After hearing about the passing of Chris Moore, which I mentioned last week, I remembered the several email conversations we have had over the years. I was really chuffed to get his reply to my mention of the lettering for Larry McMurty covers where Tom Stimpson dd the main artwork and Chris did the titles. He said “It’s really nice to see that someone has taken an active interest in a field of work that has largely gone unnoticed over the years”
Having been down in Kent for the week I now need to add more cover scans to Chris’ page but I was intrigued to see he went to Maidstone College of Art as that was where I was. I have taken the liberty of including my condensed version of the biography on www.chrismooreillustration.co.uk which says “Chris Moore was born in Rotherham, South Yorkshire June 1st 1947. He was educated at Mexborough Grammar School, Doncaster Art School and Maidstone College of Art on a Graphic Design course. From there he was accepted by the Royal College of Art to study Illustration. After several years he discovered S/F working on titles by Isaac Asimov, Larry Niven, Frederick Pohl, Anne McCaffrey, Clifford D. Simak, Kurt Vonnegut, J.G. Ballard, Arthur C. Clarke and Samuel R. Delany, Moore was also the artist of choice for more mainstream writers like Jeffery Archer, Frederick Forsyth, Jackie Collins, Claire Francis, Stephen Leather, Wilbur Smith, Terence Strong, and Colin Forbes. Amongst the UK publishers Chris worked for were not only PAN but Transworld, Orion, Penguin, Harper Collins, Sphere, Hodder, Associated Book Publishers (Magnum), Headline, Random House, Time Warner, Octopus, Hamlyn, and many others. In the early 80s Moore joined Artist Partners alongside many familiar names such as Brian Sanders and Cecil Vieweg, Chris became good friends with Jim Burns, Fred Gambino and Keith Scaife all well know S/F cover artists. Chris sadly passed away on the 7th February 2025”
I was most surprised to find I had ‘won’ a bundle of stock lists on eBay. The starting bid was £1.00 which someone had bid so I went to £1.20 where it remained for the several days to go before it finished. I was convinced some else would bid but no the 20 were mine for £1.20 which I think is a bargain. They are from PAN, Fontana, Hodder and Stoughton, Puffin, Sphere, NEL, Transworld and Granada.
Having mentioned Derek Arthur Stowe before I was pleased to get hold of number 88 of the ‘Tecnirama’ partwork. This was first published in the UK as ‘Understanding Science’ while ‘Tecnirama’ was published in Italy and the cover is the one piece of original artwork by Derek I have. It was also used as the frontispiece for a couple of editions of hardbacks in the UK and Germany. Being a bit of a completest I know I am missing ‘Understanding Science’ second printing for number 88 so if anyone has a spare copy or possibly a scan or knows of any more sightings please comment or email me.