The World Jones Made

As I continued working my way through illustrating Philip Dick's books, they became crazier and more depressing and I became crazier and more depressed. This one, "The World Jones Made," had something to do with mutants in a post-nuclear-war world, alien spores, precognition, colonizing the planet Venus, and a religious cult led by a clairvoyant named Jones. The book was published in 1956 but again, Dick's vision was disturbingly true. In 1979 the mass suicide of Jim Jones' cult in Guyana (in late 1978) was still a new and horrific memory. There were mass deaths in this book and I tied them together with the suicide cult by copying images of the piled-up corpses from Jonestown. I modeled Jones (the big face with glasses) on myself. You'd have to pay me a lot to read this book again. I have a copy of it in the Gregg Press edition but I am glad to have it gather dust until I move to Venus.

"The World Jones Made" is ink on illustration board, about 7" x 10", summer 1979.