Paul Reiche: This is Paul Richie, and today we're going to be talking with George Barr, who was one of the artists who defined the look for Star Control and did many of the most memorable color paintings, if you remember what the Unzervault looks like, or the grandfather talking to his kids at the end of the game or what the spaceship looks like when it's warping into hyperspace, those are all images that George Barr created for Star Control. Hi, George. George Barr: Hi. Paul Reiche: So- George Barr: Glad to be here. Paul Reiche: Oh, I'm really glad to have you here, this is a very casual interview and conversation, I have some questions that I'll ask along the way, but what we're doing now is we're looking at images that George has collected over the years, and we're thinking about using some of them in our new game, Ghosts of the Precursors, and then we're also looking at some of them because they have a historical value to us because they are from Star Control. So, George, there's a couple of images here that are black and white studies for Star Control, can you tell us why you created those before making the color painting? George Barr: Well, I want to establish the composition, where things are going to be on the page and get the approval on my design of the person who's going to be paying for it, they shouldn't have to be paid for something they don't like, and it's surprising how often there are major changes asked for or insisted upon by the editors, and I did them as large as I could so that I could email them to the person so that they could see it as detailed as possible. Paul Reiche: We did Star Control so long ago that it was actually even before email and I remember I was out in a small town in Nebraska and we were working on this game together, and I used the fax machine and told them, "You're going to be getting some faxes to me," and I think they thought I was going to get legal papers, and so I remember you sent images of the Planet Onsavault and then the cave with all of the precursor machines inside, and they being cattle ranching, mostly people out there had no idea what I was getting, but so you used fax machines to transmit them? George Barr: As soon as I was able to, my roommate at the time was very into electronics and he would do all of the faxing for me, I never used the machine, I've got a computer over here now that I haven't touched in 10 years because I just don't do that anymore. Paul Reiche: And all of this work that you did for us- Fred Ford: I just wanted to make one point is you keep saying Star Control. Paul Reiche: Oh, okay. George Barr: You're not supposed to? Fred Ford: Well, it's technically Star Control 2, and saying Star Control is what gets us into trouble. Paul Reiche: All right, so- Fred Ford: You can edit in the two later- Paul Reiche: Star Control 2. George Barr: Two, two. Paul Reiche: Will do. Will do. So one of the things that is, Fred and I have been making games up until this afternoon and everything's digital, but when we were working together, everything was on physical media, and you've used different, very specific physical media on our games, and I was kind of curious if there were styles or if there were looks to the work that came out of the physical nature of either the medium you were drawing on or what you were using to draw. George Barr: Very probably true because the style of my work, the color work, is, somebody said, "Inimitable," which means you can't imitate, and it's seen a couple of things that people have tried using the mediums that I used, and with a couple of efforts they say, "Oh, I can't do that, I can't do that," never stopping to realize, okay, it took me 20 years to develop it, I was in high school and my art teacher said, "George, you are depending too much on your eraser," he says, "You put in so many lines and then you erase what you don't like," he says, "Start sketching with a pen knowing that what you put on the paper is going to stay there, so you'll be a lot more careful where you put it," and I did, and this was in the very, very early ages of ballpoint pens, this is back in the 1950s. George Barr: And I started with ballpoint pen because it was so much trouble having to refill a fountain pen every few minutes, and the ballpoint pens were pretty awful at that time, the ink, it smeared and it didn't drive, but that was what I was using, and over a few years time, I found that if I was careful with a very light touch, I could do a myriad of very, very fine lines and get a nice gray tone, and it was quite some time afterward that I decided to try watercolors over the top of this to see what it looked like, I used that for a lot of the preliminaries that I did for the early book covers that I turned out, and then asked Don Wollheim of do DAW Books if it would be all right if I did a full cover using that technique, he says, "Well, sure try it," and I did, and he liked it, he published it and it looked fine, and so that's what I've done ever since. Paul Reiche: Do you recall- George Barr: Put some watercolor over ballpoint pen. Paul Reiche: Yeah. And I love that style. There's the nature of the page, the paper that you worked on seems to influence that a lot, what sort of paper did you use? George Barr: Well, I learned to adapt to whatever kind of paper I could afford at the time, I liked illustration board, a nice, textured surface, not really lumpy, but just to texture so that a light touch of the ballpoint pen would give almost a series of dots rather than a full line, but I'd get Strathmore paper, Strathmore was a brand I used when I could get it, and I like the Auditor's Fine Point, BIC Auditor's Fine Point pen was the best that I ever found. Paul Reiche: And did you ever have issues with the ballpoint ink being water soluble when you were doing that, the paint over with watercolors? George Barr: No, never had a problem with that, I did have a problem with one, after I finished the work, because watercolor is easily damaged, I would spray it with Krylon to give it a smoother look, I don't know how else to express it, and one time I couldn't find the Krylon and I bought another brand of spray and it kind of dissolved the ballpoint pan and it just spread, it was horrible, I sent it to the customer anyway and told him I was experimenting with the style and he bought it. Paul Reiche: Excellent. Well, sometimes- Fred Ford: It wasn't us, was it? Paul Reiche: It wasn't us, we weren't the customers. George Barr: No. Oh, no, no. The guy that had bought that died a number of years ago, so I'm not worried about it anymore. Paul Reiche: I'm looking at an image right now that you did in 1978 of what looks like coatl or a kind of winged serpent almost, and it's got incredibly fine lines used to define the shape and the value, is this Rapidograph or is this- George Barr: No, that is a Crow quill pen, a dip pen. Paul Reiche: Wow. These are lines so fine, it's hard to imagine having a steady enough hand to do that. George Barr: Well, I got practically nose to the paper when I was working on things like that, I didn't do it very often because it was a little hard on the eyes. Paul Reiche: This is beautiful, this is for a story called Star School by Joe and Jack Halderman, science fiction writers of some great note for Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, that's beautiful. George Barr: Thank you. Paul Reiche: So we're going to set this aside then, so I guess that leads to a question of how did you get started doing this? It sounds like you were taking art classes from when you were young, but how did that lead into professional work? George Barr: Well, I didn't really take that many art classes, I took art in school when it was ever offered through high school, and after I graduated from high school, for lack of anything else to do, I went to a commercial art school, the vocational school, and had one year of that and realized that I was... they were trying to shoehorn all of the people into what could be used in the local commercial art area, and it would be painting signs for grocery stores and things that I had absolutely no interest in. I learned an awful lot about color and the various mediums that I didn't know anything about, but I was not at all interested in what they were trying to talk me into doing, so I only took one year of that. George Barr: And then fandom and I discovered each other at about the same time, and I found out about fanzines, and my only interest in doing things for fanzines at the time was to get published samples of my work that I could show to people to let them see what I could do, and it didn't go very far because the kind of work that I was doing for the fanzines was not of any interest at all to the kind of people in Salt Lake City that I lived among and it wasn't... well, I had a few professional assignments, I sent things to conventions and Seal Goldsmith, the editor at the time of Fantastic Stories Magazine liked one of the pieces that was there and contacted me and said, "Would you do a version of that that we could use on the cover of our magazine?" So I did a couple of covers for them, and it was kind of embarrassing in a way, because instead of being sent a story to illustrate, they sent the illustration to an author and said, "Write a story around this." Paul Reiche: Well, that sounds actually kind of like that was an inspiring image for them. George Barr: Well, it could have been except that one of them... oh, I wish that they had sent me the story because I would love to have illustrated that story, and this painting that he based it on just looked crude, it wasn't at all what he was describing and the general public reading the story wouldn't have any idea that the picture came first, they would figure that I didn't know what I was doing, but I thought, okay, I've had these published, now everybody's going to write to me, but it didn't work that way, I had about 10 years of very, very little work, most of my income was coming from what I could sell at the convention art shows and very, very little published work, and it wasn't until 1968 when I got a call from, let's see, what was his name? George Barr: William Ware Theiss is the costume designer for Star Trek, he had been to the World Con that was held that year in Los Angeles, and I had won the Hugo for the best fan artist, not professional, fan artist at the time, so he went into the art show to see what I did, why I got a Hugo, and he called me, he says, "There are so many opportunities waiting for you, get out here where we can use you," and I said, "Well, I don't think about it," and he says, "No, you come out now," he says, "I'll pay your way, I'll get you out here," he says, "You get out here quick and I'll introduce you around and you'll find some work," and so a couple of weeks later, I was in Los Angeles and never went back. Paul Reiche: Did you do work on Star Trek? George Barr: It's kind of funny, I was not really interested in it when I got out there and saw how it was done and the personalities that you had to contend with, I saw temper tantrums that stopped production where everybody was standing around collecting wages while somebody got over their tantrum, and I just couldn't see it, and so I started looking around LA for other stuff, and then Bill Theiss called me and he says, "I need your help on something," he says, "This is sort of halfway between makeup and costume, there's a story coming up that deals with some futuristic flower children on a spaceship that are looking for the Planet Eden," and he explained it to me, he says, "This is sort of hippie type," he says, "But futuristic hippie," he says, "Body paint and give me some images of fruit and flowers and that sort of stuff." George Barr: So I did some sketches, I was at the studio, he pulled me into the studio for doing this, and all I did was just quick pencil sketches, and he says, "Well, let me check now with the makeup guy to see if this is something that will work," and he came back a few minutes later, he says, "Yeah, we're having rubber stamps made of these images," I says, but, "Bill, those weren't finished, those were just sketches," he says, "Well, they will do," he says, "And you will come in and paint the images, won't you?" I said, "Well, I guess so," so for a week I was on the Star Trek set every day painting these images on futuristic hippies. George Barr: I wish I could remember the names of the people I painted, one of them was Charles Napier, who I understand had done some soft core porno before this, and really a homely guy, but a terrific physique, and he is now a major character actor, I see him in a lot of stuff. Paul Reiche: Really? George Barr: Yeah. Now in his eighties, I guess, but he's succeeded, where the rest of them, whose names I don't remember at all, were just there for that one episode. Paul Reiche: I remember that they had a slang term for a very un-hip older person, it was a herbert, and I don't know if you're... I may have watched a lot of Star Trek, Fred may have too, so that has never been a successful insult, as many times as I've tried calling people a herbert, they just don't get it, so. George Barr: Well, you'd have to have seen or heard the origin of it. Paul Reiche: And then so you were in down in Los Angeles, and where did that go? George Barr: Well, Los Angeles is a place that sooner or later, everybody goes, and there were small conventions, and I was living in the house owned by John and Bjo Trimble, I don't know if you know their names, they were big names in fandom at the time, Bjo was considered Mrs. Star Trek, she started a letter writing campaign that saved Star Trek from being canceled after the second year, so she was responsible for bringing it back for the third year, and everybody in fandom knew her, and so any fans that visited Los Angeles visited the Trimble House, and I was part of it at that time, and Alicia Austin, a Canadian artist, came down and joined the household, we were kind of like a little commune and met so many people, big names in the publishing, and they saw my work and were interested and it just took off, I never got rich, I got to do everything in the world I ever wanted to do except get rich. Paul Reiche: Well, I think if the world were just, you would've been. One of the images that I ran into yours first, linking back to soft core porn, was a great poster that I can't remember who gave it to me, some naughty adult because I think I was about 13 and I got the poster for Flesh Gordon, and I knew it combined the things I was most interested in at 13, which was Glanly Clad, people and science fiction. How did you end up doing... it was a great poster, by the way, I loved it. George Barr: Well, I got to know a lot of people when I was working on the little bit that I did on Star Trek, I met Mike Minor, whose name, I don't know whether he painted that big picture over there, the seats- Paul Reiche: That's it- George Barr: Alien Landscape, beautiful piece. Paul Reiche: Wow. George Barr: He's passed away since, but one of the first fans I met was Greg Gene, who a few years later went on to design the alien ship in Close Encounters. Paul Reiche: Oh, really?? George Barr: Of The Third Kind. Yeah, he's been very successful doing... well, first, he was doing model work, but when CGI came into it, he would do the models and then they would photograph them from all different angles to be able to feed it into their computer, so he was still able to work in it, but he had a really good career with that, he has recently retired and oh, Jim Danforth. Paul Reiche: Sure. George Barr: Met him, oh, I wish I could remember all of the names- Paul Reiche: He was a Ray Harryhausen student, is that correct? George Barr: Yeah, very much. Paul Reiche: And I met all these people and they were all pulled together for working on Flesh Gordon, Mike Minor designed all of the sets, Jim Danforth didn't want his name connected with it, but he did some of the animation in it, and Greg Gene did the modeled of the spaceships for it- George Barr: Which are great. Paul Reiche: And because I had done this makeup on Star Trek, they contacted me to do the makeup, and I said, "No, absolutely not, all I did was body paint, that's not makeup," but little makeup I had done was done for amateur stage work in Utah, and it's not quite the same as movie work, I said, "No," I absolutely could not do it, and I recommended Bjo because she had done some makeup work, never anything of this particular type, but she did it, got a screen credit for it. George Barr: Oh, I didn't know that. Paul Reiche: Yeah. George Barr: And so they said, "Well, if you're not going to do the makeup, will you at least do the poster?" So I did a concept of the poster, and they sort of liked the basic idea, they insisted on some changes that, so far as I was concerned, just ruined it, I had had here, Flesh Gordon standing there holding a ray gun, and they wanted him holding an umbrella because there is a scene in the movie where he bails out of a ship holding an umbrella, but if you haven't seen the movie, you wouldn't know that, so it would just look stupid, but I put his arm up and had the umbrella sort of going down behind him, so he didn't see much of it, but they also insisted that I work four or five times as large as I was really comfortable working. Paul Reiche: Was that the largest piece you worked on? George Barr: Oh, no, I've been stage sets before, they're pretty big, but no, this is a good size poster, the original, the concept that was my ideas and my work is owned by a guy here in Livermore, a long time friend, he owns the original of that, it hangs in his house. Paul Reiche: Fantastic. That's great to know where your work is. George Barr: Well, he's one of my closest friends, we've known each other for 49 years now. Paul Reiche: Fantastic. George Barr: Yeah. Paul Reiche: That's fun. George Barr: His wife, she passed away about six or seven years ago, but we were all really good friends, we all belong to the same science fiction club here in the Bay Area. Paul Reiche: Now, you've always been involved in science fiction fandom, is fantasy fandom and science fiction fandom one and the same, or were they two worlds? George Barr: They were, when I first got into it, they were part and parcel of the same thing, how it is now, I don't know, since I lost my eyesight to the point that I could actually do anything, it's been almost 20 years now since I've had anything to do with fandom, I don't hear what's going on, I don't know who's involved in it now, I really couldn't say. Paul Reiche: Well, I don't pretend to know details except for Comic-Con has become such a giant phenomenon, we go to a lot of, or have over the years, gone to a lot of conventions or shows involving game development or software development, and now the Game Developers Conference has tens of thousands of people at them and so Comic-Con has become a place that is now a destination for launching movies or launching games, and we have had booths there specifically to advertise and upcoming game we were creating. George Barr: Sure. In 1969, I believe it was, I went to the second San Diego Comic-Con, it wasn't called the Golden State Comic-Con at the time but it was the second time they had one, and I was there as their fan artist guest of honor. Paul Reiche: Wow. How many people were there at that one? George Barr: It was like a small science fiction convention, pretty much run the same way, they had program items, not the big hall filling things where you got all of your casts and everything of TV shows, because there weren't any TV shows at that time except Star Trek, but I met Burne Hogarth, one of my heroes, it just astonished me that he was still alive, he had done the Tarzan comic strip that I saw in the newspapers when I was a child. Paul Reiche: Really? George Barr: And he was, I guess probably in his seventies, but we sat and talked for quite some time, just really nice guy, I saw Stan Lee, he was pointed out to me, I didn't meet any of those people, but there were an awful lot of them there. Paul Reiche: He still goes, I think. George Barr: Yeah, I've heard that he does. Paul Reiche: Wow, that's amazing. I think the way that I first started working with you, Fred and I started working with you was through a mutual friend John Freeman. George Barr: Yeah. Paul Reiche: How did you come to meet John? George Barr: He was a science fiction fan and was a good friend of the Trimbles and was over to their house, and I was introduced and we just became good friends, he and his wife at the time, we did a lot of things together, went to movies and things of that sort, and after they split up, he moved up here to the Bay Area, and I still heard from him occasionally, been to his house a couple of times, but it's been quite a number of years. Paul Reiche: Yeah. It's been a few industries. So John Freeman and his later wife, Ann Westfall, and I worked on two or three of Electronic Arts first games. George Barr: Excuse me. Paul Reiche: So we worked on, together, to create two or three of Electronic Arts first Games, Archon and Murder on the Zinderneuf, and then a sequel Archon II, even before that though, John had co-founded one of the first computer game companies, which was initially called Automated Simulations and later became Epics, and that was the first place I worked on computer games, and I saw your artwork on several of the games that I loved, one was Crush, Crumble and Chomp! Which was a Build your own monster and go stomp around and destroy cities, something everyone should do, and then you had also done some other classic, I don't want to say pulp or retro, but very classic science fiction images for a game called Rescue at Rigel, and that image stuck in my head, and I think that as we sit here talking about it becomes clear to me that that was one of the- George Barr: Excuse me again. Paul Reiche: Inspirations for what I wanted us to do together in Star Control, that embracing of what science fiction, how it had been presented, science fiction is many different things, but I didn't necessarily find some of the darker or more purely digital versions of science fiction very inspiring. George Barr: Yeah. So that painting was done deliberately to look like a pulp cover, I think John probably still owns the original, when I worked for him, he retained all rights that included buying the original art, so well, what he did with him after he got them, I have no idea. Paul Reiche: My guess is he still got them. George Barr: I wouldn't be surprised. Paul Reiche: And so we work together not only on Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters, but we also work together on a game called The Horde later for Crystal Dynamics, I have some artwork of yours in my living room, I think Roscoe the Dumb Dragon, I believe, there's this very... in the game, you actually never see him in the game, but you can summon a dumb dragon to help you, and he just sort of randomly scorches an area of the game, which hopefully is something you want at scorched, but you're never quite sure what Roscoe's going to burn, and I just love that, it's a small painting, maybe six inches. George Barr: I don't even remember it, I never played the games, I never got into that side of it at all, I would do the art, I'd do what they told me to do, but I never played them. Paul Reiche: So do you enjoy, or when your eyesight allowed you to, did you more enjoy reading books or reading graphic novels, or what was the medium- George Barr: I never got into graphic novels, I kind of wish I had, because I've recently discovered them, but I have to work with a tiny little magnifying glass to even see what's on the page, so reading one of them is impossible, but I'm really impressed with the kind of work that they do, I don't know if you're familiar with Elfquest? Paul Reiche: Yeah, I like that. George Barr: Wendy Pini, I met her when she was 17 years old, she was Wendy Fletcher at the time, I owned all six or seven of her early works, beautiful things, I just bowled over by her ability, the talent in that kid, I don't mean to put down what she's done with her life, but she could have turned out things that would've made what she did for Elfquest look like scribbles. Paul Reiche: She was that good. George Barr: She was that good, she's done what she wanted to do, and I bless her for that, but she and her husband, can't even remember his name now, but they stopped in here a couple of years ago. Paul Reiche: Really? George Barr: Yeah. We sat and talked for quite some time, I've got some of her earliest stuff back when she was still Wendy Fletcher. Paul Reiche: You saw the transition from physical media to purely digital, did that change the culture of artists who were working together? George Barr: I suspect it has, but I've been so far out of it for so long now that the digital side of it, I never got into, I'm impressed beyond expression at the CGI stuff that's done in movies nowadays, it just blows me away, but I've never gotten involved in any part of this, no way I could. Paul Reiche: I remember once trying with John, or maybe it was John trying to get you to do work in Deluxe Paint on the Amiga, I think, or maybe on an old pc, do you recall? It was a- George Barr: I- Paul Reiche: Very early painting program? George Barr: Vaguely, vaguely, I remember something like that, I didn't until you mentioned it, and I don't remember what I remember and what I might have imagined, I just don't recall. Paul Reiche: I felt like we had handed you a stick with three colors and said, "Draw something beautiful," because it just was so- George Barr: Alien. Paul Reiche: Alien and it's sort of handing a mosaic pattern to someone and saying, "Here, work with these tiles and do what you just did with pen ink," because the pixels were so big and the colors were so limited, and now of course, you can't even see the pixels, and there you can have any color you want. So let's see, I'm going to just let this keep rolling and look through some of these, and this is great, thank you, by the way, the conversation I love. Oh, that's pretty. Wow. Yeah, you should have a book made of these, I would prefer if you've had it made before you were gone, but- George Barr: Oh, no. That one was for, not a computer game, but one of these books where you work your way up to a point and then make a decision at the end of the chapter and it tells you where to go for the next- Paul Reiche: Choose your own adventures? George Barr: Yes. Paul Reiche: Yeah. George Barr: I've done a number of those. Paul Reiche: Love those faces. That's right. George Barr: That was for a short lived magazine called Adventures of Sword & Sorcery. Paul Reiche: The first... I had a couple of color book covers from yours from the sixties and maybe the early seventies, and I thought Sword & Sorcery was one of them, but I remember a dragon blasting some night and the fire is sort of splaying out from the shield, and I remember drawing that over and over trying to see how you had done that, and I, of course, not really being an artist that never succeeded. George Barr: Well, it was done with the ball point and watercolor. Paul Reiche: There's the problem, I was trying to do it with acrylic. Oh, that's very cool. George Barr: Oh, yeah, that was for a Dungeons and Dragons piece called, I think it was, Night of the Living Day. doesn't it say down at the bottom? Paul Reiche: Spelled with a K. George Barr: Yeah. Paul Reiche: Inside the Head of Worm. Wow, that's cool. So each of these images that, as we look at it, has the name of the book that it's written on, and this one actually has a note it looks like to the publisher about how to display it, about how it should be reduced, and it's a double page. Oh, wow, look at that. George Barr: Oh, yeah. That one was for, I can't remember the name of the magazine. Paul Reiche: Oh, I see. George Barr: It was a double page spread. Paul Reiche: Wow. It's beautiful. George Barr: Yeah, it was one of my favorites, I really liked that one. Paul Reiche: Now, these are all black and whites we're looking at here. George Barr: Yes. Paul Reiche: I think there's some color ones I'd love to look at too. George Barr: Yeah. I've got a few. Paul Reiche: Ring of the Nibelungs. George Barr: Oh, the Ten Opera Singers Paul Reiche: I think the tape on this is- George Barr: Yeah- Paul Reiche: Seeing it's last. It's funny how adhesives go away, we made our last game was called Sky Landers, and we sold toys, hundreds of millions of them, and they were in blister packs that sat on cardboard and people collected them as collectors are apt to do, but after a certain number of years, the glue just evaporated, and so there became this almost after kind of an online knowledge base about what glue to use and how exactly to put the blisters back on so that your collection wouldn't just fall apart. George Barr: I guess these are all upside down. Paul Reiche: And here's another one, it must have been two. Oh wow, so- George Barr: Yeah, that one worked out for that stuff. Paul Reiche: Oh, I see. Okay, so- George Barr: That was for Mary and Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine. Paul Reiche: Now, you had connection with Mary and Zimmer Bradley for quite a long time. George Barr: Oh, yeah. We met at a convention and I guess she was more impressed with what I did than I had realized because she talked to people as if we were really close friends and I barely knew her, I liked her, and then she called me and asked if I would do the cover, first issue cover of her magazine, and of course, I jumped at the chance and I did, I guess about a third of the covers from then on until the magazine died when she died. Paul Reiche: Wow. Well, she of course, wrote The Dark Over series and tons of wonderful science fiction that I read when I was young and was a big influence. George Barr: Oh yeah. Paul Reiche: I'd love to set this one to the side. George Barr: Sure. Dig up here with those. What is it? Oh, yeah, that one was for Barsoom. Paul Reiche: Yeah, that's got that style that we love. Immigrant. So what's the story here? This guy looks like he really doesn't want to let go of that. George Barr: He's hugging it for warmth. Paul Reiche: Oh, okay. George Barr: I don't remember the whole story, but I do remember that he was out there in the bitter cold wrapped around this machine, I think the machine is sentient, I'm not sure, it's been a long, long time. Paul Reiche: This looks like not far away from where stuff like that in Utah exists, I presume- George Barr: Oh, yes. Paul Reiche: Yeah. I was just down in Arizona with my dad getting a new hip, not me but him, and so I got to see a lot of the beautiful Arizona Rocks. George Barr: Monument Valley and- Paul Reiche: Oh, wow, look at that, that's great. George Barr: That's also from Barsoom. Paul Reiche: Do you recall what kind of creature that was? George Barr: Let's see. Paul Reiche: Maybe you remember Edgar Rice Burroughs, right? George Barr: I don't remember the name of it, no. Paul Reiche: White [inaudible 00:36:48]. That's a cool picture. George Barr: Burroughs, described his creatures pretty well, I didn't have to use an awful lot of imagination on them. Paul Reiche: Wow, that's beautiful too. George Barr: Oh, yeah, that's the rocket ship, well, not rocket ship, is the- Paul Reiche: Flyers- George Barr: Transportation flyers. I did the- Paul Reiche: Were these for Dick Lupow? George Barr: He wrote this book Barsoom about Burroughs and his Martian stories, and it had been published before and he was bringing it out again and wanted me to illustrate it and oh, God, I worked hard on that, I turned out a cover, I'll show you that later, which I think you've already seen it, you commented on that little mosaic stuff around it and I gave specific instructions on how that was to be put on the cover, and the publisher ignored everything I'd said, instead of enlarging it, and I had crop marks, "You should cut off this part," and everything, I put a little more on than is going to show there so you don't end up with white edges, and he published the whole thing and had to reduce it way down in order to get it on the cover, and it didn't suit the composition at all, and instead of doing it in standard printing techniques, he computer printed it and the contrast on it turned everything that was dark, turned it black, and I was just horrified. Paul Reiche: Oh, that's a shame. George Barr: And it was embarrassing because Dick, who has been a really good friend for quite a number of years, he asked if I would do an interview, he was doing a radio show or something, I'm not sure, and he asked me if I'd ever had any major disappointments, and this book that he had written had just come out so bad, and I told him the truth, and we've never spoken since then, I don't even know if he's still alive. Paul Reiche: Yeah. I haven't seen any of his work in a long time, and certainly growing up in Berkeley, he was well known. George Barr: Well, he was a good bit older than I am, so he'd either be in his late eighties or early nineties if he's still alive, I just was really sad that our friendship ended on that mode. Paul Reiche: Oh, yeah, sorry. can you tell me a little bit about this piece? Because this looks like something we could use, it fits right into our... George Barr: This was for a game, I don't know if it was a computer game or whether it was a story related game, I never saw the finished product, I did a whole lot of work for it, various characters and scenes and stuff like that a lot of work but I don't know how it was ever used. Paul Reiche: It almost looks like Alien Logic. Fred Ford: Yeah, it kind of does almost. Paul Reiche: We have a friend, in Berkeley, a guy named Andrew Leaker who created a world that had creatures somewhat like this, but that's great. George Barr: Does it have a copyright? Paul Reiche: It does have a 1993 with your name on it. George Barr: Oh, well, I guess the black and white piece is my property, we can do whatever as we please. Paul Reiche: River of Air, Ocean of Sky. What was this for, I guess, amazing story. Yeah. George Barr: Oh, it was just a story that it dealt with a sort of a science fictional version of the Icarus and instead of with the flappable wings on a sort a kite type thing, and I just tried to do it the way it was described. Paul Reiche: I love... this illustration has a great example of you using your stipple technique to achieve what looks like a level of detail that's hard to imagine- George Barr: No, this is not stipple. Paul Reiche: Oh- George Barr: This is what is called, or was called coquillee board, C-O-Q-U-I-L-L-E and it was a textured board specifically made to give the impression of a half tone back in the days when it was so expensive to do half tones, and I loved the feel of it, I used it in almost all of my black and white work and now it's totally unavailable. Paul Reiche: Wow. It's beautiful. George Barr: But I love the... you work with a black grease pencil and it just touches the tops of the bumps of this textured paper and he gives that- Paul Reiche: It's gorgeous- George Barr: That beautiful look to it. Paul Reiche: Yeah. When I had that your work scanned lately and then put into frames, the people who were scanning it were just staggered at the level of detail because they were being asked to go in and scan it and they just loved it. George Barr: Well, that big one you were talking about with the obelisk on the lunar type landscape, and the paper that I used for that was canvas textured paper that is made specifically for oil painting because I couldn't get the coquille board anymore, but I made that one as large as I did because the lumps were bigger. Paul Reiche: Oh, that's another great piece. George Barr: I don't remember the story that went with that. Paul Reiche: Too Much Loose Strife, oh, by Fred Pull, wow. Great writer. Ha, this is someone using a flame thrower and there's a bunch of tiny little creatures running around behind him. George Barr: It's trying to get rid of Olin. Paul Reiche: That's maybe a trick. Now, Fred Pull, I was just showing my daughter my favorite old Star Trek episodes because unlike my son, she hasn't watched Star Trek, and we watched Amok Time and I think was that Fred? That was Ted Sturgeon, Ted Sturgeon did the episode, and then we got [inaudible 00:43:40] City on the Edge of Forever, which is debatebly by Harlan Allison, I think he would debate it. George Barr: Harlan died fairly recently. Paul Reiche: Yeah. He did. That's cool. George Barr: That one is another half and half piece. Paul Reiche: Yeah. Flyers, wow. George Barr: Yeah, I actually drew airplanes, realistic modern airplanes, but I had fun with that one. Paul Reiche: How about this alien or high technology? I recently went to Hoover Dam and I just had a blast looking at the turbines and the old giant technology. George Barr: It's a beautiful place. Paul Reiche: The mosaics and the floor there, heard a story about the Mexican family who had done those mosaics and they were beautiful. Oh, there's something from Star Control I recognize, that's great, that's the Mark 2. This one I actually think, I'm pretty sure that I know the guy whose game this is and I think he would probably not be okay with us using it because his computer games... I'll ask him. George Barr: Sure. Paul Reiche: And if it turns out that's not the case, then I'll probably come back. George Barr: I've got a lot of stuff from that particular game. Paul Reiche: Yeah, that's true, that's true. I wonder if he... oops. Good Creatures, Jorune yeah, this is from his game, that is so funny yeah, A Skyrealms of Jorune is was what it was called, and he was a big Star Control fan, it may be possible that we connected him with you, but yeah, he did a game called Alien Logic that I think disappeared in, he's still making games. George Barr: I haven't had any contact from him in a long, long time, but then I moved here to Livermore and I didn't send out a change of address to most people because I just wasn't capable of doing the work anymore, so I suspect an awful lot of fans probably believe I'm dead. Paul Reiche: I hope not, I hope not, and I suspect Star Control, all the Star Control fans in the world will know you're not, because your name is part of the lawsuit we're involved in, would you want to give this to- George Barr: Sure- Paul Reiche: Andrew? Okay. That's a beautiful piece. George Barr: Oh, yeah, that was an early thing for, I can't remember which magazine it was either, Amazing or Asimov's, I think it's probably Amazing. Paul Reiche: Wow. And all these different creatures at the bottom, they're all different and they're all great. Huh. George Barr: One little human boy among them. Paul Reiche: Yeah. I wonder what... yeah, I want to read that story. George Barr: Well, that was the point of the pictures was trying to get people curious enough to read them. Paul Reiche: That also looks like Alien Logic. George Barr: Which one is that? Yeah, I believe it is. Paul Reiche: Wow. You have quite a body of work here. George Barr: Yeah. I told you- Paul Reiche: We've been looking at pictures and- George Barr: I've got hundreds of things that amaze me when I realized that I had done that much. Paul Reiche: Wow. George Barr: When you get into the smaller stuff, I do so many little space fillers. Paul Reiche: I like this one, We've Got Pills. George Barr: Oh, yeah, that's one of my favorite songs. Paul Reiche: Beautiful Women and Cars. Brian Stableford, also famous science fiction writer. That's great. One of the illustrations that you did in Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters was of the Syreen, the beautiful Space warrior, and she's reclining... you did actually a number of illustrations of her, she's- George Barr: The blue hair? Paul Reiche: Yeah, blue- George Barr: Blue skin. Paul Reiche: Yeah. George Barr: Black hair. Paul Reiche: Yeah. And I'm curious what... the early description was very simple from our sort of blue skin space beauty, who is a warrior, how did you approach that? Do you recall the creative choices you made in bringing that character to life? George Barr: I don't remember what she's wearing, so I don't have any idea how I decided on the costume. Paul Reiche: It was sort of a metal chest piece with a spiral snake sort of for the- George Barr: Very Cleopatra style- Paul Reiche: Yes- George Barr: I... I decided on the positions that I wanted her in and then looked through my files to find some beautiful girl that was somewhere close to that position. Paul Reiche: Oh, that's great too. George Barr: Yeah, I like that one, I'm very pleased with that one. I got a reputation with this one publisher of being the guy who puts clothes on dinosaurs, and I hadn't realized that I had done that many times, but I really did, I guess that's not exactly clothes, it's more just a... oh, head piece. Paul Reiche: That's great. Probably saying he's got a chess piece too, or something going on there. That's great. Set that one aside. So any of these ones with a copyright indication, you think it would be possible, if we purchased it, we could use that image? George Barr: I would hope so, I would hope the people would... because with the magazines, they bought first printing rights, first time publication, and after that I was supposed to be able to do whatever I pleased with them, and I haven't had anything to do with them recently. Oh, yeah, I don't remember the story of that one. Paul Reiche: That's cool. George Barr: That one, there's a story behind it, I got this book from, was the Metallic Muse I can't remember the author's name, and I read the thing and there's nothing in here that I can think of that would make an illustration, I thought this is something they ought to have said to Kelly Freeze. Paul Reiche: Really? George Barr: And then immediately I saw in my mind what Kelly might have done, and so that's what I painted, was the Kelly Freeze Beast, but I had to do two or three concepts to send to the publisher, they always wanted three things, and this was one of them, but I had done a pencil, small colored pencil thing, but I liked the concept, so I redid this just for my own interest, it's never been published, never been shown, it's just one that I like, but this is the Metallic Muse the way it turned out. Paul Reiche: Oh, yeah. I'm familiar with that image, that's a fantastic painting- George Barr: It's been published four times. Paul Reiche: That's great. George Barr: And I told Kelly about it one time and he looked a little embarrassed, he says, "Well, I'm kind of flattered, I guess," but it was what I had imagined he might have painted for that Paul Reiche: I certainly had a lot of his covers when I was, I think 11 or 12, I can't George Barr: Mad Magazine. Paul Reiche: Really? He had a lot of those. George Barr: Oh, for years. Paul Reiche: Oh, wow. I just knew him from Asimov's and Analog and those, Asimov's once did an advertisement, I think, for blinking plastic jewelry back in like 1973. And I was totally fascinated by that concept of LED jewelry. George Barr: Yeah, I never saw that. Paul Reiche: And never having gone to a rave, I still haven't ever had any of that. George Barr: But Kelly was one of the nicest guys I ever met. Paul Reiche: Really? George Barr: He's just really spectacularly modest, and this is the thing that impressed me, that the most talented people I have met have been the most modest about their works, and you find some of them that are just beginning who are so full of themselves, it's almost embarrassing, and I think, "Oh, come back and see me in 30 or 40 years, and then tell me how great you are." Paul Reiche: Jay Michael Straczynski, that name is very familiar. George Barr: I don't remember the story. Paul Reiche: I feel like that's someone who gotten- George Barr: That was one that I thought they should have sent that to Virgil Finley, and then I did a Virgil Finley. Paul Reiche: That's beautiful, it looks like your style to me. George Barr: Well, it's- Paul Reiche: I see what you're saying about Virgil. George Barr: It's Virgil Finlay's sots and bubbles he did that so often. There's one of the publishers of Amazing or Weird Tales, I can't remember which one it was who said, I think he was complimenting me, I'm not sure, but he says, "You are the greatest pasticist in the business." Paul Reiche: What do you mean by that? George Barr: He meant that I could imitate anybody else's style, but I found that that was not quite true, I tried doing a Kelly Freeze once and found that he was inimitable, he's who he is and you can't do what he does. Paul Reiche: Well, that's a great pretty image. George Barr: Oh- Paul Reiche: I love just the flow of the way that the creature is curving, that's beautiful. George Barr: Thank you. Well, all of them in this box, this particular box are the ones that I considered my best work. That one, nobody has ever commented on what I hoped would be a very noticeable point, they all have the same eyes. Paul Reiche: Are they the same individual? Reincarnated? George Barr: Yeah. Paul Reiche: Yeah. That's cool. George Barr: That was the only way I could think of to put a point across the point that they were all the same person, was to give them all the same eyes, but nobody's ever noticed that. Paul Reiche: Well, I wish I could say I would have noticed it, but I think now that you said it's impossible not to see it. The idea of sort of computerized afterlife has certainly become, this image has a representation of that, and there's a TV show from England called Black Mirror now by a guy named Charlie Brooker, and he's touched on that idea of what are the memories of someone who's passed away when they're preserved electronically and displayed on something like that, or that you can go in and experience it. George Barr: Yeah, that's our, let's see, I can't remember which, I think it was this direction. Paul Reiche: Yeah. George Barr: It's for Weird Tales. Paul Reiche: That's great. And is this is canvas board? Is that that- George Barr: It's a... well, let's see, is this... yeah, this is the canvas board or a really rougher version of the coquille, it came with several different textures, this may have been the rougher. Paul Reiche: How are we doing for time, Fred? Because I want to- George Barr: Have some place where you've got to be? Paul Reiche: Well, I have a mom with Alzheimer's. George Barr: Oh. Paul Reiche: And I need to be there between 5:30 and 6:00 this evening in Berkeley, so we've got plenty of time, but my daughter is in town for a short period of time and I kind of want to connect them while I can, otherwise I would love to just keep hanging out here because I love looking at all of this. Teddy bear, the teddy bear in the background, sticking out its tongue is really great, I love that, I think I saw a Christmas, maybe, card you put out with a teddy bear, Winnie-the-Pooh-like character, I love that. George Barr: I've done a lot of Christmas cards over the years, there was one guy up in Oregon that I think 35 years I did their family's Christmas cards- Paul Reiche: Really? George Barr: Always involved in dragon. Paul Reiche: Huh, this is a gorgeous piece, holy molly. George Barr: Oh, that one, there was some poetry and they wanted a picture on one page and the other page, and I tried to get images from the poem and in this one there was [inaudible 00:57:34] and I put in mermaid with him, of course, and the other one there was a unicorn with a princess done in pretty much the same style, that one sold quite a number of years ago. Paul Reiche: That's a beautiful kind of drawing. George Barr: That one was done for a fan publication for convention bulletin, I think it was on two facing pages with text in those spaces. Paul Reiche: Bad Ogre and Staunch Friend. George Barr: That was one of my own stories. Paul Reiche: Now, were these stories that you wrote or just- George Barr: Yeah, I wrote it myself. Paul Reiche: Oh, wow. That's a great ogre. 1997. Now, how long did, you said you no longer illustrate, how recent is that? George Barr: About 10 years, the last thing I did was one of those dragon Christmas cards and it was awful, and I told them I was very sorry, but it would be the last one I would be able to do. Paul Reiche: I sure wish technology could catch up with that. George Barr: Everybody has told me that that was a self-portrait, I don't know, it was not intentional if it is. Paul Reiche: I can see how people could think that. George Barr: Wasn't always as very closed as I in now. Paul Reiche: Right. Viola's [inaudible 00:59:36] Andre Norton was a big influence on me in terms of her fiction. George Barr: I think that Quiet Violets is the last thing she had published, she died right soon after that. Paul Reiche: Is that right? George Barr: For Marion's Notes. That's another half and half piece. Paul Reiche: That's nice. George Barr: Goes on the other side. Paul Reiche: Very, very in love with Tanith Lee's work for a while, and then I just sort of got out of touch with it, I don't know if it... I've seen her work published every now and then, but remember John saying she was quite a striking figure from his perspective. George Barr: Oh, I never met her, but I got a couple of complimentary letters from her for things that I had done, illustrated her story, she appreciated that very much. Paul Reiche: She wrote something called The Silver Metal Lover and Drinking Sapphire Wine, which are two of my favorite stories, of course. George Barr: I don't think I've read either of those. Paul Reiche: The Storm War is another one, probably all from 1973 or '74. George Barr: For the last, oh God, I guess about 20 years of when I was illustrating, I never got a chance to read much of anything except what I was illustrating, it wasn't the time, I collected a whole shelf full books that I just never got around to. Paul Reiche: Do you- George Barr: Never will. Paul Reiche: Are you able to listen to audio books? George Barr: Oh, yeah. Paul Reiche: Great. George Barr: I got one just a week or so ago called A Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters and it's funny, I really enjoy that one. Paul Reiche: Oh, that's great. George Barr: Oh, this one just has the title that goes over here. Paul Reiche: Yeah. The Wizards of Ashes and Rain? I want to make sure we get a chance to look at your color pieces. George Barr: Sure. Paul Reiche: Stephen Baxter, I know Stephen Baxter, if that's the same Stephen Baxter, science fiction mostly. George Barr: I don't remember the name. That's the kid watching the two gods. Paul Reiche: Oh, two gods? George Barr: Squaring off, yeah, see how much smaller than them he is. Paul Reiche: Oh, yeah, oh, yeah. That's usually trouble, anytime you see gods. George Barr: Yeah. Paul Reiche: Whoa, that's a great illustration. George Barr: That one was so complex that I don't think it reads well at all, basically what's happening, that these are contributing things that are going on in other places, and I don't think it really worked, I worked hard on it, but I think it's just too busy. Paul Reiche: Sometimes when you're going through images fast, things that are this complicated are hard to read and sometimes I skip over, but if it's ever something that's like up on your wall in your room or... I just remember as a kid, there were some images that were this complicated that I spent a lot of time imagining what was happening, it provided enough detail that I could kind of lose myself in it. George Barr: That one was kind of fun, people that could climb the walls. Paul Reiche: When I was working at TSR on Dungeon and Dungeon material, a lot of it was on powerful magical thieves and what they could do and that was the kind of thing we could do. Snory, there's been a big resurgence in Nora Smith lately, what's his name? Famous, fantasy writer, I can't remember, forget it, he wrote Sandman and he wrote- George Barr: The name sounds familiar- Paul Reiche: Oh, gosh. Anyway, he recently put out a Nora Smith's an interpretation of [inaudible 01:03:39] gotten people interested in it again, this one would've been challenging for me to think about how to do that. George Barr: Well, the ones for that story turned out rather stylized much more so than I had really intended, but I was trying to give the impression that he was getting so much information all at once that it was just hard for him to encompass it. Paul Reiche: I'm going to take a break from looking at these and maybe I've got some questions to see if I've covered some of them in our conversation, and if there's anything that you either want to talk about or specifically don't, it's totally fine by me. George Barr: Sure. Paul Reiche: So let's see, some of these questions you've answered, but you've mentioned a number of science fiction artists who you feel like have inspired specific pieces, but which artists would you say overall have been most influential or inspiring to you? George Barr: You mean among science fiction artists? Paul Reiche: Could be science fiction or classical, really any. George Barr: Okay. It would probably be Arthur Rackham and Maxfield Parrish. Paul Reiche: I certainly know Parish, tell me a little bit about Rackham. George Barr: Rackham is very stylized, he had particular line to his work, he did, oh, I can't think offhand of... the names just don't come to my mind of the things that he's illustrated, but it was around the turn of the last century, he was a book illustrator, and I liked the look of what he did, the way it moved, the lines of it, and I used to have kind of fun drawing something with the ration style of how he proportioned things and then rendering it in the Maxfield Parrish style, and with his kind of coloring in which the richness of how he did it, I tried to combine those to a number of times and ended up looking not much like either one of them, but. Paul Reiche: Well, hopefully you liked the pieces. George Barr: Yeah, I had fun with them. I'm trying to think of anything that I've got that would demonstrate that, can't think offhand. Paul Reiche: Well, you have a lot of wonderful pieces in the room, are there any in particular that are from artists that you're fond of or- George Barr: Tim Kirk, he was a good friend, I met him the very first day I was in Los Angeles, and he was just instant friendship. I watched him, he was only, I guess 20, years old when I met him, I turned 31 a couple of months later or I just turned 31, but anyway, he turned 21, so we were just 10 years apart, but just amazed at the talent in that boy, God, he could do anything. And this particular one was done specifically for me, I had done a portrait of him surrounded by a lot of the characters from his drawings called The Dreams and the Dreamer, and it was used as the founder's piece in a book of his published work. George Barr: And he says, "What can I give you in return for this?" And I asked him if he remembered the Temple of the Dawn from The Thief of Bagdad, and he says, "Well, yeah, sort of," I says, "Well, now, don't go back to the movie, do it from your memory, do me a painting of the Temple of the Dawn," and that's what he came up with, in the movie it's brightly Lit, I don't know why they called it the Temple of the Dawn, because it's obviously midday in the film, but he did it right, and he says, "I hope you won't object to the fact that I included the torchlight procession from," oh, what was the other movie? Lost Horizon, he says, "I love that movie," and he says, "I had all that space there, so I put in the funeral procession there. " Paul Reiche: Let's see. We've talked... I guess this is more specifically relating to Star Control II, how would you describe the creative process? Both how it started and then how you took over and used your imagination? George Barr: Well, a lot of the pieces in it, you sent me work that someone else had already done the designing of the characters, so I just elaborated on that to put it into the full color scene, there's the one that, the guy that is kind of rhinoceros looking and I can't remember which others, but there were several of them that there were not my concepts at all, I just tried to do what had been established without putting more into it, but not infringing on what had already been established. Paul Reiche: For the ones that... I'm trying to remember which ones, sometimes I provided sketches and I think sometimes they were from the previous game, but boy, it's hard, you did such beautiful work, I'm trying to think of some of the larger pieces I feel like I would describe just a scene on, it is an alien world with a giant spaceship and I would get back this marvelous first facts and then a painting. George Barr: Well, you had told me that the plan that you had was that the captain, it was not supposed to be definite in the game, whether this was male or female so the boys or girls could play it and it would be equally accessible to either one of them, and so everything that I did, all that had the captain in it up until the very final piece where he's talking to the children, I didn't want to make it look effeminate, but I also wanted to make it look like it could be a woman, and the one scene where looking out over the valley and the two figures standing there under the tree, he's got his back to you, so you can't really tell, and I was deliberately trying to be, I don't know what you... transgender, not exactly, and then I saw the cover painting for the box and I realized, "Okay, it's pretty well established, he is male," so for that final picture, I abandoned any pretext. Paul Reiche: So we had responsibility over everything inside the game, the publisher got to decide the cover, and although we went back and forth with them on its contents ultimately- George Barr: It was a beautiful cover. Paul Reiche: It is, we did want the gender to be nonspecific so that people could project themselves into that role, and I think people still did, but ultimately at the end we did just kind of say, "Well, if we want to show this person when they're old, then we have to get up a little bit closer so you can recognize them," and that worked out great. George Barr: Well, I thought the cover that you got on the box was a beautiful piece, I wish I had done it, I wish I were capable of doing it in the style I've never been able to do. Paul Reiche: I probably told you this story before, but the first game, Star Control II obviously was a sequel to Star Control, and the initial cover that that was created was just this alien hand with a high tech wristband and was, I can't remember if it was clutching a planet or if it looks like it could be clutching a planet, but it was a nice illustration for the box for the computer game, and then we did a version for the Sega Genesis, which was a console, I'll have a video game console, not a general purpose computer, and they wanted to do a new illustration and they said, "Well, we're going to redo the illustration, what do you want?" Paul Reiche: And I said, "well, I like the original illustration, but I guess you could make the rendering a little tighter, make it just have someone take a little more care because it's sort of vague in some sense" and they brought it back later and said, so this is what Boris Vallejo did with it, he followed your instructions completely, and I went, "Boris Vallejo is the artist you had doing that, and I just told him to do it tighter?" And I- George Barr: He was the one that did that final cover. Paul Reiche: He did... you probably haven't seen it, but if you saw it, you'll go, "Oh yeah, that's Boris Vallejo's version of that other drawing." George Barr: I know his work, I agree, he's about as tight as it gets. Paul Reiche: Yeah, yeah, not necessarily of those, the Frank Frazetta world is much more where I would want to live, but. George Barr: Well, he started out as the cheaper version of Frank Frazetta, of course, Frank Frazetta started out as the cheaper version of J. Allen St. John. Paul Reiche: Oh, is that right? George Barr: Oh, yeah. Paul Reiche: Well, I guess we all start somewhere. So let's see, one of the important experiences I had with you was you were the first artist I worked with, or really the first creative partner I worked with who was out or who was openly gay, and I don't want to push that in any uncomfortable way or even talk about it if you're not comfortable, but is it something that you feel like you have something to say about or that you would like to talk about? George Barr: Well, in fandom, I have been pretty much open because Jim and I were together for 36 years, we went to conventions together, everybody knew we were a couple, so there was little point in trying to hide it, the places where we lived, we were not quite that obvious, I presume some of the people around us had guessed it. In this complex that I'm living in now, there is one person I told that I was gay because she was being just little sweeter than I was comfortable with, and another one who came up to me while I was out feeding stray cats, which I do every night, and she says, "George, I'm gay," and I says, "So am I," she said, "I kind of thought you were," and so we've talked about it quite a bit, but they're the only people here that so far as I know, know it for sure, they may have suspected, but nobody said anything. Paul Reiche: Do you feel like it informed some of the art you did or that you can feel that aspect of you as present in your artwork? George Barr: I presume it probably is as, you must have noticed in the things that you've been going through, there's one hell of a lot more pictures of men than there are women, and the men quite often are not fully closed, but I've never pushed it where it wasn't acceptable in the story, there's so many of the old things in the pulps where there's the beautiful girl in the brass bra that was just standard and you read the story and you think, "Well, okay, maybe she could have possibly had been wearing something like that, but there's no indication of the story that that's what she was wearing," and she's not all of that major a character anyway, but it was just part and parcel of it, there had to be the beautiful girl. George Barr: And fortunately, I got into it just about the time when people were saying, "Now, don't push the girl too hard, we don't want that," in fact, I had a couple of illustrations that I did that were sent back, they said, "No, it's a little too sexist," the girl was like this, and they said, "You've got her nude," I said, "Yes, but she's covering up these," "But she's nude, you can't do that.,"And so I avoided that when possible. Paul Reiche: Certainly the siren that you illustrated, the female captain was absolutely beautiful and so well dressed, I mean, I think- George Barr: For the character- Paul Reiche: In retrospect, she certainly didn't have an excessive clothing, but with environmental controls inside spaceships, maybe that's not that important, but still, she's certainly beautiful. George Barr: Well, I hope so. Paul Reiche: Yeah. George Barr: One of the, well, I presume you've seen that book of mine that was published about 40 some years ago, what was the title of it now? It was a book of my early work, that's strange that I can't remember the name of it, but one of the fans who wrote a review of the book, he says, "George Barr paints unbelievably beautiful women," and I thought that was rather nice, but it was funny because years later, there was a woman that started working with Marion doing some of the layout and stuff, and the issue just previous to her coming into it had involved a story where there's this girl who is described as being very plain, no figure at all, she's out hunting for frogs, she's catching frogs, and I can't remember the story exactly, but there is one instance where this young boy kisses one of the frogs. George Barr: And so the main illustration is of this boy holding this frog out here like he's going to kiss it, George Soothers absolutely loved that, he bought the original, he thought that... he says he could imagine that kissing the frog and suddenly there'd be this handsome prince this little boy was kissing, but the opposite page has the tall, slim, kind of skinny, scraggly looking girl out catching frogs, there's a frog jumping across the thing, and this woman decided on the basis of that, she hadn't read the story, she just looked through the pictures that, "George Barr cannot draw a pretty girl, he doesn't know anything about how women should look," and so she was assigning me a cover that she assigned the illustrations that went along with the cover to another artist that she figured could draw the women as pretty as they- Paul Reiche: She wanted them to be. Yeah. George Barr: Yeah. It was the only time I've ever been accused of not being able to draw pretty woman. Paul Reiche: Well, I think part of why I liked your illustrations where I always couldn't necessarily project myself into the ultra muscular, hyper testosterone bad assets that you'd see covers where your heroes had kind of a physique I could more project myself into. George Barr: Well, I tried to make them real, I even did some completely nude male figures on occasion, and somebody commented that these are extremely modest, in fact, in spite of the fact that they're nude, he says, "They're not hung like a horse," I said, "Of course not, that's not the way men look," but I've always tried, if I was doing men or women, if the story called for it, to make them good looking and just turned out that I ended up drawing more men than women, that maybe that was a matter of my choice in the subject matter, I don't know, I really honestly don't know, I never avoided drawing a picture of a woman because I may not be physically attracted to them, but I still can recognize beauty when I see it. Paul Reiche: Yeah. You once described a costume that you made for a woman in a science fiction costume show I think, trying to remember that, to get you started on it, it was someone who I believe was ill and- George Barr: Oh, yes, oh, yeah, I remember the one, the girl was going blind and she was a very pretty girl, beautiful, long, dark hair, but Bjo Trimble and I decided that we should do a costume for her for this upcoming convention that would enable her to see pictures of herself as long as she could see and see herself as beautiful as she really was, so we did a Queen of Atlantis costume, I did the headdress and the cloak and the jewelry and Bjo did the dress, the under sort of thing, and she looked beautiful and absolutely beautiful, and it was what we wanted. Paul Reiche: That was very, very nice thing to do for someone. George Barr: Well, she was a good friend, and I wish I had gotten some photographs of the costume together, she asked me if she could keep the headdress and I let her, it was a sort of semi Egyptian that I had made of almost the Cleopatra type of wings coming down around the face, I made it out of bits of cardboard that I had covered with gold lame and then glued them all together and jewels, and then had it edged with peacock feathers it was rather pretty, and it also had strings of jewels, which hung down under the chin, instead of a necklace, it hung from the edges of the headdress. George Barr: And it was kind of disappointing in one thing, I took the name from, I can't remember the name of the novel, it was made into a movie called The Queen of Atlantis, then it was remade starring Maria Montez as Siren of Atlantis, but the name of the queen was Antanea, and that's what we called her costume, was Antanea, Queen of Atlantis, and the person who was announcing it says, "Antonia, Queen of Atlantis," that hurt, it wasn't in Antonia.