Tag: Artwork

Science Fiction Covers

Posted on by Neal Asher

And now to science fiction. Rather than try to sort this lot out, I’ll leave them to speak for themselves, bearing in mind that these are responses to the question ‘What sort of cover puts you off an SF book?’:

Jesper Krogsgaard: Ewoks. Cute and fuzzy. Using conventional pictures doesn’t provide enough mystery unless you twist it. Again, like with fantasy, I like it gritty, dark and dangerous.
Colin Strawbridge: I think the typefaces used are more important than pictures; Gollancz have managed pretty well all these years without resorting to lurid graphics.One thing i find especially disconcerting is when they put celebrity reviewers names in much larger print than the actual author.
Andy Plumbly: Something that seems totally irrelevant to sci-fi. Like an apple. I’m quite happy with a spaceship or planet. Simple mind I guess.
Colin Strawbridge: I love how what on initial inspection seems like a random picture eventually starts to make sense as one gets further into the book.
Peter Nugent: Something original. If it’s the bog standard hero with a smoking gun on an alien landscape that looks suspiciously like a desert i’m usually not interested.
Bob Lock: Squids in spacesuits…
Stuart McMillan: Complicated scenes and complicated fonts. Keep It Simple, Stupid (KISS) principles must apply.
Jon Bodan: On further reflection, I think that if you had the book name in the Tron font, and your name in the mid-80s digital font, it would be ace. Lol
Roger Fourt: Winners: M M Smith, Jeff Noon, Asher (I wouldn’t lie)
Losers: Hamilton, Reynolds, Morgan.
Simple premise: avoid badly painted unfeasibly large spaceships.
Susan Hopkins Carpenter: I agree with Stuart, simple generally works best for me too. What puts me off is something too esoteric, I just know I’m going to be wading through pretentions claptrap.
Zeon D V Kitchiner: Anything with gold embossed lettering and roses.
Dave Wells: I find it’s normally something on the cover that catches my eye which then prompts me to read the synopsis etc rather than anything specific putting me off. Course if it has ASHER on it then I pick it up just to have a look even though I’ve already got all of your books 🙂
Chuck McKenzie: Cartoony spaceships.
Owen Roberts: Depictions of characters.

Fantasy Covers

Posted on by Neal Asher
Here’s a little summation of just a few opinions about fantasy covers. Some hardened SF readers simply don’t want to know, an opinion summed up by Roger Fourt: Anyone wielding shiny sacred weapons, multiple planets/moons in the background, improbable waterfalls, ludicrous cities perched atop unscalable peaks. In fact, fantasy covers are generally off-putting, along with their trite, largely write-by-numbers storylines and nerdy pubescant D&D followers. Gives SF a bad rap by association.
Those that do want to know object to depictions that bear either little relation to what the books contains, or are, frankly, embarrassing. On covers Bob Lock doesn’t like fairies, or the WOT series as all the characters seem not to scale. They look as if they are riding Shetland ponies, nothing like how I imagined them from their descriptions, whilst Stuart McMillan opines, heaving bosoms and demure damsels keep my wallet *in* my pocket. Saying that, great chested men with giant weapons are equally a turn-off. Andy Plumbly and Chuck MacKenzie respectively don’t like the typical bright colours and a generic character on the front and ‘same old’ sword & sandals designs (think the ‘Gor’ books).
And then Andi Marment and Chuck lean towards fantasy down and dirty like weaveworld or imagica, none of that wheel of time bobbins or fantasy books (athough I read very little fantasy) with cities on the cover, but that’s largely due to having read brilliant ‘city’ fantasies by China Mieville and Alan Campbell.
So what can be learned from all this? What some like and dislike about a cover is usually informed by their opinion of what is inside the book. In the end, making an exception of those embarrassed about their ‘guilty pleasure’, the truer the cover is to the book’s contents the better. But then we all knew that anyway.
Of course, the sample of opinions here doesn’t mean a lot. What would all those 10 to 18 year old boys think of the John Norman cover here? I certainly still like the lurid covers on some of my books and, had I avoided such covers, my reading, and enjoyable reading, throughout my life would have been cut down by about 80%.  

Which Cover?

Posted on by Neal Asher

Here’s a couple of question that have come up on Twitter: what kind of cover puts you off a fantasy or science fiction book? I also wonder about the reverse: in both genres, what kind of cover catches your eye and makes you turn the book over to take a look at the blurb, or maybe read a bit of the first page?

Here’s a section from an interview I’m doing now for the Mad Hatter, which seems relevant:

MH: Tor UK has been recently re-releasing many of your books with new cover art, which I must say are usually outstanding. I’ve noticed they’re usually going with some sort of crazy looking monster-alien creature popping off the page. Before I had read The Skinner I thought they’d be a crazy Horror/Sci-Fi mash-up, while they are clearly more than that were you going for a Horror feel at all. Do many of the stories involve monsters of a sort?


Neal Asher: Yes, many of my stories involve monsters, some of which, of course, are human. I don’t think the intention was to go for a horror feel to the books, since the horror market is not exactly in the rude health it was in twenty or so years ago. I think here we have more of a case of unashamed cover design. This is science fiction, this is science fiction with aliens, big guns and weird robots and, no matter what any myopic twits in the publishing industry might think, we are not going to have a still-life cover featuring a rose and a handgun.


MH: I think fans appreciate it. You can only have so many ephemeral space stations and ringed world covers…

And here’s some Facebook replies, fantasy first:

Jesper Krogsgaard: If it’s all light, bright and glamour I usually stay 100 miles away. It has to be at least a bit gritty – unless it’s a comedy.

Colin Strawbridge: Generic ‘bodice ripper’ type pictures are a big turn off.


Stuart McMillan: Heaving bosoms and demure damsels keep my wallet *in* my pocket. Saying that, great chested men with giant weapons are equally a turn-off.


Andy Plumbly: Typical bright colours and a generic character on the front. Saying that….Gridlinked originally caught my eye because of it’s snazzy cover (the green one). Loving all the newer covers of yours too!

And now SF:


Jesper Krogsgaard: Ewoks. Cute and fuzzy. Using conventional pictures doesn’t provide enough mystery unless you twist it. Again, like with fantasy, I like it gritty, dark and dangerous.

Colin Strawbridge: I think the typefaces used are more important than pictures; Gollancz have managed pretty well all these years without resorting to lurid graphics.One thing i find especially disconcerting is when they put celebrity reviewers names in much larger print than the actual author.

What do all you reading this think?

New Brass Man Cover

Posted on by Neal Asher

Mr Sullivan has done the book proud:

The knight errant Anderson is hunting a dragon on the primitive Out-Polity world of Cull, little knowing that far away a man has resurrected a brass killing machine to assist in a similar hunt that encompasses star systems. When agent Cormac learns that an old enemy still lives, he sets out in pursuit aboard the attack ship Jack Ketch … whilst scientist Mika begins discovering the horrifying truth about that ancient technology ostensibly produced by the alien Jain, who died out five million years ago.
On a planet roamed by ferocious insectile monsters the people of Cull must struggle to survive, while they build the industrial base to reach their forefathers’ starship still orbiting far above them. An entity calling itself Dragon assists them, but its motives are questionable, having created genetic by-blows of humans and the hideous local monsters before growing bored with that game. And now Cull, for millennia geologically inactive, suffers earthquakes…
Meanwhile a brass killing machine seeks to escape a bloody past it can neither forget nor truly remember. So mindlessly will continue its search for sanity, which it might find in an instant or not for a thousand years.

ART COMPETITION 2010

Posted on by Neal Asher

Right, I have been procrastinating about this but Robert A. McGregor (whose picture here of a gabbleduck took one of the runners up prizes) has shoved me into motion by providing a forum to which the artwork can be posted, and where it can also be discussed. Quite appropriately, I think, he’s called it Subminds.

You can find Subminds here.

So what’s this competition about? I want to see pictures of scenes and characters from my books – characters including all the weird and wonderful life-forms, the drones, AIs, Golem, whatever takes your fancy.

What do you win? Jon Sullivan, who is the excellent artist presently producing my covers for Macmillan, has suggested signed prints of those same covers, and there’ll be signed copies of the latest book pubilshed by Macmillan too. Sorry to be vague about this, but we’ve yet to sort out precisely what will be on offer, and maybe we’ll be able to sort out some more goodies. Also, you get your art out there – you get to advertise your skill. Mr Sullivan will also be the judge of this competition, so take a look at his website to get some idea of who will be judging you.

The duration of the competition will be one year – the winner and runners-up selected by January 2011.

Get drawing and painting!

Failed Genetic Rackslub

Posted on by Neal Asher

Here’s a couple of pictures from our very own Vaudeviewgalor Randisraisins (I wish you’d shorten that name, Vaude) which are, I quote, ‘ just did a title page for a paranormal easter bbq book coming out 2010. sending the attachment and an illos for a jack vance game’.


Not quite sure what a paranormal barbecue is … kebabs with ectoplasm sauce? But certainly the name Jack Vance interest me.


Incidentally the title of this post comes from the subject line of the email. I suspect there’s a strange hidden society blossoming somewhere in Berkeley, but I guess that’s not unusual for California.