H.R. Giger‘s groundbreaking production design for Ridley Scott‘s Alien (’79) was organic and porous and oozy…giant rib-cage interiors and moist reptilian leather and gloopy saliva drippings. I don’t know or care which way Giger personally swung but his work was fairly gay and throbbing and meat-lockerish. In one fell swoop Giger erased all those smooth antisceptic sci-fi space-travel imaginings that began with the Flash Gordon serials and The Day The Earth Stood Still and Forbidden Planet and….sorry, I fell asleep. No disrespect or anything. I was lying on the bad as I wrote this on the iPhone and I dropped off…sorry. In his own glistening meat-and-bone way Giger’s realm was almost certainly influenced by the paintings of Francis Bacon, whether he copped to it or not. (Ditto Tim Palen‘s Guts.)