What Harlan Ellison was to the writing of the fantastic during the 1960s and 1970s -- bold, irreverent and distinctive -- Leo and Diane Dillon were to the art of the fantastic during the same era. How fitting that the Dillons are among the artists most often associated with Ellison's work.
Ellison met the Dillons in New York in the late 1950s, and through him they quickly became among the most in-demand illustrators for science fiction digests and books. Their artwork for Dangerous Visions was integral to that volume's cutting-edge character.
The couple, who virtually always worked as a team and produced art in a dazzling multiplicity of styles, also broke into other markets, producing illustrations for classic literature, men's magazines, Time-Life books, spoken-word recordings and, most of all, children's books, for which they won several Caldecott Medals medals.
The Art of Leo & Diane Dillon is a coffee-table style book that serves as a marvelous introduction to the Dillons work up until 1980. The book was nominated for a Hugo Award in 1982 for Best Non-Fiction Book (it lost to Stephen King's Danse Macabre).
