Book Description: In his classic Guide to Extraterrestials, Wayne Douglas Barlowe brought us science fiction's greatest aliens. Now he does the same for the bizarre and beautiful beings of a thousand years of fantasy and horror.
Here is the Unicorn, still shimmering from the imagination of The Last Unicorn author Peter S. Beagle. Here in all its disgusting glory lurks H. P. Lovecraft's Gug, along with Robert Jordan's Trolloc. Here you will meet Marion Zimmer Bradley's Morgaine from The Mists of Avalon, Conan-creator Robert E. Howard's Bran Mak Morn, Clive Barker's Gek AGek, Drool Rockworm from Stephen R. Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, and many wondrous more.
Fifty fantastic creatures in all. Awesome, incredible, startling, disturbing, these creatures are all rendered with exquisite accuracy and excruciating detail. Barlowe's Guide to Fantasy is the essential companion for anyone who has ever been thrilled by the terrifying and wonderful creatures found in fantastic literature, and wished to see them brought to life by a modern master.
A Primer for the Serious sf art fan Wayne Barlowe kicks butt, plain and simple. In this book, he takes a wide variety of classic and sometimes overlooked aliens and nearly allows them to walk off the edge of his pages (for an especially creepy example, check out The Ting from John W. Campbell's "Who Goes There?"-- not exactly like either James Arness' or John Carpenter's versions, but possibly more disturbing for its faithfulness to the original). The accompanying text for each subject describes planet of origin, habits, culture (if any), biology, etc. Since Barlowe is obviously a fan, he avoids the dry, dusty words of the average ordinary critic, making the aliens more solid than mere paint can do alone. Another benefit of the book is its inclusion of authors and book/story titles, which allow the reader to hunt down and capture the books for further reading (some are, alas, out of print).
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Interesting Intricate, detailed, well-drawn images of various persons and creatures fill the pages of this incredible work. However, the text is rather slim for some of the latter entries, and I must say that I question the artist's choice of subjects - few creatures in here are truly alien, and far too many are simply human! Nevertheless, unlike some of the other artists, Barlowe manages to offer images which do not disrupt our own imagined images of the characters, but merely improve and clarify them.
"The incredible artwork, the detail...the man's a genius." The Guide to Fantasy by Wayne Barlowe is a superb look into the minds of authors and one man's ideas of what the character looks like. Full-color illustrations really capture your eyes. I'm in awe of the man.
Great, but not as great... I anticipated the publishing of this book as I have few others. Any companion volume to Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials would have to be a plus, right? Well, sort of. The selection of characters is very diverse, but the paintings look very rushed, and incomplete in some cases. Furthermore the text is not very descriptive of the characters. It's more like reading a synopsis of the novels than information about that particular entry. Definitely not as inspired as Barlowe's previous work, but it's wonderful, nonetheless. I wish I could give it 9 on a 10 scale.
Fasinating! This is one of the most amazing books I have everread, it introduced me to new titles I've never heard of. I can't wait to see his guide to Extra -terrestrials.
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