Cult Hero - Hannes Bok

Born in Duluth, Minnesota on July 2nd, 1914, Hannes Bok was an outstandingly brilliant artist who was also an excellent writer. Bok spent much of his early life in Seattle and Los Angeles, where he became intensely interested in science fiction/fantasy, quickly gaining an apprenticeship in illustrating for pulp sci-fi magazines and fanzines (including Futuria Fantasia, a fanzine put together by budding sci-fi writer Ray Bradbury).

Bradbury became something of an avid promoter of Bok's images, taking a batch of his paintings, sketches and ink drawings from LA to New York in 1939 when he attended the inaugural World Science Fiction Convention.

"Hannes was one of the great ones," wrote Bradbury in an introduction to Bok's work by sci-fi writer Lin Carter. "I could have stared at his paintings for days. So manic was my attitude toward Hannes that I felt the world should know of him."

Gaining interest from sci-fi magazine greats such as Weird Tales and Unknown, Bok moved to New York in 1940, quickly becoming one of the best-known magazine and pulp illustrators of the 1940s, but occasionally alienating himself through the perceived sexual perversion of his art.

Working with Renaissance techniques of underpainting, assiduously building a picture tone by tone, and achieving a luminous quality through the use of a lengthy glazing process (learned from his mentor, Maxfield Parrish), Bok would spend months on a single work. Although he established himself as one of the best known cover illustrators, he was also one of the worst paid ($5 to $10 was a typical fee). A move to writing proved somewhat more lucrative. Influenced heavily by the writing of the highly acclaimed, so-called Lord of Fantasy, A. Merritt, Bok published his first novel, Starstone World, in Science Fiction Quarterly in 1942. Shortly after came The Sorcerer's Ship, and then The Blue Flamingo (since renamed Beyond the Golden Stair). Through these books, Bok established for himself a far wider audience. His prose was constructed with the same care and attention to detail, his artist's eye enhancing his mode of expression, his imagery inherently painterly. Totally lacking in business sense, Bok lived in his self-styled wizard's cave in New York surrounded by books, records, papier-mΓchΘ masks and wall-to-wall art.

A ceaseless smoker and coffee-drinker (even a small amount of alcohol made him ill), he lived for weeks at a time on a diet of cornflakes and coleslaw, refusing to compromise his art - despite being fully aware that he was being taken advantage of by so-called colleagues and agents. He died of a heart attack, alone, in his West 109th Street apartment on April 11th, 1964, a man obsessed with astrology who cherished his privacy; the first artist to win a Hugo Award; and a person, says Lin Carter, who "was the happiest man in the world".

For further details, go to www.members.tripod.com/~gwillick/bok