Infinity Plus has posted an extract from Martin Sketchley’s The Liberty Gun,
all the covers from the Structure Trilogy, the UK and US alongside each other. In light of our cover discussions, it’s cool to see them all in a block like this.
Meanwhile, while attending the recent Boskone, I was able to see all three of Dave Seeley‘s original paintings for the US covers lined up side by side. Quite a sight to see. 
Just back from Boskone to find a flurry of Pyr reviews in the in-box.
The Eternal Night is quite taken with the galactic yarn-spinning of Mike Resnick’s Starship: Pirate:
“Resnick does have a very definite style…If you like your sf to be space opera, if you like your sf gadgets to just work without needing an explanation of how, and if you don’t need to worry about the vast interstellar distances getting in the way of telling the tale – then Resnick is an author you should read.”
Then Ryun Patterson of Bookgasm finds John Meaney’s To Hold Infinity
a “snapshot of a stunningly well-realized future that grabs hold and doesn’t let go…Meaney’s prose is tight and descriptive, and he avoids many of the pitfalls involved in getting ideas out of his head and into readers’. I’m no scientist, but the technology involved – though far-flung from today’s tech – never becomes so inexplicable that it might as well be magic, with a basis in networking and computer science. …a rather stunning book of ideas and imagination.” Despite liking the inside, Ryun is less than pleased with our cover and (to my amusement) offers this alternative.
The Cultural Gutter isn’t quite sure what to make of Chris Roberson’s
Paragaea: A Planetary Romance
And finally, I can’t tell you how happy I am to report that Publishers Weekly has given Kay Kenyon’s forthcoming Bright of the Sky
“
At the start of this riveting launch of a new far-future SF series from
Kenyon (Tropic of Creation), a disastrous mishap during interstellar space travel catapults pilot Titus Quinn with his wife, Johanna Arlis, and nine-year-old daughter, Sydney, into a parallel universe called the Entire. Titus makes it back to this dimension, his hair turned white, his memory gone, his family presumed dead and his reputation ruined with the corporation that employed him. The corporation (in search of radical space travel methods) sends Titus (in search of Johanna and Sydney) back through the space-time warp. There, he gradually, painfully regains knowledge of its rulers, the cruel, alien Tarig; its subordinate, Chinese-inspired humanoid population, the Chalin; and his daughter’s enslavement. Titus’s transformative odyssey to reclaim Sydney reveals a Tarig plan whose ramifications will be felt far beyond his immediate family. Kenyon’s deft prose, high-stakes suspense and skilled, thorough world building will have readers anxious for the next installment.”
We’ve just completed the dust jacket for Kay Kenyon’s Bright of the Sky,
For starters, Bright of the Sky is science fiction, but it’s got a fantasy feel.
Or at least a “fantastical” feel – in that it’s set largely in a pocket universe peopled with multiple strange creatures. It’s really exquisite world-building on Kay’s part, and I wanted a cover illustration that could sell the size, scope, scale of her imagination and the world that has sprung out of it. Kay and I talked over several possible illustrators before decided on Stephan Martiniere. Now, Stephan is no stranger to Pyr, and anyone who reads my blogs knows he’s one of my favorite illustrators working today, but in SF he’s known mostly – at least up to this point although it’s shifting – for his wonderful architectural visions, such as his work on Ian McDonald’s River of Gods.
Next enter Jackie Cooke, from Pyr (and parent company Prometheus Books’) art department. At this stage, it’s about trying all sorts of options. We say we’d rather experiment and then pull back then not try to begin with. So we went through a ton of font choices, placements, and colors. Unfortunately, that was many moons ago, and I don’t have those files anymore. But suffice to say we went through a wide range – including a vaguely Asian-brush stroke type front that seemed in concept appropriate to the Chinese-like culture of one of the races in Bright, but which was too heavy handed in execution to use. Also, I don’t mind admitting that, although the end result looks nothing like it, we looked to the cover of Dan Simmon’s Ilium
So that’s the image you see in our catalog, on Amazon, on the website etc… But one of the central landscape elements of Kay’s “Universe Entire” is a mysterious river called the nigh. The nigh isn’t made of water, but a strange quicksilver substance, about which I won’t say anymore because you, well, have to read the book for yourself. But that’s the nigh you see pictured on the cover. But the colors on this cover are muted, and so Jackie and I wanted a way to both grab more eyeballs and to communicate some of that quicksilver imagery from the book. She settled on the use of a silver mirror holograhic foil, a special effect offered by our jacket printer, Phoenix Color.
Ah, but when you do special effect like embossing, special dyes and inks, foil, etc… you pay per square inch. And it ain’t cheap. So, for instance, a book with the title and author name both at the top in close proximity to each other would be cheaper than a book where the effects are placed at top and bottom, like, unfortunately, we have. (If you follow the link, you’ll notice that Ilium
the title at the bottom. This is why.) So, word came back that the bosses were willing to spring for the holofoil on the title, but not the title and author’s name. (Which is still mighty generous, as the effect ain’t cheap and they could just as easily have said to do without). That meant we had to find another solution for “Kay Kenyon” at the bottom. So here we have some of the colors we tried. The rainbow effect on the title is Jackie’s attempt to approximate the holographic foil, since we can’t show it in a jpg, and she wanted me to be able to see how it might pick up on and reflect various colors from Kay’s name. Here, I admit that I liked the white, but was wisely outvoted by both Jackie and Kay (we tend to involve the authors in the process – no, this isn’t the norm.) The mauve was never a consideration, though a grey that echoed the look of the catalog version was. Eventually, however, we settled on a sand color that was also used in the subtitle as the best match. I’ll wait and show it when we talk about the rest of the jacket.
Which is now. Jackie nailed the back cover in one. I love the purple on black, as well as aligning the quotes top left bottom right. I think the whole effect is very dignified and goes a long way towards our intention of presenting what an “important” epic this work is. But, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, the spine isn’t there. Sometimes, grabbing a cross section of the cover illustration can really work well. Othertimes, not so much. It just didn’t look – you know it – “epic” to me.
So I suggest Jackie try a simple black spine. And maybe grab an image of that horse creature (called an Inyx) or those wonderful flying fish. I pictured placing this image at the top of the spine, but Jackie surprised me by putting it center and surrounding it in that stylish border motif she’d already devised for the subtitle:
The flaps are added at this point to. Disregard the white spaces – they won’t be there on the final. So now we’re almost there, but we still need to add Kay’s picture, and Jackie felt the left flap – the grey one – was a little plain, so she decided to added a faded image from the cover to give it some texture. The result is our final dust jacket below, though, of course, you don’t see the effect of the holographic foil on the title. Right click it to see larger, as with all these, of course. And since this was a long post to put together, feel free to ooo and ahhhh.
Now tell me, does Bright of the Sky: Entire and the Rose: Book 1
Bright of the Sky: From Illustration to Finished Book Jacket Read More »
The February 12th issue of Publishers Weekly on Adam Robert’s Gradisil, coming in March in trade paperback from Pyr:
“Written like a love-hate letter to American SF, Roberts’s latest is a multigenerational saga of space colonization and betrayal. Centered on the life of Gradisil Gyeroffy, it covers the early years of plucky (and/or wealthy) Uplanders, individuals who take up residence in low Earth orbit, through their transforming war with America and Gradi’s sacrifices to weld them into a nation. The forward-looking, freedom-oriented space colonists stand in contrast to their tradition-bound, systems-wedded opponents. Roberts (The Snow) suggests that popular access to space is just a technological improvement away, though the government as represented by the USUF (aka the U.S. Upland Force), rather than rugged individuals, would (and should) lead the way…. Rewarding the patient reader are some witty asides of social changes (like going from one to three to 14 popes) and an unsparing portrait of a social revolution and its costs to the revolutionaries.”
A Love-Hate Letter to American SF? Read More »
Kilian Melloy reviews Jack Dann’s The Man Who Melted
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the novel, Kilian says: “Dann has packed so many surprises into his novel that by the end, the reader feels whole new colors on the spectrum of motive and emotion have been revealed…. This complex, mutli-layered novel engages you twice: first, searingly, as you read it and then, later and more profoundly, as you replay its subtle warnings and prognostications. …Dann’s novel requires that you look, then look again, to appreciate everything he’s put into its creation.”
Meanwhile, be sure to check out this interview with Jack Dann which Kilian conducted as well. In Jack Dann’s words, ” In The Man Who Melted, I was investigating in depth the very nature of amnesia. I must admit that this was a delving into self, as I’ve had my own experience with amnesia, with its effects, and so this novel was my way of working out some of my deepest feelings and fears.”
Author James Lovegrove reviews several science fiction novels, including Ian McDonald’s forthcoming Brasyl,
Lovegrove says, “Contrary to received opinion, science fiction’s preoccupation .jpg)
has always been the here and now. Its far-flung planets and future timelines are merely a way to analyse the contemporary. In this respect, it is the most politically engaged of all literary genres. Motifs that may appear trashy to the uninitiated – space exploration, extraterrestrials, futuristic technology – can in fact be surprisingly sophisticated tools for dissecting and examining the world as it is.”
He then goes on to note, as others have done, a recent trend emerging in modern science fiction, an alteration in the way SF realizes “the urge to address state-of-the-world concerns.” As Lovegrove says, “The emptiness of space, coupled with the fragility of our increasingly fevered home planet, has led these writers to aim their telescopes directly at life on Earth. The genre is still intrigued by notions of otherness. This manifests now, though, not through tales of bug-eyed monsters from beyond, but by measured scrutiny of ‘aliens’ closer to home. Science fiction is written predominantly by white, western males. For them, the alien may be found beyond borders, across continents. The Other is someone with a different language, skin colour, even gender.”
Lovegrove then discusses Geoff Ryman’s Air, Ken MacLeod’s The Execution Channel, Richard Morgan’s Black Man (published in the US as “Thirteen”), and finally McDonald’s work, of which he says it’s literary structure is: “an immense, marvellous beast whose shape comes slowly, majestically into focus, constructed out of a welter of thematic elements such as quantum computing, multiverse theory, and the clash between science and religion.”
All in all, a very interesting article about the new globally-focused, non-US-centric science fiction.
Science Fiction Gets with the Times Read More »
John Picacio, the amazing cover illustrator on Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge,
“Lou and I talked a lot about this one. More than anything, we talked about the editorial direction of the book and what territory he was trying to explore. I read his introduction early in the process. Incredibly inspiring. He and I talked a lot about Richard Powers and his effect on Ballantine’s covers in the ’50s. On Lou’s blog, he mentioned something about the cover ‘approximating some of Powers’ energy for our time.’ I don’t want anyone to think that I equate myself with Powers, so I might clarify that by saying that the thing I love about Powers’ covers is that they challenge their audience. They refuse to be beauty pageant pieces that desparately preen to be liked for their surface polish. I think that’s one of the most powerful lessons in his art….they spoke to the audience of their time, and they did it on their own terms. So I guess if anything, I was attempting (and attempting is the keyword) to do the same with this cover. Lofty as that may sound. Of course, in the end, I look at the FF1 cover and as much as it’s one of my recent favorites, I see my own glaring shortcomings more than anything. I’ve got a long way to go….”
For my two cents, John may be going a long way still – in terms of his evolution and career – but he’s already pretty far ahead of the pack with this and many other pieces!
John Picacio Speaks Read More »
Booklist has reviewed Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge
“An anthology inspired by its editor’s declaration that ‘science fiction is a tool for making sense of a changing world’ contains quite a range of stories, from Elizabeth Bear’s ‘The Something-Dreaming Game,’ in which children play a fainting game (basically autoerotic asphyxiation), and one girl communicates with the possibly last member of an alien species, to Tony Ballantyne’s ‘Aristotle OS,’ in which a journalist with computer problems upgrades from the familiar, platonic OSs to Aristotle; the different systems operate on the theories of the philosophers referenced, causing some very interesting problems when the journalist connects to the Internet with its wealth of contradictory information. Ken MacLeod’s ‘Jesus Christ, Reanimator’ is an interesting take on the second coming, replete with fascinating rationalizations by both scientific and Christian establishments, none of which wants to take Jesus on faith. Louise Marley tells a time-travel story about a particular performance instruction, p dolce, in the music of Brahms. Other contributions by familiar and new names fill out a worthy menu of engrossing forays into wildly, creatively varied futures.” –Regina Schroeder
A Forward Looking Booklist Read More »
SFSignal gives Mike Resnick’s short story collection, New Dreams for Old,
They call the book, “An above-average collection of stories featuring many award winners and nominees,” and go on to say that “Simply put, Resnick writes ‘people’ stories that carry quite an emotional impact. Instead of far-flung, hard science fiction that deals with impersonal concepts, these stories are endearingly personal. Resnick writes from the heart and with heart thus making an instant connection with the reader.”
New Reviews for Old Read More »
The Barnes and Noble review of The Man Who Melted, courtesy of Paul Goat Allen: