Researching Jim Burns

In 1966 he joined the Royal Air Force, but soon thereafter he left and signed up at the Newport School of Art for a year's foundation course.

After that, he went on to complete a 3-year Diploma in Art and Design at Saint Martin's School of Art in London. When he left Saint Martin's in 1972 he had already joined the recently established illustration agency Young Artists. He has been with this agency, later renamed Arena, ever since.

He is today a contemporary British science fiction illustrator. His work mostly deals with science fiction with erotic overtones. His paintings are generally intricate photo-realistic works of beautiful women set against advanced machines and spaceships. While his preparatory sketches are more erotically focused, his final works and published book covers have a more academic tone portraying far off and imaginary worlds.

Apart from book and game covers, Burns briefly worked with Ridley Scott on Blade Runner, and his illustrations and paintings comprise much of the book Mechanismo by Harry Harrison. He has also had books of his own works published, including Lightship, Planet Story (written by Harry Harrison), Transluminal, and Imago.

Burns won the Hugo award for best professional artist three times and has also been awarded 12 BSFA awards. Well regarded in fandom, he was artist guest of honour at the 1987 Worldcon.

A native of McLeansboro, Illinois, Burns was an all-state player who led McLeansboro High School to a fourth-place finish in the 1962 State Championship Tournament. He then played collegiately for Northwestern University, 1964–67, where he led the team in scoring all three seasons, was both All-American and Academic All-American in 1967, was All-Big Ten and Academic All-Big Ten in 1966 and '67, and is still Northwestern's 12th all-time scorer, 3rd in scoring average, 10th in both field goals and free throws made, and 6th in points in a game (40). He was inducted into the Northwestern Athletics Hall of Fame in 1992.

He was selected by the Chicago Bulls in the fourth round (34th pick overall) of the 1967 NBA Draft. He played only three games with the Bulls during the 1967–68 season where he teamed with fellow McLeansboro native Jerry Sloan. Burns also played for the Dallas Chaparrals (1967–68) in the ABA for 33 games.

Following his short professional basketball career, Burns returned to Northwestern, earning his law degree. While in private practice, he was also active in Democratic politics, running unsuccessfully for Lieutenant Governor of Illinois in 1990. In 1992, he was appointed the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. He replaced Fred Foreman in the position. His investigations of and prosecutions for political corruption gained him public recognition and popularity. It has also been claimed that those same things antagonized many powerful Democrats, so that his 1998 campaign for governor was not strongly supported. Despite his popularity and the Republicans' admission that he was the candidate they most feared, Burns finished a distant fourth of six candidates.

In April 2000, Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White appointed Burns as his inspector general, a position he held until his death. Burns died on December 11, 2020, at the age of 75.

Burns was educated at grammar school, worked in mills, and joined the army in 1954. While stationed in Germany, Burns developed a love of jazz and of American writers, accessible through American Forces Network radio and through bookshops stocking new literature for American service personnel. After leaving the army in 1957, he returned to Preston and sought out new writers filtering through to Britain, travelling to Manchester and London to explore those experimental bookshops which stocked the more difficult-to-find ones.

Burns had his first poems published in New Voice magazine in 1962, and soon began writing for and about small poetry magazines in a range of publications including The Guardian, Tribune and Ambit. Several books of his poetry have been published, including two volumes of his selected works.

In 1964, Burns launched Move, a poetry magazine featuring British and North American writers (including Chris Torrance, Larry Eigner, Lee Harwood, Bill Deemer, Michael Horovitz, Earle Birney, Dave Cunliffe and Tina Morris) which ran for eight issues (it folded in 1968): it was part of the British poetry revival, lauded beyond the traditional audience of middle class intellectuals in London, Oxford and Cambridge. Burns contributed poetry to many other magazines, and literary reviews and articles to The Guardian, Tribune and New Society. Perhaps his most important contributions were bringing the world of small poetry magazines to a wider audience through regular reviews and columns, and in particular spreading his knowledge of those lesser known North American writers who he felt deserved greater attention.

When the editor of Palantir poetry magazine (published through Preston Polytechnic) stepped down, Burns took over from issue number 3 in May 1976; this gave him the opportunity to direct attention to writers he felt deserved more support. Working on Palantir through to the final (23rd) issue in 1983, he included work from many leading poets (for example, Gael Turnbull, Wes Magee and Edwin Brock), and wrote about the lesser known beat poets.

, Burns continues to write on jazz, literature and politics, and has published several essay collections including Beats, Bohemians & Intellectuals (Trent Books, 2000), Radicals, Beats & Beboppers (Penniless Press, 2011) and Artists, Beats & Cool Cats (Penniless Press, 2014).