The
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artist's personal
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Tiger! Tiger!(From the book "solar Wind volume 2")By :
Deborah Susan Jones :
Editor One of the true
classic stories of the SF genre and it's cover art.Originally
written in 1955, in Tiger, Tiger, later retitled "The
Stars My
Destination" author Alfred Bester's vision of the future
envisages
people Jaunting, or using thought to teleport
themselves, and where the
rich barricade themselves in from the less fortunates
and defend
themselves with radioactive bodyguards.
Reissued
in Penguin Classic Science Fiction in November 1987 with
a cover
illustration by the artist the story largely focuses on
one man's
personal grudge.A
wrecked spaceship.A sole survivor.Gully Foyle. Mechanic's Mate 3rd
Class.Stranded and abandoned in deepest space after
the spaceship he is on board is
attacked, The Vorga, a sister ship, passes by, ignoring
his distress
communications. Vowing revenge after 170 days stranded
alone in deep space, he returns to Earth after refuge on
the Sargasso
Asteroid vowing to hunt down the crew the owners of the
Vorga and
indeed, pretty much everyone and anyone . . . .It
is a deeply complex story, so complex, illustrating the
cover for the
Penguin edition might have proved a significant
challenge had it not
been for the fact that the artist had developed
techniques for cutting
through the wordy jungles of authors and the painting
uses two
juxtaposed key elements from the story to avoid being
dragged into the
complexities of the story.Along
the way, in his various complex relationships,
rivalries, battles and
other involvements Foyle has his face tattooed like a
Tiger. All this
takes place against the backdrop of his abandonment in
space.This
is simplified by being presented as a star system
fashioned to be a
Tiger's face in structure with the spaceship that is
ignoring his
distress calls speeding away towards you, the viewer.The
implication perhaps being that Foyle will be coming
after YOU, aiding
and abetting his abandonment by virtue of your passivity
as a reader?Foyle's
face, fiercely staring at you as you sit, reading,
ignoring his plight,
is impactful, whilst the contrasting element, the
speeding, sleek
spaceship that ignores his distress, streaks towards
you, perhaps
implying that, should you be in some compromised
position while reading
the book, that it will pass you by, and ignore you, just
as it has
passed by and ignored Foyle.As
with so many of the artist's book cover illustrations it
takes totally
obvious and classic science fiction visual elements, in
this cases a
starscape and a spaceship, in themselves predictable
oft-repeated and
therefore somewhat unremarkable in themselves and by
re-engineering
one, the background element, and adding dynamism to the
other, the
foreground element, produces a simple and impactful
image that
encapsulates the basic storyline of the book.Painted
in the artist's inimitable "Acryloil" technique it
combines classic
hard edged science fiction space hardware styling set
against softer
oil painted and airbrushed passages for the starscape.
The Acryloil
technique, allowing as it does the reliable and free
inter-mixture and
interleaving of both oil and water-based paints is ideal
for rendering
the variety of textures needed to present the visual
stotyline here.The signature PAJ style!Deborah Susan Jones
