his aesthetic is nigh impossible to separate from the genre’s imagery. Isaac Asimoc, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, Rick Raphael, Michael Moorcock, John W. Campbell, Jack Vance, Edmund Cooper, and other Sci-Fi authors all have books bearing Foss’s artwork. Unless Foss is ambidextrous, it’s fair to say he singlehandedly altered the public notion of how Sci-Fi looked on the page. For fans of his work or Sci-Fi art in general, Titan Books has recently released Hardware: The Definitive SF Works of Chris Foss. Oh, complete (and tangentially convenient) afterthought, Foss was also the visual design consultant on a little movie called Alien.
Yeah, that’s right, Alien, oh, and Alejandro Jodorowsky’s never-made film-version of Dune. A Sci-Fi classic and one that fans have been stewing over for decades. Some of the iconic visualizations from both of these landmark Sci-Fi franchises came right from the brain of Chris Foss. For Dune, his work includes mind-bending spaceships of rich colors and odd designs, but for Alien, Foss holds a certain element of prestige that actually extends into the upcoming prequel, Prometheus: the design of the mysterious space jockey. Those not intimately familiar with the Alien films might not remember a “space jockey” and for good reason, since he wasn’t so much a character in the original film as he was a fixture. When the Nostromo sets down on the desolate planet where they pick up the beacon’s signal, they venture into a crashed spaceship and discover a being, long since deceased from a mysterious injury from its chest, leaning back in a chair the way a rider would a motorcycle. It’s become an integral part of the film’s mystery and the subject of much fan conjecture.
Foss’s work on Alien didn’t stop at just designing the space jockey’s perch, it also included numerous designs for the Nostromo (also known at one point as the Leviathan) as well as the space jockey’s crashed ship. Considering Foss had already made a name for himself, it’s no wonder he was tapped to oversee the design for a space epic, however the book details the experience working on the film as a less than encouraging one. Whereas Foss’s later work on 1980’s Flash Gordon was so rewarding as to result in many direct adaptations of his concepts from the page to the screen, his work on Alien was rather indirectly influential. Before Ridley Scott stepped in to direct, Foss and a collection of other artists spent weeks toiling in a room concocting many different designs for the film’s spaceships, an effort which resulted in the then-director walking in, offering a snide comment “Yeah, a room full of spaceships,” and walking back out. The designs would later affect what made it to screen, but that shift in control and the productions move to the UK left Foss out of much of the future design work.
Typically, as it’s Foss’s specialty, his contributions fall in the realm of vehicles in vast expanses of space or on pristine planets. The more you flip through the full-color pages of Hardware and soak in Foss’s unique style, the more you become acutely aware of his influence when watching other Sci-Fi films from the last 30 years. His impact on the SF aesthetic is undeniable, and once you know what to look for it jumps out. There is a slight drawback to a book comprised entirely of his work: amongst all the appreciation, it becomes hard to discern one piece from the other. Sure, this is true of many artists, but even with his art as richly detailed as it is, the curves, contrasts, and his love of checkered paint jobs begin to blur together. Where the book is truly worthwhile is in the few cases where a piece from his private stash was altered for a book cover later on, and it’s interesting to see how the addition of a spaceship or other element can change the feel of a painting drastically.
As an added plus, the book features multiple forewords by the likes of Rian Hughes, Moebius, Imogene Foss (the best of the lot, as it’s a paraphrased conversation with Chris), and Alejandro Jodorowsky.
If you're curious to check out more art by Chris Foss or learn more about his work, check out his website www.ChrisFossArt.com
