thumb|Chris Foss at the 2014 edition of the [[Utopiales in Nantes]]

Christopher Frank Foss (born 1946) is a British artist and science fiction illustrator. He is best known for his science fiction book covers and the black and white illustrations for the original editions of The Joy of Sex.

Career

Early work

Born in 1946 in Guernsey, Channel Islands, He went to a boarding school in Dorset; his master encouraged him to train for an art scholarship. While studying at Magdalene College, Cambridge, he started pursuing professional magazine commissions, including the then recently launched Penthouse magazine.

Foss designed the craft for the a Alejandro Jodorowsky's intended film version of the science fiction novel Dune by author Frank Herbert. Foss delivered several conceptual studies published in the book 21st Century Foss, containing a foreword by Jodorowsky. The project failed. In 1977 Foss worked for several months on studies for the movie Alien, which were ultimately not used in that film, and also did some designs of the planet Krypton for the movie Superman. Some of his crystal structures for the planet were realised in the movie, although they were used as ice-structures.

During this period Chris Foss illustrated the sleeve of the album Clear Air Turbulence for the Ian Gillan Band.

Painter Glenn Brown controversially appropriated individual space scene paintings by Foss and in the one case copying and altering it (Exercise One (for Ian Curtis), 1995) and in the other, leaving it entirely unchanged (Dark Angel (for Ian Curtis), 2002).

Chris Foss created much of the colour concept art for Sweetpea Entertainment's Traveller franchise, as produced by Imperium Games. He produced 12 pages of artwork for the new Traveller edition's first supplement, Starships (1996).

Bibliography

  • Foss, Chris. 21st Century Foss. Dragon's Dream, 1978. .
  • Foss, Chris. Hardware: The Definitive SF Works of Chris Foss. Titan Publishing, 2011.

References

  • Chris Foss's Official site
  • A gallery of Foss's French books covers
  • About Chris Foss in French
  • New Scientist interview with Chris Foss