In retrospect, I now realize that I had to look at (or pretty much through) a number of covers that told us the future would be gaunt, misshapen, and just plain ugly. A few years ago I joined the Vintage Paperback mailing list, which sends us a picture of an old book every day, and I realized that the ugly-sci-fi covers were done by a man named Richard Powers (with perhaps a few by artists trying to imitate him).
Once again I am in the minority. He was the Discorporate Artist GoH at World Fantasy Con, where they had a video display of one of his covers after another (from which I learned that he didn’t have to draw like that), and now I learn that he has been inducted into the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame.
Thanx to Tor.com.
