The late, great Kelly Freas* would’ve turned ninety-eight today. As I’ve noted elsewhere, Freas started out in Weird Tales and could have had a fine career illustrating fantasy and weird fiction. However, he tied his star to the burgeoning science fiction market and became one of the all-time greats. For me, without question, Freas’ art epitomizes the look of what’s known as the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Gorgeous color, beautiful women, sleek spaceships and a universe blazing with stars.

My time is very short this evening. So, I’m just going to stack some selected Freas paintings below. No captions, because, honestly, I’m not sure where one or two of them appeared. I will say a couple are from his Planet Stories days in the early ‘50s. I’ll let y’all guess which ones.

I hope you enjoy them. I know that looking at Freas art always makes me smile.

*Pronounced “freeze”. Yeah, he was pretty damned cool.

Happy birthday, Mr. Freas.