Frank Kelly Freas As He Sees It

With 10 Hugos as Best Professional Artist and countless other awards, Kelly Freas is the most popular and prolific science fiction artist today. His gritty, realistic work in the 1950s set a new agenda for magazine and book covers–which artists follow still. But, his painting also can reveal a relaxed humor, with their cheeky scoundrels and personable aliens. More than 24 publications featured his work, including Analog, Astounding Science Fiction, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. He’s illustrated stories by some of the greatest sci-fi writers–Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, e.g.–as well as record and CD art. He also did the original, definitive 3-D bust of Alfred E. Neumann, Mad magazine’s gap-toothed mascot. A new volume of Freas’s art is always something to celebrate, and this one, containing the all the best of his work from 1984 to the present, is no exception.