Rating: 
Summary: Beautiful Book
Review: A nice coffee-table book, featuring both well-known and almost-forgotten pictures. There is a wonderful two-page Foreword by Ray Bradbury.This book is divided into two sections. The first section, "Doorways to the Future," which has lengthy and informative narrative, focuses on the history of Sci-Fi art. Beginning with woodcuts, early mechanical drawings, and illustrations for the works of Jules Verne, this section gently leads the reader though the many stages of evolution of fantastic art. There are quite a few black and white drawings from such artists as Henri de Montaut, Joseph Clement Coll, Virgil Finlay, and Leo Summers (a colorblind artist who created some fine, detailed sketches). Also included are some examples from early "Flash Gordon" and "Buck Rogers" comics. The second section, "Masters of the Infinite," showcases artists in alphabetical order, starting with Paul Alexander and ending with Stephen Youll. Of course some popular artists are left out, but the samples of those who are included do give ample credit to those named (although some of the selections are not always among the artists' "best"). There are a few borderline Sci-Fi/Fantasy works in this book, from Frank Frazetta, Manual Sanjulian, and Boris Vallejo, though most of the art is focused on Science Fiction art. The art in this book includes book covers, magazine covers, illustrations for stories, and commissioned/noncommissioned art. The colors are sharp and clear, edges are crisp and clean. There are many full-page pictures, even a few two-pagers. No pictures are "too small." While a great book, I'm taking one-and-a-half stars off for the bad editing. Quite a few of the works are identified incorrectly (mislabeled), really they are just transposed in most cases. Still, someone should have caught these errors before the book was printed. Recommended for Sci-Fi buffs. Three-and-a-half stars, rounded up.
Rating: 
Summary: An Invaluable Source
Review: As a science fiction screenwriter and art designer, I looked a long time to find examples of classic science fiction artwork from the past century, and found myself limited to the covers of moldy and ragged original paperback editions. Then I found this book, which contained everything I was searching for in a single place. Here is a collection of the best work from the greatest illustrators, Chesley Bonestell, Paul Lehr, Richard Powers, Stanley Meltzoff, and countless others. This is a beautiful history not only of science fiction artwork, but of science fiction itself. My only complaint: like a lot of art books, the paintings are often spread over two pages, hiding the middle of the picture in the fold of the spine. But that's my only complaint.
Rating: 
Summary: Too outdated, and missing some of the best recent artists
Review: I found this book to be sadly lacking recent artists, concentrating too much on pulp artists. There is no mention of Chriss Foss, Tim White, Angus Mckie, Peter Ellison - just to name a few. I found De Fate also seems to have a bias agains photorealistic images being produced by artists today. What few images there were of this type were generally reporodced so small that it was impossible to appreciate their detail. Whereas images where huge blotches of paint were evident were granted pages of their own. If you want pulp art, this is a book for you. If you want to see post 1980 work, particuarly of SF hardware, you should look elsewhere.
Rating:
Summary: A fine survey of a neglected field
Review: I'll add just a couple of comments to the good reviews done on this. I see INFINITE WORLDS as a great survey of science fiction art - there is little purely fantasy art here. DiFate is himself a leading SF artist, and his narrrative in the book is enthusiastic and informative. If you ever get the chance to see him in person, as I did in Chattanooga, don't miss it! He clearly knows the field very well, but he uses artistic jargon sparingly. The book surveys a wide variety of styles, usually paintings but some in other media. Yet I think those who denounce his inclusion of earlier "pulp" art are missing his purpose in this. DiFate is trying to present here a history of SF art and to show its variety. He sees some of those "pulp" artists, especially Frank R. Paul, as very influential on later artists. Some of that work was of good quality, and takes up much less than half the book in any case. Incidentally, INFINITE WORLDS is also beautiful. The various sizes of the images is nicely balanced, and the book is large enough for full-page reproductions to look very impressive. Maybe this book will encourage more museums to take notice of the many fine science fiction art works that have been produced!
Rating:
Summary: A fine survey of a neglected field
Review: I'll add just a couple of comments to the good reviews done on this. I see INFINITE WORLDS as a great survey of science fiction art - there is little purely fantasy art here. DiFate is himself a leading SF artist, and his narrrative in the book is enthusiastic and informative. If you ever get the chance to see him in person, as I did in Chattanooga, don't miss it! He clearly knows the field very well, but he uses artistic jargon sparingly. The book surveys a wide variety of styles, usually paintings but some in other media. Yet I think those who denounce his inclusion of earlier "pulp" art are missing his purpose in this. DiFate is trying to present here a history of SF art and to show its variety. He sees some of those "pulp" artists, especially Frank R. Paul, as very influential on later artists. Some of that work was of good quality, and takes up much less than half the book in any case. Incidentally, INFINITE WORLDS is also beautiful. The various sizes of the images is nicely balanced, and the book is large enough for full-page reproductions to look very impressive. Maybe this book will encourage more museums to take notice of the many fine science fiction art works that have been produced!
Rating:
Summary: A coffee table book, but a beautiful one
Review: Infinite Worlds is divided into two lushly illustrated halves. The first half, "Doorways to the Future", is an eighty-odd page history of science fiction art. Di Fate goes back to Bosch and da Vinci, and then gives several pages to the late nineteenth century illustrators such as Robida and the early pulp artists before moving on to the genre work that fills most of the pages. Di Fate's history is sound, and the stories are interesting, but he accompanies them with pictures that are distractingly gorgeous to look at and which make it hard to concentrate on the tale he tells. Page 34, for example, has a full page reproduction of the Startling Stories cover for van Vogt's "The Shadow Men" that shows a black robot firing a ray gun, with green rays shooting from its eyes, and a beautiful scantily clad woman struggling in its arms. How can you concentrate on the text with that sort of thing going on? The second half (actually two-thirds by page count) of the book is called "Masters of the Infinite" and consists of (mostly) two page spreads of each of about a hundred artists. There's a little text too, maybe two or three paragraphs, to give you some context for the artist. Only the most influential get more than two pages--Freas of course, Frazetta, Whelan, Paul. Richard Powers gets four pages, which is good to see--he's not as well known now as he should be, perhaps because he did so much work for book covers rather than magazines; but he is a major figure. There are a couple of odd omissions, which other reviewers have noted below. I'll just mention one: Chris Foss, who was perhaps the single most influential British sf artist ever. What makes the omission even more extraordinary is that di Fate acknowledges Foss' tremendous influence twice, on pages 82 and 84. Perhaps there were copyright problems, and Foss' work wasn't available; whatever the reason, it's a pity. The only other negative comment I have is that the book is no more than a survey. Lovers of the work of any of these artists will have to go elsewhere for their fix of Bonestell or Finlay or Barlowe--no one artist has more than half a dozen works here. But that's what the book is designed to be, and *as* a survey it works wonderfully well.
Rating:
Summary: A coffee table book, but a beautiful one
Review: Infinite Worlds is divided into two lushly illustrated halves. The first half, "Doorways to the Future", is an eighty-odd page history of science fiction art. Di Fate goes back to Bosch and da Vinci, and then gives several pages to the late nineteenth century illustrators such as Robida and the early pulp artists before moving on to the genre work that fills most of the pages. Di Fate's history is sound, and the stories are interesting, but he accompanies them with pictures that are distractingly gorgeous to look at and which make it hard to concentrate on the tale he tells. Page 34, for example, has a full page reproduction of the Startling Stories cover for van Vogt's "The Shadow Men" that shows a black robot firing a ray gun, with green rays shooting from its eyes, and a beautiful scantily clad woman struggling in its arms. How can you concentrate on the text with that sort of thing going on? The second half (actually two-thirds by page count) of the book is called "Masters of the Infinite" and consists of (mostly) two page spreads of each of about a hundred artists. There's a little text too, maybe two or three paragraphs, to give you some context for the artist. Only the most influential get more than two pages--Freas of course, Frazetta, Whelan, Paul. Richard Powers gets four pages, which is good to see--he's not as well known now as he should be, perhaps because he did so much work for book covers rather than magazines; but he is a major figure. There are a couple of odd omissions, which other reviewers have noted below. I'll just mention one: Chris Foss, who was perhaps the single most influential British sf artist ever. What makes the omission even more extraordinary is that di Fate acknowledges Foss' tremendous influence twice, on pages 82 and 84. Perhaps there were copyright problems, and Foss' work wasn't available; whatever the reason, it's a pity. The only other negative comment I have is that the book is no more than a survey. Lovers of the work of any of these artists will have to go elsewhere for their fix of Bonestell or Finlay or Barlowe--no one artist has more than half a dozen works here. But that's what the book is designed to be, and *as* a survey it works wonderfully well.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent resource
Review: This is a truly wonderful, beautiful book. Opening the mind and eye to all sorts of great science fiction artists that might otherwise be forgotten. I spoke to Mr. DiFate about what caused the absence of the important artist Chris Foss from his book. He said there were problems with, first, getting Foss's permission (Foss wanted all his work to spread over the crack in the middle of the book, as if this would deter electronic copying), and then Foss dilly-dallied in sending his work to DiFate until it was too late to publish. Really too bad, because this is otherwise the best imaginable survey of science fiction art.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent resource
Review: This is a truly wonderful, beautiful book. Opening the mind and eye to all sorts of great science fiction artists that might otherwise be forgotten. I spoke to Mr. DiFate about what caused the absence of the important artist Chris Foss from his book. He said there were problems with, first, getting Foss's permission (Foss wanted all his work to spread over the crack in the middle of the book, as if this would deter electronic copying), and then Foss dilly-dallied in sending his work to DiFate until it was too late to publish. Really too bad, because this is otherwise the best imaginable survey of science fiction art.
Rating:
Summary: Too outdated, and missing some of the best recent artists
Review: This is the most beatifully executed overview of fantastic art I have ever seen. The reproduction is as clear as it gets, and the supporting text is extremely informative. There was definitely a lot of effort put into the making of this book. ...and hey, the price is right!
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