I did some research on SF art to try and figure out if my paintings qualify, and I came across these incredible paintings by Chesley Bonestell (1888-1986). He worked as an architect and a Hollywood special effects artist before turning to a career as an artist. His paintings of outer space were so realistic, people (including astronomers) thought they were based on photographs, not just made up. Bonestell also did over 60 cover illustrations for pulp SF magazines. Here are some of my favorite paintings of his (based on some google searching):

(“Chicago at the temperature of melting lead due to solar disturbance or orbit disruption”, “Saturn as Seen from Titan”, “Deimos”, “Globular Cluster”)

The Chicago painting makes me think of H. G. Wells’s “The Star” (and also a little bit of my own paintings), and the globular cluster one looks a lot like the NASA picture I used as my background on this website, which is a photo of Messier 75, an actual globular cluster:

I’ve also decided that my paintings do count as SF, and I’ve decided to make more of them.