View 342 December 27, 2004 (original) (raw)
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Sunday, January 2, 2005
Frank Kelly Freas, a long time friend and associate and the dean of science fiction illustrators, died peacefully in his sleep at 4:36 PST last night. His daughter Jackie and his second wife Dr. Laura Brodian Freas, were with him. The funeral will be tomorrow, Monday, in Canoga Park.
I first met Kelly in about 1960. He was already a giant, responsible for many pictures and illustrations out in the mainstream, as well as science fiction illustrations. One of my favorites, the Mad Magazine parody of "Great Moments in Medicine" (Kelly's was "Presenting the Bill")nearly caused my flight surgeon to die of laughter, and it was years before I realized that painting was Kelly's. He could draw in many styles, and while the "Kelly Freas Style" is instantly recognizable, some of his best work is entirely different.
Like most science fiction friendships, our was largely confined to conventions, where I would meet Kelly and Polly several times a year, and we often ended up in the same late night parties. Polly died of cancer some years ago, and Kelly began to fade, until he met Dr. Laura Brodian. Their marriage gave him a new lease on life.
Kelly did the illustrations for my first published science fiction stories, both short fiction and my novel Spaceship For The King; indeed he did illustrations for that several times, both interior illustrations and the cover for Analog, then for the DAW books publication, for the British edition, and for a consolidated novel including other stories. He later showed me the sketches he had done for that book, and gave me a couple of them. The sketches showed just how closely he had read the novel. Kelly never did anything by halves. His interior illustration for "The Mercenary", the first of my Falkenberg stories, actually influenced the way I saw my own character; Kelly may have paid more attention to some of the details than I had.
Kelly also did the covers for the short-lived Laser Books novels. I had three of those, all put back in print after Laser's demise, each with a Frank Kelly Freas cover: and although he was doing four covers a month for that series, it was clear enough that he had read each novel, and each of the covers had details peculiar to the story. He was a professional and a craftsman as well as a gifted artist, and it all showed in his work.
If Kelly had an enemy I never knew it, although I suppose some of those he skewered with his illustrations might have felt a few twinges of rage. In person, though, he was so unfailingly pleasant that even when he was angry it was hard to detect that.
Kelly was the "star" of a famous science fiction skit called "The Capture", based on the premise that a World Science Fiction Convention was held on a cruise ship in the Bermuda Triangle, and the inevitable happened: all the passengers were taken aboard an alien spaceship. The skit was done as a series of reports by the alien expedition commander. Most of the reports received advice from headquarters that "Gremlins do not exist," although it was clear from what was going on with the detainees that perhaps there was a gremlin among them. It would be no favor to Robert Asprin and Phil Foglio who created this remarkable presentation to try to summarize it, and I don't suppose it was recorded, which is all our loss.
My wife reminds me that "pixie" might be a better description of Kelly than "gremlin" but both are apt; and of course Kelly's famous cover for Martians Go Home! was the definitive study of little green men. He created many other such lasting images.
Kelly was the founding Presiding Judge of the Artists of the Future Contest, which is an annual event begun by L. Ron Hubbard and includes the Writers of the Future Contest of which Larry Niven and I, among many others, are judges. His kindness to aspiring young writers and illustrators was legendary.
Now that Ted Cogswell, Poul Anderson, Gordon Dickson, Frank Herbert, Cliff Simak, are no longer with us, what used to be known as "The Old Guard" has disappeared from science fiction conventions. Kelly was one of the last, and his room was often the scene of late night parties where we all drank too much and sang the old songs. That era ended some time ago, and perhaps better so. We all drank far too much in those days, and the old songs may not have been as good as we thought they were. Some were pretty good, though, and now there are few who remember them.
God Bless you, Kelly.
Fire and fleet and candlelight,
and Christ receive thy soul.
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