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Title: Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials/Great Aliens from Science Fiction Literature by Wayne Douglas Barlowe, Ian Summers, Beth Meacham ISBN: 0-89480-324-7 Publisher: Workman Publishing Company Pub. Date: November, 1987 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.76 (17 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A modern classic
Comment: I first read this book when I was 10, and it freaked me out. It was one of the major reasons I began reading science fiction. This book can be reread endlessly without losing an ounce of wonder, for Barlowe's representations of alien anatomy are truly inspired. I constantly recommend this to my friends, and they are never disappointed, even the ones who can't stand sci-fi. Unfortunately, his paintings are much more interesting than some of the books they're taken from.
Rating: 5
Summary: Cool !!!!!!!
Comment: The premise of this book is: The authors have taken various characters from various science fiction works and have visualy recreated them and write about some of their culture from what is in the books. This is one of the best Science Fiction art books I've ever read!!! and if you've read some of the books that these aliens are recreated from it's even better!!!! Colorful pictures, explanations, and even a couple of pages showing the comparative sizes of each of the aliens!!!!
Rating: 3
Summary: Very good, but seems to contain some errors
Comment: I do want to say starting off that (1) I got this because, being a Sci-Fi fan into artsy books, this was a hole in my collection; (2) I have been a fan of Barlowe's art since I found a used-but-impeccable copy of EXPEDITION a few years back; and (3) overall, this book did not dissapoint.
The book seems (at least on the surface) to be a well-researched compendium of aliens renedered in paint fit to augment the fertile imaginations of readers everywhere. The aliens are mainly from books and short stories that I'm not familiar with (not surprising since this was published originally when I was aproximately 5 years old), but there is enough info about them included to make it not just pictures of things I don't know what they are.
I personally felt that the best part was the sketchbook drawings in the back. I would adore to see the Thype project finally completed. And I think that some of the sketches of the aliens are superior to the finished paintings, an opinion that I realize many readers may not share.
But my big beef with the book is based on the Guild Steersman. If you read the Dune books with any care you can figure out that steersmen are mutated humans. They are not at all in this book like they are portrayed in the novels and some of the facts here are quite wrong. That the steersmen are not aliens of an unknown planet but humans who are mutated by spice overexposure is used as a plot point in one of the Dune prequels and the fact is presumably taken either from Herbert's notes or the inferences from the original novels.
Now this in itself would not usually lead me to give a book a mediocre review. It does worry me, however, that one of the other races in this book was in a story I was reading at the time (I think it was one of the Poul Anderson stories, neither book is close at hand as I write this) seemed to have a few minor oddnesses with it as well. It makes me wonder if some of the other aliens don't have the same kind of factual problems between what is in this volume and what they're like in the original story in a way that's not simply a difference of imagination.
Bottom line: get it for the art and the glosses of the alien races, but don't be that surprised if the description or portrait of your favorite alien doesn't quite match what you've seen in your head all these years.
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Title: Expedition: Being an Account in Words and Artwork of the 2358 A.D. Voyage to Darwin IV by Wayne Douglas Barlowe ISBN: 0894806297 Publisher: Workman Publishing Company Pub. Date: January, 1991 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: The Alien Life of Wayne Barlowe by Wayne Barlowe, Vincent Di Fate ISBN: 188339810X Publisher: Morpheus Intl Pub. Date: January, 1996 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Barlowe's Guide to Fantasy by Wayne Douglas Barlowe, Neil Duskis ISBN: 0061052388 Publisher: Harper Prism Pub. Date: November, 1996 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: The Science of Aliens by Clifford A. Pickover, Clifford Pickover ISBN: 0465073158 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: December, 1999 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Barlowe's Inferno by Wayne Douglas Barlowe ISBN: 1883398363 Publisher: Morpheus Intl Pub. Date: January, 1999 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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