An Artist's Life

A dying painter returns from the Moon and discovers an artist whose work contains a perspective no human mind should possess.

Brent Dalgreen is a celebrated painter who has spent an entire year capturing the stark landscapes of the Moon. His artistic ambition has come at a terrible cost: prolonged exposure to radiation has damaged his body, leaving him only a few months to live. Even worse, Brent believes he has failed to express the haunting alien quality of the lunar world.

During a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brent encounters a landscape painted by the mysterious Arthur Di Costa. Although the picture shows an ordinary autumn forest, something within it feels profoundly unnatural. The familiar Earth scene appears to have been observed through eyes that do not understand human life.

Determined to uncover the secret behind this extraordinary vision, Brent visits Di Costa and studies his paintings, his unusual home and his seemingly normal family. The more Brent observes, the more convinced he becomes that the artist may not be entirely human.

His investigation leads him through a futuristic New York filled with automated homes, moving walkways, flying vehicles and hidden technology. When Brent follows Di Costa to a secret underground facility, he discovers that Earth is connected to an advanced extraterrestrial civilization—and that the truth behind the painter’s talent is stranger than anything he imagined.

An Artist’s Life by Harry Harrison is an imaginative science-fiction story about creativity, perception, mortality and humanity’s limited understanding of alien intelligence. Combining mystery, futuristic technology and a clever final twist, it asks whether great art depends upon technical skill or upon seeing the universe in a completely different way.

Perfect for readers who enjoy classic pulp science fiction, hidden alien societies, lunar exploration, futuristic mysteries, unusual first-contact stories and thought-provoking tales about art and imagination.