As 2014 comes to a close, we take a moment at Geeks Of Doom to remember all the fallen entertainment figures in film and television who left us this year. This year, we gave a farewell to a large array of heavyweights, cult heroes, pioneering figures, and sentimental favorites who were among those who have passed on in a physical sense, but leaving the memories, the ones that they made in the past and the ones each of their fans have in regards to them.

H.R. Giger, the Swiss surrealist painter and sculptor who became internationally renowned in the 1970s for the nightmarish visions he helped bring to life in Ridley Scott’s sci-fi/horror masterpiece Alien, has died at the age of 74.

The cause of death was injuries Giger sustained in a fall on some stairs at his home in Zurich, Switzerland. He succumbed to his injuries in a hospital yesterday, as told by Sandra Mivelaz, administrator of the H.R. Giger museum in Gruyeres, western Switzerland, to the The Associated Press.

A master of disturbing artistic visions that fused Gothic horror, sexuality, and extraterrestrial machinery in a way that no one could ever imitate, Giger’s work first caught the attention of filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky, who hired him to provide design work for his eventually-shelved adaptation of Dune.

The Book of Alien
Written By: Paul Scanlon and Michael Gross
Published by: Titan Books
Release Date: May 29, 2012
Paperback

The Book of Alien by Paul Scanlon and Michael Gross was originally published by Heavy Metal Books in 1979. Ridley Scott’s return to science-fiction with Prometheus has sparked a renewed interest in the Alien mythos once again, so Titan Books has reprinted this 112-page art book, which features conceptual designs and illustrations that would come to define Ridley Scott‘s Alien as a science-fiction masterpiece.

The book features minimal information about the genesis of Dan O’Bannon’s script and the film’s production. Instead, The Book of Alien is an art book that focuses strictly on the visual aspects of Alien, filled with countless illustrations and photographs from the film’s production.

Artists Ron Cobb created hundreds of preliminary sketches of the interiors and exteriors of the Nostromo ship, which went through many design concepts, as well as the escape shuttle, Narcissus. Joining Cobb on the more human aspects of the film was artist Chris Foss, known for his covers of science-fiction novels and spaceship illustrations.