Blast from the Past #322: Card for Joan Vinge

As I have mentioned before in this blog, I met the science fiction author Joan Vinge at one of those UMass sci-fi events for which I did poster artwork back in the 1970's. As I recall, she was the featured guest at one of them, and I got to meet her and chat for a while. She was at that time expecting her first child (I think it was the first, anyway), and I did this drawing for a card that I made for her when she had the baby.



The friendly sea creatures with the baby are my interpretation of the author's "Mers", key characters in her book "The Snow Queen", which I read after meeting her and liked very much. -- PL

Blast from the Past #275: "Futuristic city" drawing inspired by a novel by Joan Vinge

Years ago, when I had one of my drawings accepted as the winning entry in a competition to determine the artwork which would be featured on the posters and t-shirts of the UMass science fiction convention "A World Beyond: A Happening", I met the author Joan Vinge at that same convention. She was very nice and interesting to talk to, and that encounter led me to seek out her novels. I read several of her works, of which "The Snow Queen" was my favorite.



In reading "The Snow Queen", I was inspired to do this almost-finished drawing of one of the settings in that book, a city the name of which I have forgotten. But I remember that her description of it was quite compelling. -- PL

Blast from the Past #233: "A World Beyond: A Happening" poster

Back in 1981, I did this drawing which ended up being used on the poster for a science fiction event -- or "happening", in the parlance of the day -- at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, MA. My memory is a bit fuzzy about some of the details, but I think there was some kind of contest to see what art would be used for the poster, and my entry was picked. I can't recall if there was any prize for this, but it was cool to have my drawing on the posters. I also got to meet the author Joan Vinge at this event, and she was very cool (and a really good writer, as I was later to find out by reading most -- if not all -- of her published work).

Unfortunately, I didn't save a good copy of the drawing, and the original seems to have disappeared, so this image is from a photo of one of the posters.



And while going through some old files tonight, I found this piece -- the rough sketch for the finished poster art. -- PL