Chris Foss - Next Of Kin

Screams '70s. Nice add!

Thanks Rick! Yes, those were the days: pre-Star Wars, pre-Alien, pre-Jodorowsky's Dune... And a lot of his designs are still prominently featured in our collective culture today!

The downs spacecraft looks like a fish, but breaking apart from the high pressure of the depths.  The red color haze makes it so you don't know where this is happening and creating even more peril and drama!

Thanks Marcus! It's true that the landscape adds a dose of confusion and unbalance. But it's a dimension I like and I feel it's also part of the talent of Chris Foss to include landscapes with a level of abstraction that counterbalance the heavily industrial structure of his spaceships. As for me, on this one, I see the ship in great difficulty, entangled in a reddish mass of Nebula gases. But, that's only me...

Another pertfect example. Congratulations!

Thanks Ben! A dream come true!

Foss has a unique, rounded shape to his spacecraft. This is a lovely example, with beautiful airbrush work.

Thanks Paul! I agree obviously! Chris Foss' spaceships are all his own... But I feel that all spaceships that have been designed since he made it on the scene owe a lot to him!

Une autre pièce de choix qui complète votre belle collection mon ami, bravo !!

Merci mon ami ! Je ne pensais pas pouvoir trouver 2 œuvres de Chris Foss... donc, je mesure ma chance !

What I see is a once-sturdy, aged spacecraft that's been hit in an attack by other spacecraft, plunging through the atmosphere of a distant planet and disintegrating as it falls. The astronauts are not likely to survive, hence the title, "Next of Kin." But that's just my guess.

Thanks Bill for your comment! I have not read the novel either, but when it was reissued in 1973 with that Chris Foss cover, this was the pitch printed on the back:

"Take a piece of bent copper wire . . . and conquer the universe. Invent a supernatural intelligence . . . and call it Eustace. Get captured by an army of hostile anthropoids . . . and use your imagination to come out on top.
Leeming's mission was suicidal from the start: to blast a stripped-down scoutship through the massive firepower of the Lathian space navy. So when he got caught there was only one way he could stay alive . . . scare hell out of the aliens with his imaginary protector: a piece of wire called Eustace."

Suitably intriguing, but, yes, it does look like the starship got serously damaged by enemy firepower! But, apparently, the hero does pull through!