Even if the name Jim Burns doesn’t immediately ring any
bells, odds are that, as an avid consumer of science fiction over the previous
decades, you’ve encountered more of his art than you know. He has worked on
movies, games, and books for longer than many of us have been alive, and his
shelves at home are speckled with trophies that include multiple Hugo Awards
and numerous British Science Fiction Awards, among others. His gorgeous new
book, The Art of Jim Burns: Hyperluminal is scheduled to hit
bookstores (both brick and mortar as well as digital) at the end of this month
and collects may of his paintings and covers, both that you’ve seen and that
you haven’t.
Burns is probably most known for his concept work on Ridley
Scott’s Blade Runner. He’s largely responsible for the look
of the flying cars that, while modern, still maintain some classic lines. (In
addition to that, he also did some work for Scott on his adaptation of Frank
Herbert’s Dune, a film that, sadly, never came to fruition.)
As author Joe Haldeman (The Forever War) says in his
introduction, while Burns has all the technical bells and whistles—clean lines,
good composition, unique color work—it’s this ability to take everyday objects
and give them a “science fictionalization,” to take the mundane and make it
something fantastic and otherworldly, many infused with a sense of eroticism
and sensuality.
The writers he has worked with over the years reads like
who’s who of modern sci-fi luminaries. This is a list that includes, but is not
limited to, Greg Bear, Neil Gaiman, Peter F. Hamilton, Timothy Zahn, Orson
Scott Card, Terry Pratchett, and Anne McCaffrey. There are way too many to list
here. I told you that you were more than likely familiar with his work, at
least in a passing, cursory way.
The pieces in Hyperluminal cut across the
spectrum of his work. There are book covers, of course, that’s the world where
he is most widely recognized, as well as concept art and works that are part of
his own private collection. Burns doesn’t just do work in the realms where he
is most celebrated, but he has a large number of standalone pieces that are
just scenarios his own vivid imagination developed without any outside push or
instruction.
Woven throughout the slick, brilliant reproductions of his
paintings, Burns himself provides something of a guided tour of the work
contained within the cover. You get the various nuts and bolts, but it also
offers a glimpse into the process that goes into things like sci-fi book covers.
For instance, you learn how he came to work with a particular writer, what they
wanted out of his work, how they went back and forth, and show off the finished
product. This is the kind of vantage point that you don’t often run across, but
is also one that Burns is qualified like few others to unveil.
The latter portion of the book, probably the final quarter
or so, does trade in the sci-fi trappings in favor of a more fantasy bent.
While the quality of the art remains consistent, on a personal level, I’m
simply not as much of a fan of fairies and orcs and shit like that. Here the
suggestive and sexually charged elements are on full display, there are lots of
busty elfin women in revealing tops.
In the final section of the book, called “Encounters with
Otherness,” Burns digs into his evolving fascinations and styles. As he ages,
he says his work tends to inhabit a new “dark place of the soul,” looking for
new avenues and areas to explore with his work. This segment has more macabre,
surreal vibe, like a field of human bones surrounding a cathedral, and pieces
that combine elements of various mythologies from around the world.
If any of this sounds interesting, The Art of Jim
Burns: Hyperluminal is well worth taking a look at. It’s yet another
visually stunning, well put together offering from Titan Books, one that offers
a new, different perspective on the a piece of the science fiction genre that,
while we all recognize is important, too often goes overlooked by more general
audiences.
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