Interaction Souvenir Book 2

Interaction Special Guests Alan Lee Jane Johnson I encountered Alan Lee’s work in the first week I scope for other hands started in publishing. Castles – a beautiful wielding paint and hardback by Canadian author David Day, music and drama’.... illustrated by a young British artist – was about to Even so it took a very be launched at Canada House in London’s West long time to persuade End. My boss, the publisher of George Allen & the Estate to give us Unwin, had a copy on his desk, hot off the press. I the go ahead for the remember gazing at it with considerably more project. The deciding interest than I had in my haphazard shorthand factor was Alan’s notes as he dictated a complicated letter. As a beautifully illustrated result I rather botched the important missive to a Mabinogion, the great famous TV naturalist (which later resulted in the legend cycle of the latter being very terse with me on the phone – Welsh. Alan had mountain gorillas being clearly, and treated the tales with understandably rather more endearing to him than all the respect and inefficient PAs). Castles is a gorgeous book. The delicacy one would subject matter was already appealing to me in expect from him. The finished work is one of itself, but the illustrated contents were magical: considerable grandeur, and it won over the Estate dreamy and occasionally gruesome evocations of at long last. I commissioned 50 full-colour original mythical realms in subtly-hued watercolour and paintings from Alan, with a delivery date set a the most exquisitely detailed pencil work you good three years hence. could imagine. Fabulous artwork by a true magician: I was entranced. All was set fair… Or so I thought. I had not worked directly with Alan before. I had met him The spell never wore off. and found him utterly charming. Conversations on the phone, however, could be a little vague, Some years later, I found myself in the position of punctuated by the sort of silences you get when editor in charge of the Tolkien list and was you know you’ve interrupted someone and they’re contemplating how we might mark the centenary not really focusing on what you’re saying. These of Tolkien’s birth some years hence. It was 1986. often gave the impression of trying to engage with The centenary loomed in January 1992 (those were a slightly distracted alchemist who has the the days of long-term planning in the industry…). nagging suspicion he has left something What about, I wondered, an illustrated edition of dangerous bubbling in the laboratory. In The Lord of the Rings? Tentatively, I approached the retrospect, I now recognise from this Alan’s Tolkien Estate with the concept… intensity of focus and a deep perfectionism, which Their initial response was decidedly negative: not produces miraculous results. At the time, it was a surprising given the cover treatment the works bit of a life-shortener. Deadlines came and went; had previously received, especially in the US. They the centenary crept dangerously close. Paintings argued that if JRR had wished to illustrate the remained elusive. We were still 6 short on the very work he would have done so and that to have last day we could courier them to Eastern Europe someone else interfere with the text’s vision was for the final printing date. In the end, delivery unthinkable. With a sinking heart I went away to meant one of my colleagues fetching the lick my wounds. The author had indeed never outstanding pictures by train from Exeter, with illustrated The Lord of the Rings, as he had The Alan still frantically working on them on the way. Hobbit, but I did find references in his Still unhappy with one particular detail when he correspondence to the fact that he would have reached our Hammersmith offices, he slipped off done so had he felt equal to the task, and that he to the Art Department and swiftly and ruthlessly was creating a mythology which would ‘leave guillotined the feet off Aragorn and Eowyn… 49 Splitting Infinity But the finished book is glorious, a masterwork of When I saw the first 20 minutes of rough footage illustration. Selecting tangential quieter moments from Fellowship of the Ring, I was unutterably and non-obvious scenes alongside grand drama, moved: there in front of my eyes the paintings I Alan did magnificent justice to Tolkien’s great had commissioned over so many years sprang to epic; and holding a finished copy of the illustrated life. (Take a look at the painting depicting Aragorn Lord of the Rings in my hands for the first time and the hobbits sitting at night at the feet of the remains the proudest moment in my twenty-year Stone Trolls. Unmistakably, in weird time-slip, publishing career. there sit Billy Boyd and Viggo Mortensen. The likenesses, created years before the movies came How bizarre then, some ten or so years later, to into being, are truly eerie.) The memory of walking take a call from the other side of the world, asking around the set of Edoras, the Golden Hall, in the for Alan Lee’s contact details, because the speaker gorgeous mountain wilderness of South Island as was engaged in pre-production work on a movie Alan adjusted minute details of weathered eaves version of the novel and had been inspired by and worn stonework, will remain with me to my Alan’s paintings. And how much more bizarre to dying day: it was like stepping back a thousand set foot in Middle-earth (aka New Zealand) two years in time – like watching a sorcerer putting the years after that at Peter Jackson’s invitation to see finishing touches to the world he has created. what Alan and John Howe (whom I had also commissioned to produce Tolkien calendars and Those of us who love Tolkien’s work have a very book jackets) had created. Bizarre to walk over to great deal to thank Alan Lee for. I do believe that the Art Department at the Wellington production no one else in the world could have brought such a studio only to be confronted by a pencil sketch of sympathetic sensibility, such an empathy with the Saruman in Alan’s inimitable style, finger pointed nobility of the characters and the subtleties of a Lord-Kitchener-style, bearing the legend: Sauron water-formed landscape, or such an intuitive sense Needs YOU. Or finding Alan at his desk in the of the hidden tides of the text, to bear upon the converted paint factory surrounded by hundreds visual interpretation of Middle-earth. of tantalising drawings for statues and carvings Jane Johnson is Publishing Director at and architecture and characters and battles. HarperCollins, and also writes as Jude Fisher 50 Interaction Special Guests David SouthwoodJ & EH Most of us discovered science fiction in our teenage Over the past 35 years, when that ‘sense of wonder’ was being years David stimulated by space opera. Jaunting around the Southwood has universe discovering new planets and new species published more was what many of us were dreaming about, than 200 papers wondering whether it may come true. On 14 and scientific January 2005 the Huygens probe landed articles, and has successfully on Saturn’s largest moon Titan, taking worked on a us a little closer to our dreams. variety of space ESA - P.Sebirot missions, including heading up the What was probably just as remarkable as this team that built the magnetometer for the Cassini farthest landing from Earth to date was the Saturn orbiter of the NASA/ESA Cassini-Huygens coverage that BBC TV gave to this event! I am sure mission. that not since the Apollo Moon landings had so much time been devoted to a space exploration He began working at ESA in 1997 as head of Earth event – well that’s probably open to debate but it observation strategy where he introduced a new certainly felt like it. We were treated to all the programme in Earth science – The Living Planet. graphic powers that the corporation could muster In 1999 he returned to academia to become to show the little probe descending to the surface Regents Professor first at UCLA and then at of this alien world. But no graphics were Imperial College, London. In May 2001 he was necessary to illustrate the enthusiasm and invited back to ESA to lead the space science excitement of the space scientists at ESA who had programme. obviously put so much of their time and lives into making this a success. If this wasn’t enough to fire David Southwood has chaired a number of the imagination of future space scientists I don’t committees associated with space science in know what would. Europe. These include head of the ESA Space Science Advisory Committee from 1990 to 1993 And at Interaction we are sure that this excitement and head of the ESA Science Programme will be continued when Professor David Committee from 1993 to 1996. Southwood gives his keynote talk in the Interaction Science Programme – ‘Titan and the In May 2001 David Southwood took up his post as Imagination, Huygens and Cassini’. Director of Science (D/SCI), in charge of the ESA Science Programme. David Southwood is a space physicist who has spent most of his career teaching and carrying out When asked about his job as Director of Science at research. After graduating in 1966 he decided to ESA David Southwood said “it is probably the pursue a career in academia and went on to most interesting job a space scientist could aspire Imperial College London, UK, where he obtained a to and possibly the most challenging”.

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