FOSS, Chris(topher)

(1946-)

   UK illustrator. CF studied architecture at Cambridge University, and has worked in sf ILLUSTRATION since 1970, primarily as a cover artist; he uses brush and airbrush to excellent effect. He is best known in sf circles for his hardware, particularly his SPACESHIPS: intricate, asymmetrical, almost Gothic, these have been deeply influential not only on other UK illustrators but also on film designers. Ever since STAR WARS (1977), most movie spacecraft look as if they have been designed by CF,even though they have not - although he did work as a concept artist on ALIEN (1979). (Paradoxically, outside sf, CF is better known in commercialillustration for his detailed figure studies; he did the many romantically erotic drawings for Alex COMFORT's The Joy of Sex (1972) and More Joy of Sex (1973).) CF's smooth, airbrushed, representational style, demonstrated on hundreds of covers, spearheaded a revolution in UK sf paperback design in the 1970s, and had many imitators. It was what the market wanted, and after a decade had become almost tedious in its predictability - though that was the publishers' fault, not CF's. His sf work is often a celebration of technology - monstrous spaceships or vast robots, beautiful and deadly, rear up over landscapes and skyscapes where humans are absent or tiny - yet the effect is bracing. Science Fiction Art (1976), with an introduction by Brian W. ALDISS, is a portfolio of his work; others are 21st Century Foss (1978) and The Chris Foss Portfolio (1990). Diary of aSpaceperson (1990) is unusual and not wholly successful in combining the erotic with the scientific in what purports to be the illustrated diary (written by CF) of a spacewoman who has sexual congress with an alienplant.

   PN

   See also: TECHNOLOGY.