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Creator / Wayne Barlowe

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Wayne Douglas Barlowe (born January 6, 1958) is an American science fiction and fantasy painter and writer with an abiding love of Starfish Aliens. He was employed as a designer on Avatar and Pacific Rim, and his style is all over Pandoran fauna and Kaiju. His homepage is here.


Works include:

  • The Pop-Up Book of Star Wars (1978)
  • Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials (1979): Contains his visualizations of different alien life forms from various works of science fiction, with information on their planetary location or range, biology, and behaviors, in the style of a real field guide for animals.
  • Empire Strikes Back: Mix or Match Story Book (1980)
  • Expedition — Being an Account in Words and Artwork of the 2358 A.D. Voyage to Darwin IV (1990): An alien life field journal in a setting thought up by the author himself.
  • An Alphabet of Dinosaurs (1995): In which paleontologist Peter Dodson lists a dinosaur for each letter of the alphabet, with basic information on each.
  • The Alien Life of Wayne Barlowe (1995)
  • The Horned Dinosaurs (1996): Another collaboration with Peter Dodson, this one focused on ceratopsian biology and evolution.
  • Barlowe's Guide to Fantasy (1996): A similar book to Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials covering races and individuals from fantasy books and legends.
  • Barlowe's Inferno (1998): An illustrated book depicting Barlowe's vision of Hell. Inspired by Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy.
  • Brushfire: Illuminations from the Inferno (2001)
  • God's Demon: A sequel to Barlowe's Inferno, telling the story of a demon who seeks God's forgiveness. Inspired by John Milton's Paradise Lost.
  • The Heart of Hell (2019): A sequel to God's Demon.
  • Psychopomp (2021): A collection of his hell based art.

Works with their own pages:

Works that he designed for:

Other works contain examples of:

  • Eldritch Abomination: Barlowe's Inferno has the Abyssals, the native inhabitants of hell... yes, demons were not the first living there, they were cast there and hell already had a natural fauna.
  • Our Gryphons Are Different: In Barlowe's Guide to Fantasy, griffins are fancifully portrayed as a species of real, albeit extinct, creatures native to Central Asia, which endured until at least the first century AD before dying out for unknown causes. In a nod to speculation that the griffon myth arose from early discovery of Protoceratops fossils, they are portrayed as literally being descended from a mutant strain of the actual dinosaurs, and consequently depicted as Protoceratops with avian wings and long, feather-tipped tails. Female griffins excavated extensive tunnel systems in which to brood their eggs, often bringing gold to the surface as they did, but only a very brave or very foolish person would have risked delving into a griffin's nest to get it.
  • Our Souls Are Different: Barlowe's Inferno has a rather terrifying prospect for all human souls who go to Hell. Apparently, the underworld does have a food chain, but humans are at the bottom of it. Humans are also the main building materials for demons; their livestock, vehicles, and war machines all made out of souls.
  • Two Beings, One Body: In Barlowe's Inferno, Hell is full of this sort of Body Horror. For example, there are vehicles made up of lots of people who've been mashed together so that they now consist of a big mash of flesh walking around on a collection of human legs.

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