The Art of John Harris: Beyond the Horizon Hardcover – May 27, 2014

John Harris and his iconic paintings have been a part of the science fiction community for nearly four decades. He brings an impressionistic sensibility to his bold, massive space landscapes that make each piece stand out as a distinct work of art. Generations of readers have discovered his work because of the science fiction novels graced with his creations. Harris continues to be a prolific creator whose work resides on the covers of some of the biggest names in SF literature. This new retrospective is a welcome body of work and should be added to your collection the moment it is released.John Scalzi provides the foreword to this collection of art, which is fitting given the volume of work Harris has created for John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War series over the past decade, including 13 original works to go along with each chapter, released weekly in 2013, for The Human Division.In it, Scalzi touches on the inspirational power of works of art, giving the example of how John Harris’ painting chosen for the cover of The Ghost Brigade, stirred his imagination at a time when he had hit a roadblock in the execution of that very novel.John Scalzi states, “John’s artwork, like that of Richard Powers or Frank Kelly Freas, is iconic, and also Bookstore Iconic–which is to say you can see it from across a bookstore, and when you see it, you know what you’re going to get in the pages of that book: A damn fine read that takes you places you can’t go any other way.”.I find that an apt description because, unlike some cover artists, John Harris is not creating a painting to illustrate specific scenes in a novel but is instead creating a work whose scope and scale evokes some sense of expectation and emotion. His paintings inspire daydreaming about the places they depict.The title of John Harris’ first art book is Mass, and it is a fitting title given that so much his work centers on great hulking ships, buildings, and planets and how these massive elements exist in relation to one another. In this new collection, Harris talks about how scientific concepts of mass and gravity and spatial relationships are important to him in his work and yet he will at times bend, or violate, those concepts in one way in order to promote them in another.The Art of John Harris: Beyond the Horizon covers some thirty-five plus years of his career and showcases not only paintings used as cover images for a variety of science fiction novels, but also works he has created over the years for an ongoing story in images that he regularly adds to, as well as paintings inspired by NASA images of Earth from space and other non-book-related works.While the look Harris achieves is accurately defined as “iconic”, this book shows the full range of his work, including some of the early roughs and pastel sketches that provide the foundation for his finished paintings. This glimpse at the process is insightful, especially as those roughs are also small works of art in and of themselves.I became aware of the work of John Harris at an early age and have been a fan from the first time I laid eyes on one of his book covers. His work for authors like Ben Bova, Orson Scott Card, John Scalzi and Jack McDevitt cover many years of creative effort and he continues to provide cover work for these authors today. I personally value cover art consistency across book series and I give kudos to the book companies and their creative directors who continue to employ John Harris to create beautiful art.When I think back to what attracted me to science fiction as a child, and what continues to spark my interest today, it is the sheer enormity and vastness of space. Our solar system is enormous, and that is but a speck of dust in comparison to the greater universe. John Harris captures that sense of the awesomeness of space and does so with rich, sometimes strikingly colorful images. Titan Books has created a wonderful tribute to John Harris’ career to date; it is a lovely volume worth adding to any collection of art books. The release of the book is timely given that John Harris is on the shortlist for Best Professional Artist at this year’s Hugo Awards in London. The May 27th release provides a gorgeous visual reminder of his talent and several of his eligible works from last year are included in this volume. As John Harris has strongly influenced my imagination over the years, I am pleased to see his work presented in a high quality volume at a price that everyone can enjoy.

I am not an artist. I’m an English teacher, and I love science fiction, and I love the art of John Harris - I could stare at his paintings for hours.Imagine my delight then, when last fall, my students and I were given the opportunity to interview John Harris about his career as a science fiction artist. For an hour we picked his brain about his upbringing, his inspiration, his techniques, and his relationships with publishers and writers. Harris told us about growing up in an English countryside littered with the rotting and rusting artifacts of World War II; he told us about how he draws on nature to create images; and he talked at length with us about two pieces in particular, Quiet Night and Cleaning the Ducts (both of which receive full spreads in this book). The conversation was fascinating and insightful, and, of course, left us all wanting more. Would you like more? Then I give you The Art of John Harris: Beyond the Horizon.While it’s true that a lot of Harris’s artwork can be seen on the internet, or indeed by walking up and down the SF/F aisles at Barnes and Noble, this beautiful and sturdy book provides a wealth of both his most popular artwork, and paintings that I have never seen before. In addition to the finished paintings, Harris has also included numerous pastels and sketches. These were my favorites, as, to my brain, the small colored sketches crackle with life and energy.But what this book provides, most importantly, is context. Harris explains over several pages that much of the work in this book is of a single world and culture, created in his head, just so he could paint it. As he explains, he imagines himself on a donkey, traveling into a world that humans have not seen before, and, rather than having the luxury of something as mundane as a camera, he paints what he sees as though he were going to return to humanity to show us for the first time exotic peoples, locations, architecture, cultures, and myths that inhabit the dark ares on the map. I’m having a hard time doing this concept justice - it seems corny when I read my explanation, but trust me, the depth of knowledge that Harris has created to pull from rivals the imagination of any science fiction writer.Almost every reader of science fiction knows Harris’s art and style, but, tragically, few readers know his name. Hopefully, this book will start to change that.The Art of John Harris: Beyond the Horizon is 150 pages of stunning paintings, sketches, and reflections pulled from over 40 years of work. Each vision that comes from the brain of John Harris is a masterpiece, and each image in this book personifies the awe, the grandeur and the mystery that made us all fall in love with science fiction in the first place.