My 2024 Christmas Gift: Desktop Backgrounds and Phone Wallpapers

Last year, I did a sci-fi-themed gift guide for the holiday season – you can check it out here. However, in all honesty, I'm not much of a physical gift giver, and it was hard work to put it together. This year, to save me from tears, I'm going another direction.

Here's my Christmas present to you all: A range of artwork that I think would make for great desktop backgrounds. I have a few phone lockscreen options as well, and honestly, all of the desktop backgrounds can be cropped down into cool phone wallpapers if you want.

One disclaimer; I haven't cropped this art to standard wallpaper dimensions, (which I believe is a 4:3 ratio) and not all of them are large enough to qualify as full HD.

This 1982 Hiroo Isono illustration is a peaceful desktop background, and easily one of my favorites.

Moebius has plenty of great backgrounds, of course. Here's one.

Perhaps the best autumn-themed sci-fi background is Dan McPharlin’s 2009 cover for ‘Prefuse 73: The Forest of Oversensitivity’ EP.

Here's a good winter one, by Patrick Woodroffe. Possibly a better fit for a phone, given the dimensions.

These two artworks are by Hiroshi Nagai, of vaporwave fame – check out this article discussing his work for more insights and art.

John Berkey's 1983 cover art for The White Plague, by Frank Herbert, makes for a funky desktop background.

Here's a classic: NASA art by Don Davis, depicting a Stanford Torus.

Here's a kinda low res version of the Windows 95 “Mystery” desktop wallpaper, courtesy of tumblr user commodorez.

Here's a great Bruce Pennington desktop.

Bruce Pennington's 1972 cover art for A. E. van Vogt's Quest for the Future makes a great smartphone lockscreen – thanks to Retroscifiart for posting this one.

Pennington's 1975 cover for Black Legion of Callisto by Lin Carter is also a solid pick. Honestly, if you Google Bruce Pennington's name, you can probably find several dozen more great background; he's that good.

This untitled John Harris has actually been my phone background for a little while now – it's a good mostly-black-and-white option for the minimalist sci-fi fan.

This one isn't actually art: It's a false-color picture of Saturn's northern hemisphere, taken by the Voyager 2 space probe in 1981.

This illustration, by Ichiro Tsuruta and appearing in JCA Annual 8 in 1989, is another solid phone background.

Here's Ludwig Schwarzer's Der Planet, 1977.

You can check out a ton of Ralph McQuarrie Star Wars phone wallpapers over here... here's one example:

Finally, here's a great computer-themed Moebius illustration, used for a 1983 magazine article about the "Alice" word processor.

Next time: 2025