Artist H.R. Giger, born in 1940, was plagued by terrifyingly vivid nightmares that made even the worst Black Mirror episodes seem like Disney movies in comparison.
His art was his outlet, a way to cope with and express himself.
His art featured recurring themes of blurring the boundaries between organic and inorganic, human and machine, and life and death. In many ways, his biomechanics concepts were remarkably prescient and would appear repeatedly in the science fiction genre.
The ghost of a living, dying robot that haunted him in his dreams became a terrifyingly powerful muse.
In the late 1970s, Ridley Scott was looking for an artist to design the monsters and spaceships for the next Alien series.
When Ridley Scott presented his chosen artists to the management of 20th Century Fox, they were initially stunned. They were concerned that this was a massively budgeted film, and that adapting Giger's unsettling art into a movie might be too much for conventional audiences.
Scott moved forward with a bold vision, insisting that it had to be Giger, that Giger was the man. Ultimately, he was fortunate enough to win.
Giger began drawing art for future alien Xenomorphs and spaceship designs.
And eventually, this art began to be directly translated into final products.
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