Looking Forward and Looking Back …
Back in 1987, on a dark autumn evening here on the east coast, my phone rang. Algis Budrys (regrettably no longer with us), coordinator for the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest was on the line. Algis had an idea.…
Some backstory on Algis and me. I had known Algis not just from science fiction (SF) conventions in general, but specifically from my interaction with the Writers of the Future Contest and its presence at major science fiction conventions, such as the World Science Fiction Conventions of the 1980s, and one of the WotF ceremonies at the World Trade Center, “Windows on the World.” I remember that event well, and it was my only time atop the World Trade Center, which sadly is also gone. Algis had made the Contest his passion, and in so many ways his life’s work. Algis Budrys was one of the “Old Guard” of SF writers, who’d left a path for all writers. Writers like that seem hard to find these days. I considered him a good friend. When he called me that autumn evening, Algis opened with his usual conversation starter. “So … heya,” he said. “We’d always had the intent as per L. Ron Hubbard’s wishes on starting another contest, that will run alongside of the Writers of the Future … it’s called, naturally … the Illustrators of the Future … and, well, we want you to be a judge!”
He explained to me that my friend and mentor, ten-time Hugo Award winner Frank Kelly Freas, was to head it all up, and draw up (no pun intended) the rules of how it worked. Kelly Freas would keep in touch because there was still a lot of legwork to do to make it all come to fruition. Aside from me, a host of other artists had been asked aboard as co-judges: Edd Cartier, Leo and Diane Dillon, Ron and Val Lindahn, Jack Kirby, Will Eisner, Paul Lehr, Moebius, Alex Schomburg, H.R. Van Dongen and the legendary Frank Frazetta. I was stunned to be in the company of such amazing and iconic talents. Feeling humble was an understatement. So in 1988, the first building blocks of the competition’s structural information was sent out far and wide. There was no Internet at the time, so this was somewhat of a massive undertaking. Kelly Freas started the ball rolling, and he had made up a list of criteria and points that the art would be judged on.
He came to believe wholeheartedly that, “More young illustrators have been introduced to and entered the field by way of this Contest than anything that has happened in the field of illustration. It’s going to make a big difference in the immediate future. There is a real need for intelligent artists who can understand what has been written and illustrate it in a way that is related to the real world and means something. A piece of art that does that becomes a treasure beyond price. L. Ron Hubbard’s Contest is creating the men and women who will do this for us.”
The concept is simple: the entrant has nothing to lose because it doesn’t cost anything. In fact there is quite a lot to gain. An illustrator is asked to submit samples of his or her work and those samples are sent out en masse to a select panel of judges on a quarterly basis. Names are removed from the entries to level the playing field to just the art. Then the panel of judges, working independently of each other, with only several judges used at any given time, further narrow down the applicants. Feedback is usually given on the artists’ three submission samples as an overall commentary. Final compilation of scores and comments is done in-house at Author Services. Should someone be a winner or finalist in the Illustrators of the Future, they get to then illustrate a winning story written by the winners of the Writers of the Future, becoming a published illustrator in the annual anthology.
I can tell you something, and this comes from a person who had very little in terms of this type of encouragement in the ’70s and ’80s, that this Contest was a boon to anyone wishing to get kick-started into being an illustrator. I wish it had been there when I was starting out.
All the excitement and enthusiasm could be summed up with Ukraine’s Sergey Poyarkov’s winning the top prize of $5,000 in a display of emotion and thanks that was quite profound. Later, Sergey would also be asked to be a judge for the Contest.
Judges have come and gone as well. My friend and mentor Frank Kelly Freas passed away in 2005, a great loss not just to myself and his friends and family but to the science fiction community. Others have passed on too: Frank Frazetta and Jack Kirby. Fortunately, I had the great honor of meeting both icons via the Illustrators of the Future ceremonies, and my good friend Paul Lehr who was a total inspiration to anyone he spoke to. We remember the passing of Wil Eisner, Alex Schomburg, H.R. Van Dongen, Edd Cartier, and Leo Dillon who have also gone onto the “great studio in the sky” as it were.
Others have joined us over the years, including amazing legendary artists Vincent Di Fate, Stephen Hickman, Cliff Nielsen and Stephen Youll. As a judge from the beginning, I have become part of the original “legacy” artists, along with Val and Ron Lindahn. In fact, I would say as an illustrator I have grown with the contest, my own work winning awards such as the Hugo award—a lineage of this award I share with not only Kelly Freas, but Vincent Di Fate, Edd Cartier, Leo and Diane Dillon, Stephen Hickman and Stephan Martiniere.
Over the years we’ve had events in Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Cape Kennedy, and Seattle at the Science Fiction Museum. In Florida at Cape Kennedy in 1997, I got to meet judge and icon, Frank Frazetta for the first time, when he stopped by to say hi after we all watched the launch of a space shuttle. After the launch, the heavens opened and poured rain in a never-ending torrent. Amusingly, the fact I had a rental car nearby suddenly made me five new best friends. There was a lot of laughter trying to squeeze everyone into that car. This is how the best memories are made.
My, where did twenty-five years go?
In addition to the awards ceremony, the Contest winners are treated to a week-long intensive workshop on illustration with Contest judges and top professionals in the field who stop in.
Many winners of the Contest have gone on to create terrific illustrations and art for many forms of media—not just books and magazine illustrations, but also films, game designs, et cetera.
Times have changed since the Contest was initiated and so have the outlets and exposure for this kind of work. I have gone from seeing entries done purely as line art and pencil drawings to fully-rendered computer-generated color images or “paintings.” As we entered the new millennium, I have seen the word “illustrator” redefined.
The Internet has broadened the scope of entries coming from all parts of the world to the Illustrators of the Future Contest. It’s fairly amazing to see the diversity of artists and ways of seeing things through their art. It brings a wider world view of new vision and creativity, and a freshness to the genre.
Illustrators and artists will always be needed in one way or another. Anything you see in our society that we use carries an image that was designed by an illustrator at some point—be it at the creative beginning or the packaged ending. Whether it’s for something in the media or something used on an everyday basis, it was designed to have a finished “look” by an artist. Books, no matter what anyone tells you, will always be read, so they will need to be “packaged.” That means cover art and/or interior illustrations. Art helps identify a thing, no matter what it is.
All in all, the Illustrators of the Future Contest is a way of investing in the future. We need new generations of creative thinkers, artists, illustrators, simply to create a visual culture for years to come. The future is a mystery, and what it brings is uncertain, but pictures have been made by Man for all his history for one reason or another. The future needs vision, and for that, the future needs art. Forward!