The Science Fiction Art Of Vincent DiFate
(2001 - Paper Tiger)

As this is the only real collection of DiFate's work to date, it is unfortunate that more of its pages are not devoted to giving full-page presentations of his paintings & drawings. There are about 60 examples on hand, among 112 pages. Almost every other page has some smaller image or two, but the main thrust of them is text devoted to essays split pretty evenly between his career and golden age science fiction movies (titles: The Infinite In Black And White (And Shades Of Grey), Gadget Man, Sci-Fi - Hokum And Barry Who ?, and Shadows On The Sky (The Early Flying Saucer Era)). With that said, every image, large or small, is accompanied by a caption containing not only size, media & use of the original, but also a healthy anecdote concerning it or its subject. This collection is dominated by his paintings, but many of the smaller pieces are interesting magazine spot-drawings he created. Also, there are 14 images that spread across the book's gutter, but only a third of them do so for a satisfying result. While you will find here dinosaurs, dragons, monsters, aliens, stalwarts, beauties, spaceships, robots and futuristic cities, there is also a large representation of his space art, along with illustrations of our space program, as well as proposals that were never realized.

Perhaps I'm judging too harshly DiFate's other collection, DiFATE'S CATALOG OF SCIENCE FICTION HARDWARE. It has almost as many good presentations of the man's paintings (and only 13 of the same ones) but is almost half again as big, with all those additional pages given over to low-grade technical diagrams & "blueprints". Certainly a disappointment there, but if you are indeed as taken by Vincent DiFate's singular style as I am, then I guess it's worth grabbing too.