Hannes Bok

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Hannes Bok bigraphy, stories - American illustrator and writer

Hannes Bok : biography

July 2, 1914 – April 11, 1964

Hannes Bok, pseudonym for Wayne Francis Woodard (July 2, 1914 – April 11, 1964), was an American artist and illustrator, as well as an amateur astrologer and writer of fantasy fiction and poetry. He painted nearly 150 covers for various science fiction, fantasy, and detective fiction magazines, as well as contributing hundreds of black and white interior illustrations. Bok’s work graced the pages of calendars and early fanzines, as well as dust jackets from specialty book publishers like Arkham House, Llewellyn, Shasta, and Fantasy Press. His paintings achieved a luminous quality through the use of an arduous glazing process, which was learned from his mentor, Maxfield Parrish. Bok shared one of the inaugural 1953 Hugo Awards for science fiction achievement (best Cover Artist).

Today, Bok is best known for his cover art which appeared on various pulp and science fiction magazines, such as Weird Tales, Famous Fantastic Mysteries, Other Worlds, Super Science Stories, Imagination, Fantasy Fiction, Planet Stories, If, Castle of Frankenstein and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

Bok as an author

First edition of Bok’s novel [[The Sorcerer’s Ship with cover art by Ray Cruz, Ballantine Books, 1969.]]

As an author, Bok is best known for his novels The Sorcerer’s Ship, originally published in the December 1942 issue of John W. Campell’s legendary fantasy magazine Unknown; and The Blue Flamingo/Beyond the Golden Stair. The Blue Flamingo first appeared in the January 1948 issue of Startling Stories. Bok later performed an extensive revision and expansion of this work, published posthumously as Beyond the Golden Stair (1970). Both novels have been repeatedly re-issued, as in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series. Bok also was allowed to complete two novellas left unfinished by A. Merritt at the time of his death in 1943. These were published as The Blue Pagoda (1946) and The Black Wheel (1947). (Bok’s commitment to fantasy and science fiction had occurred in 1927 in connection with Merritt’s The Moon Pool in Amazing Stories – one of those conversion experiences common among young SF fans.) Also published posthumously was a collection of Bok’s poetry, Spinner of Silver and Thistle (1972).

Bok as an artist

Bok is better known for his art than for his fiction. His style could alternate between, or combine, lush romanticism and humorous grotesquery. His use of time-consuming glazing techniques for his paintings impeded his productivity and limited his output, and therefore his commercial success. He also spent time carving figures in wood and making masks in papier mache. In the 1950s he was able to do more book-jacket illustrations, which he found less irksome than magazine work; though he could never have abandoned the latter. His striking wraparound cover for the November 1963 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, illustrating Roger Zelazny’s "A Rose for Ecclesiastes", was published in the last months of his life.

Bok and Ed Emshwiller shared one of the inaugural Hugo Awards for science fiction achievement in 1953, as the previous year’s best "Cover Artist" (a tie); Virgil Finlay was recognized as the best "Interior Illustrator". Cover and interior illustration were not thereafter distinguished by the Hugo Award for Best Artist under various names.

Bok and Emil Petaja

The science fiction and fantasy author Emil Petaja (1915–2000) was lifelong friend of Bok and collector of his work. After Bok’s death, Petaja did as much as anyone to keep the artist’s work before the public eye.

Bok and Petaja first met in the summer of 1936. According to Petaja, Bok and his friend Harold Taves were hitch-hiking from Seattle to New York City when they stopped off in Montana to see the aspiring writer. At first correspondents, Bok and Petaja soon became close friends. The two had much in common – including an interest in fantasy fiction, the Kalevala (the Finnish verse epic), and the music of Sibelius.