The career of Les Edwards , otherwise sleep with as “ Edward Miller , ” has taken an interesting path through horror to SF / F through the medium of “ the New Weird . ” Edwards already had a considerable body of work behind him in the 1980s and 1990s , including posters for movies like Nightbreed and The Thing , illustrations for the Clive Barker graphical novels Rawhead Rex and Son of Celluloid , and cover prowess for Metallica ’s single “ Jump in the Fire . ” And now his drab cover art is among the most placeable in SF . We talk to Edwards about his work and his alter ego Edward Miller , and take you on a tour of his most inventive nontextual matter , after the jump . Despite this success , Edwards is most known for , and enormously democratic because of , the success of China Mieville ’s Perdido Street Station , for which he did the cover song . That iconic art re - launch his career by wedding the horror elements he was known for with complex , some would say avant garde , SF and fantasy elements . ( In the Czech Republic , the covering of book in Laser Books ’ New Weird imprint are all by Miller . )
Along the manner , he ’s never drop off a feel for the tactual elements of rouge : all of his paintings have that sense of having been run on , of the key having been literally layer on and smoothen over and then roughed up again . A picture by Edward Miller has texture and depth . Slickness and seamlessness is not , to our welfare , part of Miller ’s repertoire . It is because of these qualities that he has won seven British Fantasy Awards and been a World Fantasy Award finalist three times . Despite his meticulous and divine approach to his work , Edwards considers himself a “ gunman for hire . ” For Edwards , this can be rather pleasant — when he gets to work with author he admire :
I ’m always convinced that the next projection is locomote to be the undecomposed . manifestly there are certain source who I ’m proud of to be associated with , however svelte the association might be . What I have become more and more pleased about is that my problem gives me the opportunity to give ear out with other creative people with interchangeable interest . One of my pet line of work is to sit with a gang of writers and just listen . As my main method acting of reflexion is pictures rather than Bible it ’s always interesting to be with a group of multitude who use language as an prowess form ; peculiarly when the wine begins to flow .
Edwards ’ visual sense was influenced by SF movies and serials from an early historic period :
For some reason my parents have me to see cinema like The Conquest of Space or Satellite in the Sky . I do n’t know if I ’d already state an interest in space change of location or if they just think the movies would be educational but they certainly impressed me and the ocular elements naturally came out in my drawing . There was also a picture show serial call up Captain Video which ghost me for some time when I was about 6 . Most of my toy and game had a Science Fiction radical . In the 1950 ’s in the UK there was a hebdomadal boy ’s comic called the Eagle which is lovingly remembered by most Brits of a certain age . The primary strip was called Dan Dare . It was beautifully draw by Frank Hampson and the hero was the principal pilot of Spacefleet who spent his time rocketing around the Solar System protect the Earth from various threat of intrusion , unremarkably with a fleet left come-on . Imagine a kind of British adaptation of Flash Gordon with a plastered upper lip and an RAF uniform . Hampson ’s style was very punctilious and the comedian was impress on good lineament newspaper publisher which was very unusual at the time so the whole matter had a very opulent and advanced feel . I was probably too young to appreciate the nontextual matter to begin with but the strip featured starship and alien and ray - guns so that was good enough for me . Somewhat after another artist began a cartoon strip in the centre pages of the Eagle which boast the adventures of a Roman Centurion , Heros the Spartan . It was drawn by Frank Bellamy and was much more oriented to what we would now call Fantasy , although there really was no such genre at the time . It was done in a very striking elan with dark productive colours and featured monster and magicians and was very much a form of proto Sword and Sorcery . So I had both these influence going on at the same time but , strictly in terms of style , it was the oeuvre of Bellamy with Heros that had the greater attracter for me . Where Hampson was very precise and study , using a good deal of photographic reference , Bellamy ’s approach was much looser and more flamboyant . Bellamy is the first artist I remember trying to copy .
Edwards / Miller does n’t see a veridical watershed between fantasy and scientific discipline fiction :
I know there are people who sense that Fantasy and Science Fiction are completely freestanding music genre and never the twain shall fit . I ’ve never sense that means in the least and I honestly regain the idea ridiculous . There ’s a ridiculous kind of snobbishness at work ; ‘ My musical style is better than yours : Ya Boo ! . I show Fantasy , SF and Horror and a lot of other stuff and nonsense too . sure as shooting the real question is , not ‘ What ’s the musical genre ? ’ It ’s ‘ Is it any good ? ’ , and even as commit fan we should have the courage to say that a lot of music genre fable , and art for that thing , is just not very honest . allow ’s vanish the flag for the quality hooey regardless of where it sits on the bookshelf . So the answer to the question is that I ’m happy to work in any literary genre , if we must have such distinctions . My world-wide rule of thumb is , if it ’s weird and it ’s undecomposed then I ’m for it . Edward Miller was born precisely because of the tendency of some people to pigeonhole creative person into one literary genre . As Les Edwards I was get it on for working in a particular field and found it more and more difficult to happen any other study . I was very happy doing this work but any creative soul wants to debase himself and so Edward Miller came into being to search a different mode of painting and , originally , a completely unlike area of work . At first Edward ’s work was not Fantasy or SF orient at all and it was only after a few year that the marvelous element began to crawl in . I conjecture I could n’t serve myself .
you’re able to get more Les Edwards inhis online gallery .
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