Bridges

When it comes to visually appealing architecture, bridges have a certain sweeping gravitas.

They're tall; they're long; they connect one landmass to another over churning water or scary caverns; they can add depth to futuristic cities like the John Harris artwork in my header here.

Pick SF's Golden Gate bridge or London's Tower bridge, and you'll even have a landmark bit of iconography to really drive home the state of your utopian future or crumbling post-apocalypse.

In fact, a few of my favorite illustrations happen to center around bridges. Vicente Segrelles' cover to the 1978 German translation of Armada of Antares, by Alan Burt Akers, is my favorite entry in the "floating city" category.

This criminally uncredited 1974 cover to D. Keith Mano's The Bridge might be my favorite in the "overgrown ruins" category.

I haven't even mentioned the symbolic potential behind the concept, either. Here's a 1981 cover to the Using 6502 Assembly Language guidebook. A bridge to knowledge? You bet.

Sadly, the artist isn't credited, and I can't read the signature on the lower right.

Alicia Austin's inclusion of the Golden Gate on her 1993 cover to Bridging the Galaxies, by Larry Niven, is a bit of a visual pun, given the book title. But she also includes an "I heart SF" balloon, punning on the fact that San Francisco and science fiction have the same shorthand.

Richard Powers' 1957 cover to James Blish's Year 2018! (better known as They Shall Have Stars) features an ice bridge on Jupiter that readers will remember from the story.

Philippe Druillet's illustration “The Bridge Over the Stars” is top-teir science fantasy.

...and I suspect it's an homage to “The Bridge of Infinities,” an artwork by Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard, from his 1844 collection Un Autre Monde. It certainly wouldn't be the first time Druillet has riffed off of other artists, from Escher to Böcklin.

Ooh,wait, I just found his full splash page, which is even better! It's his title page for a Lone Sloane story, Torquedara Varenkor: Le Pont sur les Etoiles, published in the magazine Pilote in 1970.

Mark Harrison's depiction of a Golden Gate empty except for a single horseback rider is a nice, relatively subtle way to visualize a post-apocalypse.

Relative compared to this one, the post-apocalyptic Tower Bridge scene I mentioned earlier: Steve Crisp’s 1985 cover to The Death of Grass, by John Christopher.

Here's a far happier future version of the Tower Bridge, fading into the background under a tourist spaceship in a 1980s piece by Tom Stimpson.

Bob Abbett’s 1964 cover art to Fritz Leiber’s The Wanderer is pretty evocative, even if it doesn't include the story's "hollow planets filled with catgirls who want to steal the moon."

Jim Burns and Roger Dean have a few rocky bridges within empty, naturalistic landscapes.

This city by Chris Moore has a nice futuristic bridge, even if this particular photo is more blurry than I'd prefer.

Award for the least futuristic bridge goes to David Schleinkofer for the rope bridge on his 1990 cover to Harry Turtledove's A World of Difference.

Bob Peak has been lauded as "the greatest commercial illustrator active in the US after World War II." These days, of course, he's lauded as "peak." ... Anyway, here's one of his posters for a film you might recognize.

Ok, that's the end of our giddy run through cool bridges in sci-fi art – at least, until I do a post rounding up the other type of "bridge," the nautical term for command center on a spaceship.

I'll end on the best reason to build a sci-fi bridge: To go over the giant rusting thumb of a fallen robot. What else would I do, walk a hundred feet to the side?

Music Rec: DJ Shadow & Cut Chemist - The Hard Sell

Next Time: Paying users get my notes on the Spectrum 19 art collection from 2012.