Search SFE    Search EoF

  Omit cross-reference entries  

Weaver, Richard

Entry updated 12 February 2024. Tagged: Artist.

Icon made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

pic

(1936-    ) UK artist and graphic designer who studied at the Royal College of Arts in the 1950s, worked for various design agencies, and set up his own Richard Weaver (Designs) Ltd in 1975. He created numerous covers for sf books issued by the British publisher Dennis Dobson from 1965 to 1980, and apparently did no other genre work. His covers sometimes seem minimalist, products more of graphic design – such as collaged clip-art – than of studio art, though others are more conventionally pictorial.

Many of his covers may strike readers as odd, incongruous, or hurriedly executed, but a few have a genuine impact; one might consider, among other examples, his cover for a 1967 edition of Jack Vance's The Killing Machine (1964), showing a segmented blue-and-red insect, with human faces in its eyes, advancing toward the observer (this is of course the human-carrying Machine of the title, designed to induce terror); his cover for a 1969 edition of Poul Anderson's The Makeshift Rocket (November-December 1958 Astounding as "A Bicycle Built for Brew"; 1962), wherein a man's head ascends within a bottle issuing exhaust while observed by elderly scientists; his cover for a 1976 edition of R A Lafferty's Space Chantey (1968 dos), depicting a knight in armour riding an enormous insect through space; or his cover for Jack Vance's The Moon Moth, and Other Stories (coll 1976), an apparent collage showing a standing man whose face is hidden by a giant moth's head that represents the eponymous mask of the title story.

After retiring from book design, Weaver took up oil painting with such non-sf subjects as UK coastlines and historic ships. Republication of selected Weaver covers might spark greater interest in his work. [GW/DRL]

Richard Weaver

born London: 25 December 1936

links

previous versions of this entry



x
This website uses cookies.  More information here. Accept Cookies