(1958- ) US illustrator whose successful Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials (graph 1979), in collaboration with Ian Summers and Beth Meacham (who wrote the text), was published when he was 21, only two years after he had made his first sale, a cover for Cosmos. The book featured Barlowe's excellent paintings of many of sf's best-known Aliens. The son of natural-history artists Sy and Dorothea Barlowe, he has a talent for creating believable surface textures, important in creating aliens – his attention to detail is reminiscent of N C Wyeth and Howard Pyle. He works in acrylics and has done, in addition to book covers, covers for magazines including Astounding and Asimov's, to whose ex-editor, Shawna McCarthy, he is married. Expedition: Being an Account in Words and Artwork of the 2358 A.D. Voyage to Darwin IV (graph 1990), written and illustrated by Barlowe, is an interesting work of speculative Xenobiology, illustrating and describing the physiology of lifeforms on an imaginary planet. The Alien Life of Wayne Barlowe (graph 1995) has something of the air of a career retrospective; his later books incline increasingly towards fantasy, and God's Demon (2007) is a fantasy novel. Barlowe has also done film-related work including the early Tie Star Wars: A Pop-Up Book (1978), Monster/character design for {GALAXY QUEST} (1999), {TITAN A.E.} (2000), Avatar (2009), and others, and concept art/visual design for some of the Harry Potter movies, the two Hellboy movies, and others. [JG/PN/DRL/JGr]
Wayne Douglas Barlowe
born Glen Cove, New York: 6 January 1958
died
works
- Star Wars: A Pop-Up Book
(New York: Random House, 1978) [graph: hb/] - Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials (New York: Workman Publishing, 1979) with Ian Summers and Beth Meacham [graph: hb/Wayne Douglas Barlowe]
- Expedition: Being an Account in Words and Artwork of the 2358 A.D. Voyage to Darwin IV (New York: Workman Publishing, 1990) [graph: hb/Wayne Douglas Barlowe]
- The Alien Life of Wayne Barlowe (Beverly Hills, California: Morpheus International, 1995) [graph: hb/Wayne Douglas Barlowe]
- An Alphabet Of Dinosaurs (New York: Scholastic, 1995) with text by Dr Peter Dodson [chap: hb/Wayne Douglas Barlowe]
- Barlowe's Guide to Fantasy (New York: HarperPrism, 1996) [graph: hb/Wayne Douglas Barlowe]
- Barlowe's Inferno (Beverly Hills, California: Morpheus International, 1998) [graph: hb/Wayne Douglas Barlowe]
- Brushfire: Illuminations from the Inferno (Beverly Hills, California: Morpheus International, 2001) [graph: pb/Wayne Douglas Barlowe]
- God's Demon (New York: Tor, 2007) [hb/Wayne Douglas Barlowe]
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