Customer Reviews

Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The premise of this book is: The authors have taken various characters from various science fiction works and have visualy recreated them and write about some of their culture from what is in the books. This is one of the best Science Fiction art books I've ever read!!! and if you've read some of the books that these aliens are recreated from it's even better!!!! Colorful pictures, explanations, and even a couple of pages showing the comparative sizes of each of the aliens!!!!

A book on great alien races from science fiction. Classic fiction to boot. Most of us know about the Overlords from 'Childhood's End', the Puppeteers from 'Ringworld', the Guild Steersman from 'Dune' and even the Old Ones from 'At the Mountains of Madness'. But do you remember the Thrint from 'World of Ptavvs', the Cinruss from 'Hospital Station', or the Cygnan from 'The Jupiter Theft'?
A great source of information on alien races with full color pictures, lots of data on history, culture and habitat BUT also a great source for finding classic stories you never heard of!
Do you know the Pnume, Salaman, Triped or Merseian? Well, get this book and found out who they are!

_Wayne Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials_ is my 12 year old son/fantasy/scfi fanatic's favorite book. It is dog-eared from so much love, reading, studying and attention. This is no kid's book, though--these are the wunderkind's Wayne Barlowe's illustrations that have appeared in many famous scfi books. Each alien has a full bio-ethnographic description, bring each to life.

I do want to say starting off that (1) I got this because, being a Sci-Fi fan into artsy books, this was a hole in my collection; (2) I have been a fan of Barlowe's art since I found a used-but-impeccable copy of EXPEDITION a few years back; and (3) overall, this book did not dissapoint.
The book seems (at least on the surface) to be a well-researched compendium of aliens renedered in paint fit to augment the fertile imaginations of readers everywhere. The aliens are mainly from books and short stories that I'm not familiar with (not surprising since this was published originally when I was aproximately 5 years old), but there is enough info about them included to make it not just pictures of things I don't know what they are.
I personally felt that the best part was the sketchbook drawings in the back. I would adore to see the Thype project finally completed. And I think that some of the sketches of the aliens are superior to the finished paintings, an opinion that I realize many readers may not share.
But my big beef with the book is based on the Guild Steersman. If you read the Dune books with any care you can figure out that steersmen are mutated humans. They are not at all in this book like they are portrayed in the novels and some of the facts here are quite wrong. That the steersmen are not aliens of an unknown planet but humans who are mutated by spice overexposure is used as a plot point in one of the Dune prequels and the fact is presumably taken either from Herbert's notes or the inferences from the original novels.
Now this in itself would not usually lead me to give a book a mediocre review. It does worry me, however, that one of the other races in this book was in a story I was reading at the time (I think it was one of the Poul Anderson stories, neither book is close at hand as I write this) seemed to have a few minor oddnesses with it as well. It makes me wonder if some of the other aliens don't have the same kind of factual problems between what is in this volume and what they're like in the original story in a way that's not simply a difference of imagination.
Bottom line: get it for the art and the glosses of the alien races, but don't be that surprised if the description or portrait of your favorite alien doesn't quite match what you've seen in your head all these years.

Like a couple of other reviewers here, I have had this book in my possession for well over thirty years now; starting with the early 1979 paper back edition and graduating to the 1987 hardback when I wore the first out. At the time it was published there really was not much competition in this field and I am unaware of any comprehensive "collections" of this ilk to that point. Despite its age, this is still a wonderful work and as much as I hate to use the word "must," in this case I am forced to do so in my recommendation to any serious student of the Science Fiction genre.

The author has taken over fifty works by well known authors, used some of their most important works and rendered his interpretation of the alien beings inhabiting these works. He has given us wonderfully executed visuals of the works of Heinlein (Have Spacesuit Will Travel), Tiptree (Up the Walls of the World), Silverberg (Downward to Earth), Asimov (The Gods Themselves), Piers Anthony (Kirlian Quest), Pohl (The Age of the Pussyfoot), A.E. van Vogt (The Voyage of the Space Beagle), Herbert (Dune Messiah), Frank Herbert, Harry Harrison, Jack Chalker and many, many, many others.

Each drawing rendered is accompanied by a text on the opposite page giving us such information as Physical Characteristics, habitat, Culture, Reproduction, History and the like. The author has set this work up much like a bird or animal field guide. Now I grant you, some of the text is rather tongue-in-cheek as has been pointed out by others here, but it is well done and an absolute delight to read.

When I read science fiction for fantasy, I always (like most of us do) have a visual picture in my head of the people inhabiting the world the author builds. I have always amazed as to how close Wayne Douglas Barlowe came to the images I had in my own mind. I must say though that on several occasions, the artist's opinion differed considerable with mine...this is a good thing though. If you had 20 people draw any given character of any of these stories, I suspect you would have twenty different alien critter pictures. That is what makes this genre so fascinating and so versatile.

The colors here are crisp and each and every illustration in meticulously executed. You can spend quite a number of hours, repeated hours over the years, and never tire of leafing through this one. I must say also that my grandsons, who have not read one of the stories or authors addressed in this book, have all enjoyed gong over and over it themselves down through the years. One of the wonderful features of this book is the last section where we have a collection of pencil drawings which have been taken directly from the artist's sketchbook showing prep work, notes and structural cut-aways. This is an absolute delight!

This can certainly be classified as a classic of its type and belongs in the library of any science fiction lover. Do you recognize the names of Abyormenites, Cygnans, Dirdirs, Gowachins, Ishtarians, Ixchels, the Old One, the Pnume, Puppeteers, or Sirian? If so, then you will be reacquainted here; if not, then you have been missing some great reading adventures. I promise you that you will meet many old friends in and on the pages of this book!

Don Blankenship
The Ozarks

Good book. I have owned this since I was a child. It was a great portal into many of these classic Sci Fi books as I would have never heard about them otherwise. Barlowe has a fantastic nack for bringing life to these aliens. Highly recommended.

I enjoy art books, mainly books of fantasy art. But this book is more a sci-fi art book, and a very good one at that. Mr. Barlowe did a excellent job with the illustrations in this book. I read H.P. Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness." I had a hard time visualizing the Old ones described in that novelette. But Mr. Barlowe helped me greatly by including them in this volume and even summarizing their history. I would love to see how Mr. Barlowe would visualize all the creatures in my book, Tales of Ancient Xenar. I know he has a fantasy art book and I hope to see that one very soon. And to be honest, the only thing I am disappointed about is the fact Amazon.com ony allows a max of 5 stars. This book deserve well more than that.

Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials is a really good book if you need to jumpstart your imagination. It has drawings of the different species, as well as back ground information like habitat, reproduction, things like that. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves fantasy artwork, fantasy/science fiction in general, and also who has a crazy imagination already!

This is a wonderful book with detailed pictures and descriptions of aliens light and dark,good and evil, cruel and kind, and large and small. It has vibrant illustrations that grab the eye, and descriptions that send the mind and imagination to worlds millions of light years away. You will not find these alien faces anywhere else but in this book. I would recommend it to any science fiction lover who can get their hands on it.

I first read this book when I was 10, and it freaked me out. It was one of the major reasons I began reading science fiction. This book can be reread endlessly without losing an ounce of wonder, for Barlowe's representations of alien anatomy are truly inspired. I constantly recommend this to my friends, and they are never disappointed, even the ones who can't stand sci-fi. Unfortunately, his paintings are much more interesting than some of the books they're taken from.