Sweet Vekyra, courtesy of Stephen Fabian.

Today is January 3rd. At the DMR Blog, that means it’s Stephen Fabian Day. This is Mr. Fabian’s ninetieth birthday and all fans of classic SFF art should be thankful he’s still among us. A good, kind man and a great artist.

As is usual lately, I don’t have a lot of time on my hands. So, I thought I’d take a quick look at one of Stephen’s early classics: his illustrations for the 1977 Tamerlane edition of Jack Williamson’s Golden Blood. While the cover reprinted one of J. Allen St. John’s classic paintings for Golden Blood’’s original appearances in Weird Tales, the illos are all by Fabian. Though it can be argued just exactly which Fabian illos from the ‘70s were his best of that era, I consider Golden Blood—plus The Dream of X and the two Conan portfolios—to be some of his absolute finest work from the Groovy Decade.

One thing that gives the Golden Blood illustrations a little extra punch for me is that I look at them and think, “Damn! If only Fabian had been commissioned to illustrate ‘The Fire of Asshurbanipal’ or a collection of El Borak yarns.” If only.

Golden Blood was written during the prime of Williamson’s “Merritt period” and owes plenty to that Lord of Fantasy as well as harkening back to one of Merritt’s idols, H. Rider Haggard. The plot involves a bad-ass American at loose ends who hooks up with an expedition planning to loot a lost city in the Arabian Desert. Things take a strange turn and he winds up in a forgotten oasis full of serpent-cultists, super-science and beautiful women. Pulpish coolness ensues.

There are less than ten illos in the book, so I figure I’ll just make things easy and post them as a block below, rather than putting them in a carousel gallery. Enjoy!

“Price saw it was a bleached human skull.”

“Price’s fist samshed against Ali’s jaw.”

“She wrapped the cloak about his shoulders.”