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EUROPE'S MOST VISITED SF/F WEB SITE |
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Art for SF's sake In the 'Nest's April issue we ran a tongue in cheek online poll comparing the cover art of one of this year's Arthur C. Clarke Award-nominated SF novels - Pashazade by Jon Courtney Grimwood - with a Turkish cookery book.
In this month's issue, John Jarrold, Pashazade's long suffering editor who's been around the SF/F scene so long that it's rumoured he ate snails with Verne, weighs in with a spirited defense of art for science fiction's sake. Speak, mighty John ... It’s always painful to see a negative remark relating to a book one published, but particularly so when the target was the cover of Jon Courtenay Grimwood’s novel Pashazade - this cover style, which we have used with Jon’s books since our first title, reMix, has been the most favourably commented upon of all Earthlight’s covers since we launched the imprint in 1998. And there’s a story attached … In 1993, I was in San Francisco, at the World SF Convention, and I bought a US hardback of Virtual Light by William Gibson. Dead cool jacket, matt grey with gloss black sunglasses embossed and stylish lettering. Quite soon after that, I acquired Ken MacLeod’s wonderful first novel, The Star Fraction, for Legend Books at Random House, and showed the Gibson cover to our Art Director, who then came up with the style you saw on that novel and its sequels. Okay, fast forward to 1997, when I had been lucky enough to take on Jon Courtenay Grimwood for Earthlight. His first two novels, published by Hodder/NEL, had not worked commercially, but I had no doubt of his talent. reMix and redRobe, the first two books we published, are post-cyberpunk novels, and I wanted to make the covers look very, very cool. I spoke to an outside art agency, The Whole Hog, and showed them both the Gibson and MacLeod covers. They created five cover styles and after consultation with Jon, our Sales and Marketing people and the book trade, we went for the style you now see on Jon’s Earthlight titles. I try to deal with cover styles individually for each author, rather than going for a bland "SF" or "Fantasy" style - the audience is sophisticated and, let’s face it, if you visit Smiths, Waterstones or any other bookshop and go to the SF/Fantasy section, there’s a fair chance you’re looking at SF and Fantasy books. We want to make the covers interesting. If you look around at British SF authors today, there are extremely innovative things being done with artwork, from Alastair Reynolds’ Revelation Space to Neal Asher’s The Skinner and many others. I would certainly include Jon Courtenay Grimwood’s covers in the list of cutting-edge artwork styles in UK science fiction publishing - but let’s not forget that the words are the most important thing of all. We are selling more than five times as many paperbacks as Jon’s previous publisher, and I have no doubt that this can, partially, be put down to the covers, which have excited much comment both from the book trade - and if we don’t interest the trade, they don’t take the book, and the public doesn’t get the chance to read it - and the reading public, who are in touch regularly congratulating Earthlight on this design style. So you’ll see why I was somewhat exercised about the comments on SF Crowsnest. I should also point out that the cover of PASHAZADE was shortlisted for the BSFA Award for Best SF Artwork of the year. ED's comment: The 'traditional' (read steroid-popping barbarians & Foss-style starships blasting it out) versus 'arty' (read Fuse typography school & monochrome photomontages) book jacket issue has been one of the hottest we've ever seen on the 'Nest. Also one of the most divisive. Just over 46% of you have voted for the traditional cover, while a slight majority, 54%, are willing to give the non-trad covers a fighting chance. Are we right. Or is the BSFA' taste in cover designs worth more than yours? As always with matters of art, it's all a matter of personal preference. Whatever your feeling about the trad vs non-trad jacket art debate, we are happy to report that Pashazade is a cracking good read, anyway.
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OTHER CONTENT - May 2002
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