Odds and Ends

All right, I've done a whole year of science fiction art themed roundups. I've earned a weird collection of all the irregular stuff that doesn't fit into a theme. Enjoy.

Sometimes, the very act of posting a collection of sci-fi art centered on some odd theme will surface a work of art that should have been included, but I wasn't aware it existed until it was too late.

For example, here's one by Pat Rawlings that would have been perfect for my Coffee and Tea newsletter. Thanks to rsuter on bluesky for this one.

David Martin's April 1983 cover for The Space Gamer #62 would have been a fit for my Bug Aliens in Love post. According to the Old School FRP Tumblr post I got it from, the title of the piece is "Your Fly is Open," which is just an incredible pun.

Artist and designer John Coulthart let me know about this 1980 Chris Achilleos cover for A Storm of Wings, by M. John Harrison, after my post on Giant Bees and Wasps so I actually edited that post to include it, but it would have worked in my Bug Aliens in Love round-up as well.

One commenter mentioned the absence of Chris Foss's 1991 poster "Night Banker" in my roundup of train art, which is a good point. Clearly I forgot about it since I mentioned it in my Chris Foss bio for Popular Mechanics back in 2016!

John Berkey also has this great future train artwork as well, done for Amtrak - thanks to rsuter on bluesky for pointing me to it.

That's all I have for now, but feel free to drop me a comment or an email if you think of a great artwork that I've missed in the past, and maybe I'll do another roundup like this one.

I've got a bunch of other interesting things I found online recently that I think my readers might enjoy.

First up is this Twitter poster who is constantly posting a firehose of rare and obscure Star Wars art and fun facts. For example, here's four uncredited snapshots collected under the caption "I love it whenever they have Easter eggs in Star Wars where it’s a Battle Droid doing normal stuff"

There's also a post about the odd designs of collectable Episode 1 aliens, a Star Wars ad featuring a Taco Bell/KFC/Pizza Hut collab, a photoshop of the Rizzler as Yoda - truly everything you could want.

Over on bluesky, a nautical history shitposter made some fun Chris Foss ship comparisons, constrasting the way that Foss paints bizarre stripes and checkers on spaceships against the "dazzle" designs on real-life ships.

I stumbled on a forum thread a while back where fans of the Traveller RPG reconstructed this version of the 1982 game supplement The Traveller Book and made it a free download so everyone can have old-school dust jackets.

RIP to Robert McGinnis, famed paperback illustrator. Here's his Variety obit and a blog post celebrating his work from a few years ago.

He's best known for his James Bond posters, but his paperbacks and magazine illustrations are really stunning. Here are a couple good ones.

Here's a link to 50 of 1994's most delightfully tacky posters, courtesy of a Fotographica catalog.

My favorite is the dinosaurs in a space waterfall. But the companion piece featuring dolphins is great, too. And then you really want to round it out with an eagle in space, as well. And that car in a lightning storm is pretty sick...

Music Rec: Over 4 hours of Habibi Funk - "Funk from Morocco, soukouss from Algeria, deep oriental jazz from Egypt, AOR yacht pop from Lebanon, straight up disco from Tunisia, Sudanese garage and a lot more."

Next Time: Jean-Léon Huens