Grass

"Touch grass." It's a now-classic internet insult for telling anyone who's getting too worked up online that they need to go outside.

But is it also good advice for an era of science fiction art that focuses too much on sleek white iPhone-branded future cities and not enough on the simple flora and fauna that we all (not you, Exxon execs) want to keep alive and well long into the future?

I dunno. I'm just asking to set up this week's theme. We're talking grass art, babyyy!

H. R. Van Dongen frequently has an interesting perspective or concept for his covers, like the zoomed-in blades of grass or seaweed on this 1979 cover to the anthology The Best of James Blish.

What's this? A trapdoor? Looks like I should have included this one in my Doors post.

Tim White delivered his typically painstaking level of detail for this grassy field, before airbrushing it into oblivion for his atomic blast.

Dean Ellis put a lot of detail into about a dozen of the flowers for the grassy planet ring on his 1973 cover to Larry Niven's Protector, and then just went with dots of white for the rest of them.

By the way, let me know if you have a large scan of the full wraparound cover; I've been trying to get a nice version of it for a half-decade now.

Here's a 1973 Richard Powers cover for All Flesh is Grass, by Clifford D. Simak. Granted, grass doesn't seem to be included in the scene. Some nice green on the creepy alien figure, though!

Never fear; Jan Esteves rectifies the lack of grass with his surreal 1978 cover.

And then there's John Christopher's novel No Blade of Grass, which clearly specifies an intentional lack of grass in the title. I suppose it's tough to illustrate a lack of something unless you're Richard Powers, so Hector Garrido's 1967 cover just depicts the tainted grass beginning to melt away.

Garrido might have been cribbing from Paul Bacon's 1956 cover.

I also love Michael Presley’s 1975 cover:

Karel Thole has a great take as well, from 1973.

Finally, there's Steve Crisp's 1985 cover for the same story under a different title, The Death of Grass.

Rodney Matthews's 2016 artwork "Conflict in the Grass" includes some foliage.

Speaking of more recent art, here's Michael Whelan's 2002 personal work, Edgedancer.

A little commentary from his website: "A cautionary, 'All good things come to an end...' While she dances away her day, the ground which supports her erodes into nothingness."

Check out Whelan's new email newsletter if you haven't already, by the way. A lot of interesting information, like more info on the model, Cary, who posed for this one.

Let's end on one of my favorite grass-centric covers: David Williams' 1970 cover art for Earth Abides, by George R. Stewart. It's a great example of a subject with extremely "early 1970s" hair, but I also love the tangled grass and the subtle surrealism of the vanishing torso. Soak it in.

I had the honor to guest-curate the art for yesterday's issue of Sentiers, an eclectic newsletter about the future. I'll be doing the next three issues as well, all featuring artists from my art collection. It's fun! You should check out the newsletter, it's consistently interesting.

Music rec: Sinners soundtrack. Good movie!

Next Time: Ocean Outposts