DAVID HADEN
Editor of Digital Art Live magazine
[email protected]FACEBOOK: http://www.facebook.com/3DArtDirectEDITOR’S LETTER
RSS: https://digitalartlive.com/feed/Welcome to the “Deserts” themed issue of your
free Digital Art Live magazine for science
fiction and fantasy artists. Deserts in science
fiction are common settings, but they seem to be
remarkably under-studied. The Encyclopedia of
Science Fiction has no entry, and neither Google
Books nor Google Scholar nor JURN can find anything
containing the phrase “deserts in science fiction”, or
similar variants. This absence is remarkable.
Because one only has to think of the desert planet
Tatooine in Star Wars or Frank Herbert’s original
Dune trilogy of novels, and countless other examples
of desert planets in B-movies from Riddick to
Starship Troopers, and TV such as Firefly and Star
Trek (Vulcan etc). Not to mention the ubiquitous
presence of the red desert-planet Mars (from John
Carter of Mars to Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles, to
Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars and beyond). Or
the equally ubiquitous notion of a future Earth as a
post-apocalyptic desert, as seen in the original Planet
of the Apes movies, Mad Max and similar.
If we think of the most memorable videogames then
we might think of the deserts of Morrowind, Journey,
Fallout, Borderlands... and I’m sure keen gamers will
be able to name many others. If we look to the best
science-fiction comics, then we immediately think of
Moebius’s heroes and anti-heroes moving across vast
and beautifully drawn deserts in the 1970s and 80s,
Judge Dredd in the Wasteland of The Cursed Earth,
through to recent triumphs such as the graphic novel
The Spire. And if we were to delve into the vast
mountain of science fiction literature then we would
encounter countless examples beyond Dune,
especially in the short stories written during the fifty
golden years between 1935 and 1985. If we also
count asteroids and moons as effectively ‘grey
deserts’, the examples must be almost endless.
Then there is also the related UFO folklore, closely
associated at its inception with arid American deserts
and secret military testing facilities in the desert —such as Area 51 and 52. Related to this is the
‘Ancient Astronauts’ belief, which — in its first
popular post-Theosophy incarnations — often
founds its supposed ‘evidence’ in desert places
such as the Naza Lines. Incidentally, H.P.
Lovecraft got there first, as with so many other
things. His “The Transition of Juan
Romero” (1919) is set exactly in Area 52 and it
also contains two classic ‘UFO encounter’ motifs.
Although the story was only ever intended as a
throwaway demo for friends, his later mature work
also made much use of deserts and lost desert
cities as supporting background for his weird tales.
Deserts have also been a beloved starting point for
science fiction artists, especially those of us who
began with 3D and the likes of the Bryce software.
Partly it was that the old software and the old PCs
had such problems doing trees and vegetation.
Deserts were simply faster to render. But partly it
was also because some of the software seemed
specifically set up to create beautiful deserts and
desert-planet space-art. Such as MojoWorld.
We’re pleased to say that this issue of our
magazine has a special tribute to the MojoWorld
procedural ‘planet generator’ software, in a long
and detailed interview with the software’s maker
the late Ken Musgrave. Our thanks to Huw
Collingbourne for giving permission to publish this.
Talking of ‘moon deserts’, this issue also trails our
new summer art competition! We’re asking digital
artists to show us what a human settlement on the
Moon might look like in the year 2150! For full
details, see the double-page spread to be found
later in this free magazine.