Sea Monsters
I've talked before about the genre debt that science fiction owes to adventure fiction, and the sea is a big example. It's the "outer space" from before outer space became outer space: Unknowable, endless, and inhospitable enough to kill you fast if you don't have the special suits and ships needed to make your way from port to plane– sorry, port.
The parallels become truly undeniable once you start to example the connections that are true in fiction only, and not in real life. I can think of two big ones.
First, plenty of sci-fi stories like Alien or The Expanse feature blue collar workers risking brutal travel conditions to earn a living. That's been true for sailors for millennia. Real-life space travel, however, hasn't paid off the benefit-cost ratio needed to justify anything close to the same trade routes.
The second one: Monsters. Is there any living creature that can rival the giant squid for awe-inspiring monsterousness, let alone anything we've been able to turn up on other planets?
But wait, you might say, it's perfectly possible that we'll find aliens one day. I don't disagree at all! It's a big universe. All I'm saying is that our current model for alien encounters of the future has evolved out of the tentacles and blow holes of the real-life sea monster encounters of the past.
History lessons aside, speculative fiction artists loved sea monsters. Here's a collection of some of my favorites.
First, here's Peter Elson's 1979 cover to The Swords of Lankhmar, by Fritz Leiber. I love the red cloaked figure riding on the creature's neck here.
Let's check out a few sea monsters from two of the greats: Frank Frazetta and Jean "Moebius" Giraud.
Moebius also did the concepts for the alien creature in James Cameron's underwater sci-fi classic The Abyss:
Boris Vallejo's August 1971 cover to Nightmare magazine includes an upsetting dinosaur-inspired monster.
Jeffrey Catherine Jones' 1973 cover to Moorcock's The Stealer of Souls and Other Stories.
Although I prefer Jones' earlier 1968 sea monster cover, for The Swords of Lankhmar:
Mieczyslaw Wasilewski's poster design for Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster, 1978.
I'm a sucker for a massive block of bright red color, so I love Gary Viskupic's 1970 cover art for A. E. van Vogt's Quest for the Future. This one made it into my 2023 art collection, Worlds Beyond Time.
Interestingly enough, John Schoenherr also did a 1970 cover to the same title, and he even featured the exact same scene.
Vicente Segrelles picked a great moment to illustrate here – I have to assume this is a reference to the famous Jaws poster art.
Some flashy and very cool composition on Philippe Druillet's cover art for the June 1970 issue of the French SF magazine Galaxie
I guess Frank Frazetta liked to stick with the same sea monster design: Here's a 1972 illustration that has a wide-mouthed humanoid monster that looks about the same as the one I featured earlier in this post.
I couldn't find the artist behind this 1984 cover to The Hamlyn Book of Mysteries with a quick search, but I love the collection of disparate concepts. Many have combined a UFO with a sea monster, but few think to add a skeleton with treasure into the mix.
Ron Walotsky has a unique dinosaur monster here, with what seems to be a time machine.
Another example of the dinosaur-like qualities that sea monsters often borrow: Bob Eggleton's "Patagonian Sea Monster," 1998.
Wayne Barlowe has some amazing underwater alien biology designs, naturally. Here's "Marine Xenomorph."
All right, I'll wrap it up here – if you want more, I did an entire post about fish-people last year that was pretty popular. I'm sure I'll return to the subject again, too: I can't overstate the wealth of options to choose from on the topic.
Cool Links
Art from the 'Jack Kirby: Heroes and Humanity' Exhibition - Secret Oranges
This Jack Kirby art exhibition is over, but you can still check out a lot of very cool high-res scans over here.
Comics and Graphic Novels I've Enjoyed Recently - me
I added a few more titles to my Bookshop.org list of cool graphic novels. I've been reading a handful of indie adventure comic miniseries, and honestly, many of them are kinda forgettable!
Two that rose above the pack were Spy Island by Chelsea Cain, a goofy spy conspiracy pastiche set in the Bermuda Triangle, and Head Lopper, a colorful sword-and-sorcery about a big warrior who carries around a bickering witch's head.
Music rec: Enigma - Greatest Hits. I'm sorry to say I was unfamilar with this '90s German new-age band until just recently, but they rock.
Next Time: Space Trash and Future Junkyards