Newsday (of Long Island, New York) reviews Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union.

The Nation reviews Haruki Murakami's new novel, After Dark (which may or may not have fantastic elements in it; I haven't read it yet and the Nation review is only available in full to subscribers).

The Agony Column looks at Charlaine Harris's All Together Dead.

Blogcritics reviews Jenny Nimmo's Charlie Bone and the Castle of Mirrors.

The Pyr-o-mania blog points to and partially translates a German-language review of Ian McDonald's River of Gods from Phantistik-Couch.

David Louis Edelman continues his reading of the entire Tolkien oevure with his thoughts on The Hobbit.

Voyages of Imagination reviews Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction edited by Jeff Prucher.

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Rick Kleiffel of The Agony Column has a longish post today on cover art, starting by talking about The Name of the Wind and running on from there. As usual with such complaints, he seems to assume that he is the target audience for Big Fat Fantasy, and there he goes wrong. (Kleffel is also a bit factually incorrect: there are two covers at retail for The Name of the Wind, and he shows both of them. The one he likes is actually a small detail of the one he doesn't like, blown up.)

I know the SF intelligentsia doesn’t like the usual look of epic fantasy covers; they complain about it at every turn. A lot of editors feel that look is tacky, as well – that’s why they keep trying different things: to find a reasonable replacement. But guess what? Those covers sell books, because the general fantasy audience likes to see a picture of a fantasy scene on the books they buy. It may seem frightfully down-market, but readers do know what they like, and they buy it when they see it…

(The other blog which has been talking about cover art a lot recently is Neth Space, where I disagree some and agree some – that cover for The Bonehunters in particular doesn’t look right to me. I don’t think you can put a stagecoach on an epic fantasy cover and have it look right, even if there is one in the book; stagecoaches just make people think of Westerns, and that's not what you want for epic fantasy.)

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The "Alien Nation" art exhibit opened at the Manchester Art Gallery on the 17th; it runs through May 7th. (This is the Manchester in the UK, so I doubt most of us will be able to see it.)

The official description:

Alien Nation explores the relationship between science fiction, race and contemporary art. Twelve contemporary international artists use science fiction and extra-terrestrial forms to explore racial difference as a metaphor for the threat of the outsider. The artworks include film, sculpture, photography and multi-media installations.

Am I allowed to say "Oh, God" here? Trendy po-mo racial identity artsiness dressed up in third-rate Star Wars drag: that's what it sounds like to me. I'm glad I'm on the other side of the Atlantic, or I'd feel compelled to go...

[via SciFi UK Review]

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The list of artists with work included in Spectrum 14, this year's edition of the best-fantastic-art-annual, has just been posted.

Let's see, I'm going to pick a name at random, Google Image search, and slap in a random piece of art that almost certainly won't be in Spectrum 14. (But I can't do a post about SFnal art without a little eye candy, can I?)

Random name: Dermot Power

Random piece of art:

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The CG Society has announced the winners of its 20th annual CGChallenge; this year's Challenge was to create art for Greg Bear's classic SF novel Eon.

First prize for Film Trailer went to Emiliano Colantoni, Gianfranco Sgura, Marco Stellabotte, and David Bonelli; their winning entry can be viewed here.

First prize for 3D Scene went to James Kaufeldt (see below for sample).

First prize for Illustration went to Torsten Wolber (also see below for sample).

Full details of the contest, and more art from the winners and runners-up, is at the CGSociety's website.

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SF/Fantasy artist Gary Lippincott is in the news at NJ.com: he illustrated the labels for several elf-themed beers (imported by Shelton Brothers from England) which were then banned in Connecticut. Aparrently some prosecutor thinks this little fellow (below) would appeal to children. (Some odd children that man must have...)

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The annual Spectrum competition for fantastic art has just issued its call for entries for the fourteenth edition, and you can download the entry form here.

It's a great contest, with a wonderful community of artists, that produces an amazing book every year -- anyone who does art of any kind using fantastic imagery should be entering.

[via Irene Gallo]

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Charles Vess was one-half of the book Stardust, as some people forget. (It's sometimes published as just the Neil Gaiman words, but, since it was originally intended to appear with the Vess illustrations, and written with that purpose in mind, I find that at least faintly an abomination.)

Well, with the movie coming next year, and new books (a fancy new hardcover Stardust as well as a book on the making of the movie) coming along with it, the people responsible have thankfully not forgotten about Vess. He's working on a pile of new paintings and drawings for Stardust-related projects, and he has posted some of them on his blog.

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Diana Gill talked about her favorite covers at the Eos blog the other day, and Lou Anders has been talking about cover art both at Pyr-o-mania and his personal blog. (I think this current flurry of talking about cover art can be traced back to Irene Gallo's blog, which is getting lots of us thinking about the art we like and the art that sells books, and the intersection of the two.)

For myself, my favorite cover that I've been involved with recently is the gorgeous Todd Lockwood wraparound art on Naomi Novik's Temeraire. (It's not on Todd's site, so I'll try to remember to addd it to this entry when I'm back at work on Monday -- I think I have it on my hard drive there. You can also check out the bookshot on the SFBC site, but it's quite small, and you can't see the back.) That was one of those few cases where I had an idea in my head of what the jacket should look like, and the artist had not only the same idea, but did it even better than I expected.

(A close second in the same category is Daniel Dos Santos's cover for our Jim Butcher omnibus Wizard at Large, where I told the art director "There's a zombie T. Rex in this book. I'm not saying the artist has to paint it, but I bet he'll want to, and it would make a great cover.")

One last cover I have to mention is Ron Walotsky's for The First Chronicles of Amber, a number of years ago. I first read Roger Zelazny's science fantasy series as a very impressionable ten-year-old, and I imprinted hard on the very evocative Walotsky covers those books had in the mid-'70s. (Black background, small, gem-like art in the middle and big white lower-case type around it.) So, when I stuck those books all into one volume for the SFBC, I had to get Ron to do the art. Luckily, he was free, and it came out like this:

Edit, 9/18/06 @ 12:30: Irene Gallo let Todd Lockwood know about this post, and the Temeraire art is now up on his site. (He's also selling prints of it, which I expect will be popular -- it's a great picture.) And that's good, because what I have is just a PDF of the jacket (with type and everything), not the art as itself. Similarly, I only have a PDF of Wizard At Large.

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The Judah L. Magnes museum will host an exhibition of art received by the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, it says here.

But note that the person announcing this is known for "prank-style art projects," and adjust your expectations accordingly.

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Irene Gallo tackles that perennial reader complaint -- covers that don't precisely illustrate an exact scene from a book -- and gives a fuller explanation of How Covers Happen along the way.

I'll personally admit that there have been times when I've told my art director something like "I know the book says this, but that would look stupid -- so tell the artist to do it this other way." I'm not ashamed of it, either.

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 06:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)