It's difficult to be precise about when in his life he became a science fiction artist. From a professional standpoint, it would have to be October 7th, 1972, the date he received his first payment for a commercially commissioned piece (the princely sum of £12.50).  But apart from being paid to paint pictures, he was creating in essence the same kind of science fiction-obsessed imagery that had preoccupied him since the mid-1950's. As a small child armed with paper and pencil, he started letting his imagination wander where it would and the early progenitors of his exotic beings, weird machinery and faraway worlds, first started primitively to take form on the page before him. It was a common enough preoccupation with small boys at that time, probably fed by the scientific and technological marvels beamed out from the still new miracle of TV and of course, early productions on TV and radio with science fiction based themes.  Comics fed into the heady mix as well with the book Eagle and the character of Dan Dare - Pilot of the Future who Burns says is to blame for a heck of a lot in his life!

According to Jim we're supposed to view the 1950's as a dreary, grey old time from the perspective of our glittering, gadget-obsessed now. Certainly young Jim would have marveled at the world of 2013, even if it is different in detail from what he might have anticipated (most disappointingly is that the aliens still haven't landed!). But in all truth, he remembers his South Wales childhood as a happy time, not at all grey. The typically golden, sun-always-shining days of childhood. He loved drawing and he had a weird, off-beat talent for it. His parents kept me generously supplied with the necessary materials and were always encouraging him. "Where does he get it from? There's no-one on my side of the family," was the constant refrain. And from his father, if he was in one of his not-infrequent fever-dream phases following a cold or some such, he would hear "The trouble with you James is you've got too much imagination." Ho hum, but he didn't mean it unkindly.

But Dan Dare had fired up another ambition in him, one that was to deflect him from the obvious, common-sense direction he perhaps should have been taking (in particular - art school). He decided that he wanted to become Dan Dare and the route to that was the RAF. His service career was short to say the least, 18 months altogether and it seems now to have been a life lived by another person. In that brief time he grew up a lot, but not totally, as he had a few pretty immature episodes ahead of him at art college. But generally speaking, he changed from a shy, callow youth to something resembling a young adult. He had 146 hours flying time under his belt, some of them jet solo hours and that's something he will never regret having done.

In the next single year at Newport College of Art in South Wales and then three years at St. Martin's School of Art in London, something seemed to move him one small step at a time from being a person who loved drawing as a pastime into someone who's career was increasingly gearing in that direction and finally into the professional illustrator he remain to this day.  He believes it's a lucky man whose hobby turns almost imperceptibly into the means by which he makes his living. And so, here he is, four decades later, with three daughters and a son, doing the same old thing quite contentedly, married to the lovely girl he met back in 1969 at St. Martins. And in that 40-odd years, he's painted (in paint and digitally as he succumbed in part to the seductive charms of the Apple Mac back in 1997) hundreds and hundreds of covers. He's found himself happily engaged in film work on several occasions including an eye-opening ten weeks in Hollywood working on Blade Runner. And his paintings seem to be collectible which is very satisfying indeed. The notion that many of his paintings provide pleasure to people in ways beyond their original commissioned purpose is immensely gratifying for him.

According to Jim, science fiction has been good to him. He's met wonderful people from all over the world, artists and writers and of course the loyal fans of the genre. It's provided him with a good living and even allowed him to win a few awards, including three Hugo awards. The nature of the business is definitely in a process of "evolution" and it's a challenging time to be involved in it. His aim these days is to explore more personal territory which means essentially "darker" territory. And he always wants to enjoy creating the stuff because if he couldn't, for whatever reason, he would simply have no idea what he would do with his time.