Third Eyes

The concept of the third eye was heavily covered in non-fiction volumes of 1970s-era mystism, which had a lot of great cover art. Here, though, I'm going to try to stick to a more literal interpretation of a third eye: Images of beings with a total of at least three eyeballs.

Here's a classic example by Sergio Macedo.

How much like the other two eyes should the third eye look like? It's tough to make it fit in, so some artists wisely chose to lean the other direction and highlight just how much it stands out from the rest of the face. Here's a 1966 Frank Kelly Freas cover for Roger Zelazny's The Dream Master.

Try to make it fit in, and you'll need to walk a tightrope of not making the third eye look too much like a right eye or too much like a left one.

Karl Stephan’s 1975 cover art for a German edition of David Lindsay’s A Voyage to Arcturus kinda pulls it off. He doesn't even try to include the third eyebrow.

The third eye in Chet Jezierski’s 1976 cover art to The Best of John W. Campbell looks a little like a right eye to me, but maybe it's just looking toward the left.

Angus McKie gives Isaac Asimov a third eye here.

Minimalist approaches work well, like the glowing shapes on this surreal face by Brendan McCarthy.

When it doubt, just don't make the third eye a very big part of the scene, so no one can critique it, as in Tim Gaydos' 1985 cover for David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus.

Psyche! Sorry, Tim, we're all taking a real close look at those eyes.

Even more alien creatures offer a little more leeway for designing a new biological landscape that can accomodate a third eye. Here's Joe Barney's May 1980 cover for Ares #2.

Here's Darrell K. Sweet's 1977 cover to The Rolling Stones, by Robert A. Heinlein.

If, like me, you immediately thought "I didn't know Tribbles had three eyes," you might enjoy checking out the novel's Wikipedia page, half of which is dedicated to explaining the differences between Tribbles and the aliens depicated here, "flat cats."

Basically, the Heinlein story is from 1952, fifteen years before the Star Trek episode aired, and the similarities were so noteworthy that the Trek producers got Heinlein to sign a waiver before it aired.

As for Tribble anatomy, I'm happy to report that this canonical diagram from Keiko's schoolroom doesn't include any eyes – though it does confirm that Tribbles have cloacas and enormous uteruses.

I guess this one by Giuseppe Festino counts!

It reminds me of this surrealist alien by Jan Parker, a 1971 cover to Robert A. Heinlein's Star Beast.

I haven't read Samuel R. Delany's debut 1962 novel The Jewels of Aptor, but enough cover artists have depicted a giant statue of a figure with three eyes that I have to assume it's a prominent part of the book. Here's Peter Elson's 1977 cover, followed by an uncredited 1982 cover.

Famed mid-century poster artist Reynold Brown has a great third-eye statue here, too.

Here's a Playboy magazine illustration by Don Ivan Punchatz with some upsettingly placed plyers.

That's it for three-eyed figures, but I'll give an honorable mention to the four-eyed dude on this uncredited 1979 cover art to Eye Among the Blind, by Robert P. Holdstock.

How many eyes can we add? Here's a creepy one with six eyes, by Olof Möller.

12 eyes is probably enough, so let's end on this 1977 Bob Pepper cover for Philip K Dick's A Scanner Darkly.

Want to keep going? I covered the general topic of eyes way back in 2020, so check out that link if you want more. Also, take a look at this long-abandoned Tumblr from 2013, featuring an impressive collection of illustrations of right eyes.

Cool Links

No links this week! I guess I've been too busy. I have been reading a book, though: The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova. Highly recommended if you like archival research, travelogues, and omniscient immortal ever-grasping claws of Vlad Tepes the Impaler.

Wait, actually, I do have one link: The first issue of the Starlog magazine reboot is available for pre-order! I don't usually get magazines, but I really want to see this one, so my order is already in.

If you decide to buy one too, do me a favor: See if there's a way to mention 70s Sci-Fi Art in the little "where did you hear about us?" survey they give you after you order. I'd love to get on their radar a little... I may try to pitch them some artist profiles down the road.

Music Rec: Sorry in advance, but Auralnauts: Wild Wild West x Ghostbusters

Next Time: Paying subscribers get a look at a collection of images that probably won't make it into my next art collection, along with the potential replacements that might. This one's a fun one! Sign up for paid over here.