Chris Moore, Illustrator for Classic Sci-Fi Books, Dies at 77

Chris Moore, a British artist who conjured fantastical worlds with high-sheen covers for books by science-fiction masters like Philip K. Dick, Arthur C. Clarke and Alfred Bester, and who lent his artistry to albums by Rod Stewart and Fleetwood Mac, died on Feb. 7 at his home in Charmouth, on the southwestern coast of England. He was 77.

His wife, Katie Moore, announced his death on his Facebook page. She did not cite a cause.

Making his name with a crisp, airbrushed style that blended the detail of photo realism with leaps of imagination, Mr. Moore was a renowned figure in the science fiction world. But you would never hear that from him.

“Call him a master, or a titan in his sphere, and he simply won’t have it,” Stephen Gallagher wrote in the introduction to the book “Journeyman: The Art of Chris Moore,” a 2000 collaboration with the artist. “The most you’ll ever get out of him is a grudging admission of some quiet satisfaction when something in a picture comes right.”

Despite his modesty, Mr. Moore provided memorable interstellar images for various editions of notable books by Mr. Dick — including his novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?,” the basis of the 1982 film “Blade Runner” — as well as works by Kurt Vonnegut, Isaac Asimov, Ursula K. Le Guin, H.G. Wells, Alastair Reynolds, J.G. Ballard, Stephen King and many others.

While best known for his visual journeys through the cosmos, Mr. Moore produced a wide range of illustrations. He created the art for several album covers, including Fleetwood Mac’s “Penguin” (1973) and Mr. Stewart’s “The Vintage Years 1969-70” (1976), as well as contributing images to magazines like Omni and Asimov’s Science Fiction. And he designed wallpaper tied to the Star Wars film “The Empire Strikes Back” (1980).

While he considered himself more a craftsman than an artist, Mr. Moore allowed that there was a certain magic involved in bringing far-off worlds to life.

“The process of creating these images was more of a journey of discovery than creation,” he said in a 2011 interview with the Red Moon Chronicle, a sci-fi and fantasy site. It was if he “had almost ‘found’ the image,” he said, “like it was a combination of some text you’d been given and a series of happy accidents that you had gone through to arrive at this window on the future.”

Christopher Norton Moore was born on June 1, 1947, in Rotherham, England, in South Yorkshire.

“I realized from a very early age what I wanted to do, which was nothing to do with fine art as such,” he said in an interview published by Artist Partners, an agency that represented him. “A commercial artist was my ambition from around 3 or 4 years old.”

He studied graphic design at Maidstone College of Art in England before being accepted by the Royal College of Art in London, where he focused on illustration from 1969 to 1972.

Mr. Moore produced his first book cover in 1972: a reprint of Lawrence Durrell’s 1938 novel, “The Black Book.” Working with Peter Bennett, the art director at Associated Book Publishers, he was soon illustrating covers for many publications.

“I was barely aware of science fiction” at that point, he said, adding, referring to the Stanley Kubrick film, “I’d seen ‘2001,’ and that was about all.”

That would change when Mr. Moore made his mark with “Extro,” a British edition of Mr. Bester’s “The Computer Connection” (1975).

In addition to his wife, Mr. Moore is survived by his daughter, Georgia Whiting, and his sons, Harry, Robbie and William Moore.

He exhibited his work for the first time in 1995, at the World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow, where he realized that there was a market for his originals, which he began selling.

Even so, Mr. Moore remained steadfast in avoiding lofty posturing as a fine artist. “If someone wants a picture of a horse to illustrate their new range of lasagna,” he said in the Agency Partners interview, “then I follow the brief and produce a picture of an Italian horse.”