Lee Moyer -- Not Your Father's Future

I've been working in and around the science fiction and fantasy community for two decades now. In that time I have seen many surprising developments, but feel that the artists in the field have not always acquitted themselves with honor in the face of these seismic shifts. . . . As SF has come out of its ghetto and been embraced as mainstream, the artists and publishers have too often resisted understanding and embracing those changes. I love the brittle pages of the old pulps; the weird abstract '70s covers and camaraderie of the freelance world; the classic art of Roy Krenkle, Kelly Freas, and Frank Frazetta. But they lived in a different time and worked in a very different environment.

We live in the 21st century, and it's time that we made that plain. Let's use the media available to us. Let's learn from the lessons of the past -- remembering the ludicrous days when acrylic paint was "risky", the airbrush was scoffed at as an "illegitimate" tool, and covers couldn't be green(!), at the time when heroic white men and wilting white women were all that mattered.

We see scantily clad people in the media every day now, not just in National Geographic and pulp magazines. So let's make the character of our figures (not just their titillating state of undress) matter. We live in the greatest age of cinematography in history, so let's make the light and shadows jump. The dominant color of America is no longer white, so let's make the colors all count. I feel science fiction is about the contrast between the exotic and the mundane, but that breaks down if the artist is not in touch with what is still considered exotic, or what values the everyday world holds for us. This should always be about more than money.

Thanks for dropping by to look in my little windows.

You can see more of Lee's images at www.leemoyer.com