Display MoreEarlier this month, the science fiction art community was saddened by the passing of artist Chris Moore. Mr. Moore was a famed UK illustrator who painted countless science fiction book and album over his long career. You can find his obituary here. While looking through his artwork, I noticed something familiar:
That's right: his painting "Millennium" was used by Taiwanese publisher Soft-World for the disk labels of the original Wing Commander! It's not clear how the piece made it around the world but it was originally painted in 1988 as a wraparound cover for a reissue of Ben Bova's novel Millennium. It was also used as the cover for the July 1991 issue of Omni, which seems better remembered.
The original painting sold at auction some time ago, which provided an image of both the original painting and Moore's initial layout sketch. The sketch is listed as 12 1/4" x 9 3/8" pencil on tracing paper and the final painting's dimensions are 35 1/4" x 19 1/4" acrylic on board.
If you'd like to represent this very small, tangential part of the Wing Commander in your collection, the book Journeyman: The Art of Chris Moore (2000) includes the painting and also reproduces it on its back cover!
