[sfear]

Its artwork like that of Paul Alexander that makes collecting science fiction so much fun. This wildly talented artist is responsible for some of the most memorable covers ever to grace the genre. Landscapes tend to be a mixture of technology and rubble, sometimes sprinkled with alien creatures all the more real due to their fierceness. Mechanisms are clean, colorful, menacing, with the power to make you wish you were placed squarely in the midst of danger. The covers he did for David Drake's HAMMER'S SLAMMERS, Robert Silverberg's TO LIVE AGAIN, and THE BEST FROM F&SF 25TH ANNIVERSARY ANTHOLOGY are undiluted masterpieces while PATTERNS OF CHAOS by Colin Kapp is second only to Frank R. Paul's THE FLYING BUZZ-SAW. Strangely, Paul Alexander is absent from the Clute-Nicholls Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. An artist of his magnitude needs to be remembered by the genre he so well championed with his work, not slapped in the face with artless neglect.