Grant Canfield – RIP
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Science Fiction artist and cartoonist Grant Canfield has passed away.
Robert Grant Canfield
November 21, 1945 – October 21, 2025
He was born in Belmond, Iowa, making his way through high school and the Eagle Scouts in Decatur, IL, then heading west for college and continuing west until 1970, when he arrived in San Francisco. Despite having missed the Summer of Love, he found much to enjoy in the Bay Area, including West Coast science fiction fandom, his 30+ year career as one of the Bay Area’s leading architects in research and biopharmaceutical laboratory design, and nonstop cartooning. Throughout the 1970s, while preparing for his architecture licensing exams, he published cartoons in dozens of national magazines and dozens (if not hundreds) more science fiction fanzines, with caricature a specialty.
The Internet Science Fiction Database has an index of Grant contributions to science fiction fanzines shows him prominent during the 1970s and again in the 2010s. His profile at The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction explains his absence from the ‘zines between those times:
Although his career as a commercial artist and cartoonist (Ray Faraday Nelson was at one period his regular gag writer) left him less and less time for Fandom, Canfield continued to publish intermittently in the fanzines until at least 2020.
John O’Neill, a Terry Garr fan, wound up corresponding with Grant and supplies some Grant cartoons.
In 1981 Grant Canfield was a guest of honor at Westercon 34. From that program book (pdf):
The profile lists Saturday Evening Post, Good Housekeeping, National Enquirer, The Christian Science Monitor, Vertex Science Fiction, Writer’s Digest, Parade, Boy’s Life, Playgirl, Cavalier, Gallery, and True among the magazines his cartoons appeared in.
A two part video of Grant Canfield with Tim Kirk, Jim Shull, and Dan Steffan discussing SF art.
feature image from Outworlds #19 (1974)
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