Page 10 — Origin Story
Acquiring minimalist science-fiction themed line art in black and white turned out to be much tougher than expected. I will need to further explore how to attract the attention of the visual arts community, it seems that they and the literary crowd are a bit more compartmentalized than I had initially thought. I finally proceeded to obtain some classic science fiction art from the public domain and played around with running it through a line art program to simplify it further. I am perfectly satisfied with the results although it is not what I had originally envisioned.
Then, something unexpected happened, my daughters (nepotism alert), as wildly talented as they are beautiful, who are almost impossible to wrangle into doing anything that doesn’t meet the strict requirements of what they deem to be a worthwhile expenditure of energy — came to the mini-rescue, contributing a work of art each! So, I have been able to include two pieces of original artwork in this issue after all.
Ultimately, the decision was made to present a carefully curated selection of classic, black and white science fiction drawings and illustrations to complement the poetry; it is spectacular work, depicting SF scenes that will fire up your neural pathways. A couple of the works are newer and a couple are vector art. The artwork is, to the fullest extent of my understanding, entirely in the public domain, free of copyright entanglements, and therefore freely available for use by all (note: I have no idea who the various artists are).
