Hardware: The Definitive SF Works of Chris Foss by Chris Foss

Hardware: The Definitive SF Works of Chris Foss Reviews

• 
  Mark

  Hardware: The Definitive SF Works of Chris Foss by Rian Hughes and Chris Foss
  Published by Titan Books, May 2011
  The title page of this large format art book sums up the background to this book. There is, across the large double page, a row of over fifty books, their spines showing. These include books by Isaac Asimov, James Blish, EE ‘Doc’ Smith, AE van Vogt, Edmund Cooper, Jack Vance, JG Ballard, Philip K. Dick, Piers Anthony and books in the Perry Rhodan series.
  
  For much of the 1970’s and 1980’s Chris Foss was THE cover artist for SF in the UK. His paintings adorned most of Isaac Asimov’s paperback covers, including the iconic Foundation trilogy, Doc Smith’s Lensmen series, and James Blish’s Cities in Space series. He was an artist whose covers were a sign of a quality read, or at least they were to the teenage me, when I would buy a book on the strength of its Foss cover.
  
  Awesomely sized and detailed spaceships and buildings with people reduced to the size of mere dots, brightly painted in lines and stripes and with backgrounds not just of black, blue and grey, but vibrant greens, yellows and red, Chris’s work is a triumphant sign of technology. It’s not by accident that this book is called Hardware.
  
  Sadly, over time, finding a book with a collection of these iconic covers has been difficult. Since saving up my pocket money to buy 21st Century Foss in 1980, a slim 140-odd pages, there has not been a collection of Chris’s work. Something which I, and I’m sure many other fans, have bemoaned.
  
  This latest large format art book from Titan Books puts this right. Over its 240 pages, there are more than 500 paintings from Chris’s career, mostly in energetic colour.
  
  As well as the pictures, there are some details included to fill out the artist’s CV. The Introduction, by Rian Hughes, sums up much of what is great about Chris’s paintings. Then there is an interview with Chris by his daughter Imogene, which gives us a career summary and points to future work from Chris: he’s still working. There are also two Forewords – one by artist Moebius, writing about the artistic influence Chris has had on today’s artists, and one by Alejandro Jodorowsky, updating the Introduction he first wrote in 21st Century Foss.
  
  Not all of the material here is SF in nature: there are pictures from book covers Chris did for war books and other media events. This includes not only his book cover work but also his production sketches from Alien and Superman and the first ill-fated Dune film production in 1975.
  
  As is the nature of such collections, not all of the pictures are great - I never did appreciate his cover for JG Ballard’s Crash, for example – but most of them are still as visually stunning as when I first saw them: many of the Asimov covers, the Lensmen covers, many of which I still have on the Hobbit Towers bookshelves.
  
  If I had any quibbles, it would be that there are still pictures of Chris’ work not included, though that is perhaps to be expected: at one point Chris says he was producing two or three book covers a week!
  
  On a practical note, what would have been also useful would have been an index to the book, so that pictures, or the books they were used for, could be referenced easily. Although the pictures are individually titled and dated, there is no order to the book’s pictures – they are not chronological, nor collected by series. There are general groupings - pages that have spaceships together, battleships together, airplanes together, robots together and so on, but other than that the reader is left to discover each double page spread on its own merits, which may be its purpose.
  Nevertheless, as a fan, it is wonderful to see these paintings in one collection and so clearly printed. Many of the originals are now lost and so in some cases book covers have had to be scanned in for use, not that I could tell a difference.
  
  This is a collection that awes and entertains, and is a very useful primer to Chris’s body of work. The legacy of what is shown here is seen throughout today’s visual domains, having inspired and continuing to inspire book, film and game artists. For some, like me, it is a wonderful reminder of books gone by. As the digital revolution means that book covers become increasingly irrelevant, books such as these are important for archiving what has gone before. Over thirty years on, these images still ignite the imagination.
  
  Recommended.
  
  
• 
  Andrew

  Ok I love this book- from the sheer size of it to the amount of art it covers - the book is over 200 pages long and there are usually 4 images to the page its a lot of work its showing off. And the amazing thing is that I recognise so much of it its a amazing.
  When I was just getting in to reading I was hitting science fiction the most - and as part of that I hit the end of the 70s and 80s trend of putting images on to the covers that held no relation to the story inside - for example Chris Foss did the book cover for Isaac Asimov's Robots of Dawn - and yes there is a robot but the robot in question didn't feature is any of the book at all. But still the cover had a giant robot!!! And so the trend went on but hey I didnt mind was I was getting to see all the amazing creations of Chris Foss who it seemed did the cover of every title I either wanted, or owned or just kept on seeing.
  And now along comes this book with all those pieces of art in their original context and full of colour and its amazing - the book is like a catalogue of all those books that made me the reader I am today. So if you are a fan of impossible space ships then this is the book for you. And you may find the odd gem you didnt even know about hidden away in these pages (did you know he put forward design for the original Dune movie and Alien?)
• 
  Anthony Ryan

  If you ever wondered why modern science-fiction looks the way it does, from book covers to TV, comics and movies, the answer is here. Page after page of wonders conveys a sense of a master of his craft with a truly humbling talent not to say remarkable body of work. A real visual feast for fans of sci-fi art or illustration in general.
• 
  John

  The artwork is beautiful, but it's sometimes not entirely clear which captions belong to which piece of art and what the information in the caption is supposed to refer to. It's not that difficult to figure most of it out, but it didn't need to be a problem at all with a little better layout.
  
  It also would have been nice to have some more information about the works besides just title/author/publisher/year.
  
  Finally, some of the art is just too damn small to make out. Given the size of the book that's unforgivable, especially given that the only pieces containing text were among those chosen for the microscopic reproduction!
• 
  Chris

  A really nice hardcover featuring a really nice range of art. Although the title calls out science fiction, it actually includes a lot more than that.
  
  I was most interested in seeing Foss's concept art for *Superman '78* and *Alien*, I only wish there'd been more of that.
  
  Foss has a very unique style and it's books like these that make me really sad the adaptation of Dune he was involved in never got off the ground. Seeing one of his giant, checkered, lived in space ships flying across the big screen would be a sight to behold.
• 
  Astropunk

  Chris Foss is one of the most prolific and celebrated sci-fi artists of the last century. His work appeared on hundreds of paperbacks in the 70s and 80s, and he worked as a concept artist on many well known movies, Alien, Jodorowsky’s failed Dune project, and more recently, Guardians of the Galaxy. This book collects his most famous works. Highly recommended for any fan of science fiction artwork.
• 
  Joseph

  Everything that an artbook by one of the most influential sci-fi artists alive should be.
  A brilliant, well documented labour of love. Its the book you've been waiting for.
  Get it before it goes out of print.
  You won't regret it.
• 
  Maciek Salyga

  Chris Foss - the grandmaster of sf concept art! What else is there to say? Highly recommended! Production values on this book are through the roof. Worth every penny!
• 
  Jeff

  This is the second copy of this book I've bought (the first got watered, long story) which has to say something.
  
  For me, it's as if Chris Foss has always been there, accompanying me through my childhood and onwards. His iconic images adorned the covers of so many of the SF books that I grew up with, and they always grabbed both my eye and my imagination. If pictures of spaceships and alien planets can ever be deemed to be realistic, his fitted the mould; if we ever venture beyond this world, I'll be seriously disappointed if reality doesn't measure up to Foss' pictures.
  
  This book is a fantastic collection of his images, both a nostalgia trip and a visual delight in its own right. Moreover, it's a quality book from the hard covers through the 240 beautiful, heavy, glossy pages crammed with image after image after image, each one labelled with the book for which it was created and the date. There are, it's true, a few more words in a couple of articles at the front - and they're certainly interesting enough to merit the read - but that's not why anyone would buy this book.
  
  It always seems like a bit of a luxury to buy a book like this but, hey, we all need luxuries every now and again, don't we?
• 
  John

  As a kid, I loved the Terran Trade Authority series. The artwork was influenced heavily by Chris Foss (who was also hired by Alejandro Jodorowsky for his doomed Dune Film and one of his spiritual warriors).
  
  Foss has done cover work for many sci-fi masters like EE Doc Smith, PKD, Jack Vance, JG Ballard, Harlan Ellison, Asimov, Blish and van Goght (he also did the original drawings for the Joy of Sex)
  
  However, without a narrative, this book doesn't "blast off" for me. It's probably a failing of my imagination as I grew older, but as I read through--I got bored quickly.
• 
  Ben

  A highly influential oeuvre, apparently. Lots of bulky yet streamlined spacecraft in bright colors, barren interstellar landscapes, and the occasional 'action scene' for a non-SF paperback. Enjoyable eye candy.
• 
  Ricardo Loureiro

  Stunning colour reproduction of artwork from a master in the field. Shame about some typos.
• 
  Andrew

  If music is the most instantaneous trigger for nostalgic reverie, art is the next. (Perhaps after sherbet).
  
  I remember my first ever SF book, probably about 1973, Asimov's
  The Stars, Like Dust [1951]. Those were the days of awed exploration in the book shop in Shrewsbury, days of utter novelty, the first forays where I was lost in isolation from the 'other' world in the titles, covers and authors of an unknown universe awaiting my own personal discovery, unique to me alone, gifted to me alone, an experience akin to falling in love, when the universe feels created merely for you - and that special other. Paperbacks typically cost around 35-50p in those early '70s, and I could afford one a week, after buying the desired or peer-approved album. My next purchase, after The Stars Like Dust - which was sold to me by its gorgeous cover art as much as the splendid title - was Asimov's
  The Gods Themselves [1972], just out; and the next,
  Foundation [1951], and I never looked back. I've loved science fiction ever since, and I've read more of Asimov than anyone else's, and he comes second in 'most books read by an author' after our own wonderful Terry Pratchett. Just.
  
  Of course, those covers were the resplendent evocative images of Chris Foss, and the Panther Science Fiction series featured Foss covers, and if I've not been able to buy a new version of an Asimov with a Chris Foss cover, I've got a second-hand copy with his art-work on, but also another second-hand copy to actually read, so that I don't ruin a treasure.
  
  So I've grown up revering Foss's artwork as much my brother loved Roger Dean's album covers of those days, yes, and they naturally belong to an oak bookshelf of their own, which I visit frequently just to drink it all in again: the art, the evocation of other worlds, the nostalgia for those first days of lonely discovery. For loneliness is part of both these worlds, and part of the feeling refound. Where loneliness is not sad at all. In fact, losing yourself in a Foss space image engenders that early form of loneliness; it's natural; it's good. Not all loneliness is to be pitied.
  
  Foss's artwork often has only a tenuous connection with the book's story, such as the cover of The Gods Themselves itself, with the V-like rockets implying the threat of destruction borne by a different means in the novel. But that didn’t matter to me in the slightest in those days, for the artwork evoked the sense of thrill of discovery, of an alien strangeness which came to be more than comforting, and an obsessional escape from O Levels and the pressure of expectation from parents and teachers in the real world. These were the worlds in which I wished to belong, without the practical necessity of the humdrum 9-to-5. Nothing's changed. I look at an SF book with a Foss cover today, creeping up to five decades later, and I want to immerse myself in that world as much now as I did then.
  
  So to have a whole compendium of 500 works of art by the instantly recognisable and widely adored Foss is a treasure trove of memories, nostalgia and wonder, a boy's own world revisited, and if anything, makes me wish I could time-travel back to that very first day when I saw his cover of The Stars Like Dust sitting on those beautifully crafted wooden bookshelves in that shop at the top of Pride Hill in Shrewsbury, and re-live that first sense of wonder.
  
  Remember how the flavour of sherbet exploded on the tongue? Like that.