John Berkey (August 13, 1932 – April 29, 2008) was an American artist known for his space and science fiction themed works. Some of Berkey's best-known work includes much of the original poster art for the Star Wars trilogy, the poster for the 1976 remake of King Kong and also the "Old Elvis Stamp". Berkey produced a large body of space fantasy artwork, producing utopian scenes of bubble-shaped, yacht-like spaceships. His distinctive painterly style has been evaluated as "at once realistic, yet impressionistic and abstract", and his space craft designs as being "distinctly elegant, yet clearly technological and unmistakably Berkian; more inspired by luxury yachts and manta rays than NASA". He has been described as "one of the giants in the history of science fiction art". Early life John Berkey was born in Edgeley, North Dakota in 1932. Berkey's early childhood was spent in Aberdeen, South Dakota. When he was aged six, he and his family moved to St. Joseph, Montana and then to Excelsior, Minnesota. In 1950, Berkey graduated from high school and went on to study at the Minneapolis School of Art. He resided in Shorewood, Minnesota. Career Berkey worked as a freelance artist from the 1960s, after an eight-year stint at Brown & Bigelow, a St. Paul, Minnesota advertising agency. There, he produced up to seventy calendar paintings a year, which featured historical scenes of the American pioneers, road and railway construction, agricultural and industrial scenes. Book covers & magazines Among other commissions, Berkey regularly produced artwork for magazines such as Popular Mechanics, Omni, Science Fiction Age, Discover, National Geographic, TV Guide and The Plain Truth. Berkey made his mark in science fiction publishing with his cover art for Ballantine Books' 1972 reprint of the STAR Science Fiction series. Following this success, he went on to design a large number of book covers including works by Isaac Asimov, Ben Bova, Philip K. Dick, Robert Heinlein, Glen Cook and many more. For the 1972 edition of Asimov's novel, The Caves of Steel, Berkey's cover art featured a self-portrait with his arm showing exposed cybernetic mechanics. NASA In the 1960s, Berkey was commissioned by NASA to produce artworks depicting the Apollo space program and other missions, as part of the NASA Art Program. He continued to paint space exploration subjects, including Skylab and the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. Film work Berkey declined an invitation from Stanley Kubrick to work