Chris Foss

Long before director James Gunn needed someone to make the spaceships of Guardians of the Galaxy look like they flew out of the 1970s, Chris Foss was painting a different kind of picture. While an architecture student at Cambridge University during the 1960s, Foss was hired by Bob Guccione, publisher of adult magazine Penthouse, to draw … well, you know.

Foss's reputation in erotic art grew thanks to his 1971 interior line-art illustrations for The Joy of Sex. But Guccione's love of sci-fi (he would go on to publish the legendary science-and-sci-fi magazine OMNI) soon set Foss on a new career path into the future.

Foss would become a legendary sci-fi artist, moving quickly to British book covers. One of his first was an alien rover for a 1971 edition of Arthur C. Clarke's Earthlight. Since then he has contributed U.K. paperback covers for U.S. classics including Asimov's Foundation series and E. E. Smith's Lensman series, as well as books by authors like Philip K. Dick, A. E. van Vogt, and James Blish.

Any hardcore sci-fi fan might recognize a Foss painting when they see it, even if they don't know who Foss is. His attention to architectural detail and vibrant patterns create a structured but eye-catching urban atmosphere. When Gunn needed just the right look for the spaceships and eerie yellow vats of spinal fluid in Guardians, he knew there was just one illustrator who could deliver the strikingly colorful retrofuturistic designs he wanted.

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"As Unreal as His Spaceships"

In his heyday of making sci-fi book covers, Foss at one point averaged three per week. He laid down his designs in airbrush, the medium his name is now synonymous with, in part because it's a tool that worked whether he was drawing nudes or spaceships.

Over the course of more than 1,000 covers, the Foss future gradually gained recognizable themes regardless of whose book they adorned. Massive tanks and robots commonly scavenged through decaying piles of machinery on brutalist alien planets. Bulbous, colorful starships floated through the hyper-industrialized society of Foss's imagination. A scene might feature a high-tech Atlantis or reveal the alien origins of Easter Island statues, but some form of well-worn, battle-scarred hardware was omnipresent. His signature, a capital F encapsulated in a shapeless figure, was always nestled around the bottom.

This mechanized dystopia was inspired by Foss's childhood experiences in the 1950s on Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands found in the English Channel. He could "crawl all over army lorries and large artillery pieces" left over from the war, he would later say. The chugging engines and weathered metal of Guernsey's marine and mining industries would become the aesthetic of futuristic spacecraft. The "obvious beating heart" of a steam train wormed its way into images like a shot of towering vehicles crawling through a wasteland or, more literally, in the streamlined green train that appeared on his 1991 poster Night Banker.

Eventually, Foss concepts became such a part of the look of sci-fi that his designs leapt off the book cover to grace a surprising number of fan-favorite sci-fi films, including Superman, Alien, Flash Gordon, A.I., as well as the best Dune adaptation that never happened—a mid-'70s effort headlined by director Alejandro Jodorowsky. Foss visualized Dune's vehicles and landmarks, from the gold-caked walls of the Emperor's palace to a quirky car driven by Leto. One artwork depicts a bulky pirate ship lifeless in outer space as its cargo of spice swirls out into a vacuum.

"Chris Foss was a true angel, a being as real and as unreal as his spaceships," Jodorowsky would go on to say.

The Return of 70s Rocketships

Before the late 1960s and early 70s, the time when Foss came to the fore, British science-fiction novels were framed in half-hearted abstract swirls or perhaps the minimalistic outline of a rocket. But it didn't take long for his style of far-out spaceships and aliens to take over the look of science-fiction book (and prog-rock album) covers. A Foss cover in particular was a hot commodity.

To hear Foss tell it, he was responsible for the shift himself: "Suddenly, I revolutionized book covers," he stated in one interview. A more egalitarian way to put it would be to say that Foss led an unstoppable movement: the "Young Artists," a group of British sci-fi illustrators that included greats like John Harris, Jim Burns, Chris Moore, and Peter Elson, renowned for their innovative cover art throughout the 70s and 80s. Regardless, Foss stands out as one of the most prolific and unmistakable sci-fi illustrators of that period.

Tastes change, of course, and as that look gave way to the digitally inspired art of 90s covers, Foss's halcyon decades became known as retrofuture sci-fi art, and Foss became the figurehead of the field. And when awesome 70s rocketships came back around again, James Gunn turned to Foss to help him illustrate the retro sensibilities so clear in Guardians of the Galaxy's memorable soundtrack and pop culture references. Foss artworks were "a part of my original presentation to Marvel when I pitched myself as director and I explained the visual direction I was going to take with the film," James Gunn once said in a Facebook post. "They were immediately on board, and we ended up hiring Chris Foss to help design some of the spaceships in the film. He was, of everyone, my biggest visual inspiration on Guardians."

In addition to inspiring Guardians' vibrant color schemes, Foss contributed concept art for spaceships. While his exact work hasn't been identified, his influences are obvious in Quill's compact orange-and-blue spaceship or the Nova Corps' fleet of angular, skiff-like starships. The shapes and grubby textures are carbon copies of Foss's past portfolio.

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Although Foss largely stopped producing cover art in the 21st century, he hasn't retired, having published a 2011 art collection in addition to his conceptual consulting for Marvel. The blockbuster success of Guardians took its fans on a vintage voyage to the gritty, mechanical look of sci-fi that Foss helped to invent decades ago. The hype for its 2017 sequel may cement his spacefaring retro-future designs in the public imagination.

Adam Rowe is the proprietor of the 70sscifiart Twitter and Tumblr. You can buy these prints at ChrisFossArt.com

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