If the Stars Were Gods, paperback cover 1981

Curator: John Berkey's "If the Stars Were Gods," painted in 1981, is quite the arresting image, wouldn't you say? Oil on, presumably, canvas. Editor: Absolutely. There's an immediate sense of the epic scale here. I feel the religious tones but it is also strange, like the cover of a fantasy novel… It's got this primal scream of a reddish star, dwarfing a figure reaching out…surrounded by… are those biomechanical dinosaurs? Curator: Something like that! Berkey had a real knack for blending the organic with the mechanical, almost a premonition of steampunk, you know? He imagined futures that were less polished chrome and more… well, more lived-in. It was made for a book cover, but it is expressionistic at its core. Editor: That blending is where it gets interesting. There’s an Afrofuturist sensibility here—connecting imagined futures with a kind of primordial past and post-colonial realities, creating a counter narrative to Western canons of futurism and progress. Are the dinosaurs worshiping the human or are they mocking his worship to a dying god? The book cover is dated from 1981 during the re-theorization of feminism in postmodern philosophy. Curator: Interesting angle. I never considered the mocking part… I tend to look at these figures as symbols of humanity’s insignificance in the face of the cosmos, this vast and unknowable power out there that might as well be gods. You notice how Berkey renders the texture of the star, it pulsates right off the surface. He could bring metal and machine to life in brushstrokes. Editor: I suppose. To me, they represent a possible non-Western future, deconstructing the authority of science and technology, especially since the only human figure is portrayed in supplication to a celestial body… I see the supplication act to an all-consuming ball of fire in a different light. And what of that fire that consumes? A dying sun maybe an interesting metaphor about powerlessness… Curator: Right! So it’s not just spectacle. It has a vulnerability too, that maybe this grand deity isn’t so eternal, it can die! So you think Berkey invites a challenge to traditionally patriarchal perspectives of religion or societal system as a whole? That we might, in turn, challenge authority or authorship? It all seems rather intuitive, which can open an interpretive floodgate… Editor: It's a very useful deconstruction! You've provided the context for future creative inspiration while remaining within the traditional author-viewer relationship! It certainly gives pause to rethink canonical expectations about heroism, worship, and scale in science fiction!