The Best Rootin’ Tootin’ Shootin’ Gunslinger in the Whole Damned Galaxy

1983

Hal Salive Science Fiction and Fantasy Collection, University of Otago Library Special Collections. With kind permission from Penguin Group (USA).

New York: Signet; New American Library

Tom Hallman has been an illustrator for over thirty years and has created over a thousand covers for authors such as Dean Koontz, John Grisham and Stephen King. He describes in his own words how the ‘rootin’, tootin’’ image came about. ‘As a young illustrator in 1983, recently married and with our first child, I was fortunate to be asked by the art director, Jim Plumeri of Signet Books, to create this image….Jim tested me in many genres of cover art, so to have a playful, sci-fi cover next on the boards was truly a challenge, but a pleasure…I was able to enlist the help of a relative to pose as the cowboy, then my wife posed for all of the creatures' arm gestures. The rest was pure fun, adding as much color, atmosphere and humor as I could muster.’ (Hallman, 2015)