Two by Barlowe

This year I read two books by illustrator Wayne Douglas Barlowe. The first was The Alien Life of Wayne Barlowe (Morpheus International, 1995), and the second was Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials (Workman Publishing, 1987).

Do you really "read" art books? Or do you admire the paintings? Well for these, you get to do both, as Barlowe provides a fair bit of text along with the illustrations.

The Guide was the better of the two for me. He illustrates a number of famous aliens from classic works of science fiction (ranging from Hal Clement to Gordon R. Dickson to Poul Anderson to Donald Moffitt and beyond).

If I were to complain about the illustrations, it would be that I would have liked to have seen paintings with the aliens in their "natural" settings. What we've got are a series of formal or semi-formal portraits. They are accurate, to my eye, and Barlowe knows his biology so the aliens "work" as well. Cool stuff.

Alien Life was a mixed bag. There are illustrations from the Guide, illustrations from a work about Hell (I'll have to see if that one is out), illustrations from an (so far) unpublished novel (which reminds me of the works of Jack Vance) and more. It's a lovely collection and between the two, I'll be on the lookout for more by Barlowe.