Simon Stålenhag

How it started.

Simon grew up around the countryside west of Stockholm, painting animals and landscapes as a child. He began with watercolor and gouache, then learned to bring their textured feeling into digital painting. In interviews, he traces his visual roots to Swedish nature painters and his interest in mechanical design to Syd Mead and Ralph McQuarrie.

The pictures that travelled.

His early science fiction paintings began as personal work alongside game illustration. He shared them on Facebook, where friends could recognise the places they had grown up. Coverage by The Verge brought an unexpected wave of attention. In 2014, those familiar Swedish landscapes, now inhabited by robots and dinosaurs, became Tales from the Loop.

Stories beyond the frame.

His books combine paintings with prose, letting small human stories unfold beside enormous, unexplained machines. Things from the Flood continued the Swedish setting; The Electric State moved to an alternate America; The Labyrinth explored a devastated world. His 2025 book, Swedish Machines, also published as Sunset at Zero Point, follows two men whose shared past draws them toward a forbidden zone.