Scott Westerfeld's Blog, page 15

Last Day for Cheap Uglies

A few quick things:

Thing One

It’s the last day to buy the e-book edition of Uglies and Pretties for only $3.99!

Click to find them at the following places:

iBooks (iPad)

Barnes & Noble (Nook)

Amazon (Kindle)

S&S (Adobe file)

Or click here to buy a Google eBook via an indie bookstore!

(Sorry, this sale is US only. But the UK Kindle version of Uglies is £3.99, which is kinda cheap.)

Thing Two

This is the French cover of my adult sf duology, The Risen Empire and The Killing of Worlds, in its combined format. And it is pretty cool:

Seriously cool, in fact.

And finally . . .

Thing Three

Jessica Valenti chews bubblegum and kicks ass in this essay entitled “The Upside of Ugly.” (And she’s all out of bubblegum.) Click here to read it.

That’s it! Real blogging commences soonish.

The Manual Is OUT!

The full-color, slightly larger format, all-singing and all-dancing art book to the Leviathan series, also known as The Manual of Aeronautics, is OUT NOW. Actually, several people have found them on store shelves over the weekend, but today is the official release date. (Well, tomorrow morning in the United States. BUT YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN . . . )

You can go buy the Manual with your monies! Or ask your librarians for it, or get it online at Powell’s, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, or IndieBound.

One of my favorite features of the Leviathan series is that each of the books has a splendid color endpapers by Keith, and the Manual is no exception. Which means I get to follow my tradition of revealing the endpapers on publication day.

As a wrap up of the series, Keith and I wanted to do something that encapsulated the whole series, with pretty much all of the characters in it. Also there was a certain piece of fan art about Deryn and Alek posing for the cover photo on Goliath. So we thought it would be cool for Keith to create the photo shoot for the Clanker/Darwninist Co-Existence Treaty signing!

Most likely, the image below wouldn’t really happen in the world of the Leviathan. I mean, all these characters wouldn’t all get credit for what they did to end the Great War (and all of those machines and beasties in the background would be a bit of a mess). But think of this as a visual confection, a collage that reveals the themes of the book (not unlike the frontispiece of that OTHER Leviathan).

So this is what we went with, and from this humble idea Keith created this awesome image:

Click here for the HUGE and zoomable version. And then see if you can find all the amusing (or sad) details.

Feel free to comment on the Manual in this comment thread, given that there aren’t really spoilers for an art book. (Or are there? Hmm.)

So I guess this is KIND OF THE END. You know? I mean, I’ll certainly post about the Leviathan series again, and people will go on talking about it and cosplaying it, and as new people are born and taught to read, they’ll discover it for the first time. Also, it’s completely possible that someone will make graphic novels or movies or interpretive dances of it, or that I will do more work in that universe someday.

But that doesn’t change the fact that with the Manual finally out, the Leviathan series is kind of . . . over now, at least in its original flavor version. *MAKES SAD FACE WITH TINY TEAR*

It’s been a great five years of working with the awesome Keith Thompson, who really threw his genius into this project, making it much better and bigger and realer than I could ever have hoped it would be. (I’m pretty sure I’ll be working with him again. Steampunk card game!)

It’s also been great having so many voluble, passionate, opinionated, and ridiculously creative fans. Thank you for coming along for the ride, and especially for all the amazing fan art. You are the best.

Seriously. Barking spiders to all of you.

Fan Art Friday (Frequently Fortnightly)

Welcome to FAF(FF), my sorta-weekly series of fan art, farinaceous treats, and fun.

But before we start, next Tuesday (August 21) is when The Manual of Aeronautics comes out! On that day I’ll be doing one last art reveal. As per tradition, it will be the endpapers from the Manual, which I think you’ll find quite fabulous.

And now for FAF(FF)!

Let us begin with cake, because the world needs more cake.

This edible artistry comes from the tumblr feed of jaberwockyx, and was made for a school project. (It won first prize, obviously.)

I like that it has both a walker and a whale on it, which brings to mind the book’s tagline: “Do you oil your war machines, or eat them?”

Not to be outdone, Uglies/i> fandom also has a cake this week:

And just in case you think this is a cake with the words “special” and “extra” randomly on it, i have proof of its Uglies-relatedness:

Thanks for sending me the pix, Bea-la!

And now some whale love from Catherine P.

Not cake, but very kawaii.

And here’s some cosplay (and photoshop-play) from both series. First Jennifer B being a Special . . .

And Lauren being Deryn:

Two pencil works from peanutbuttergoddess, of Lilit and Deryn:

I like their half-smiling expressions a lot.

And to round out the lurve triangle, here’s Alek as drawn by sleepy pilot:

He’s not smiling, but he means you no harm!

That’s it for FAFFFFF. See you Tuesday for the book birthday of The Manual of Aeronautics! I am excited to hear what you guys think of the many arts in it.

To pre-order the Manual online, go to Powell’s, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, or IndieBound.

Art Reveal 5(b)

As promised, and as voted by you all, it’s time to reveal the Dr. Barlow and Tazza portrait from The Manual of Aeronautics!

But first a bit of money talk. For the next two weeks, my lovely publisher has reduced the price of Uglies and Pretties to $3.99, in ALL e-book formats. So now’s the time to replace that copy you loaned out and never got back, or to start a friend off on the series.

Click below to find the Uglies e-book at the following places:

iBooks (iPad)

Barnes & Noble (Nook)

Amazon (Kindle)

S&S (Adobe file)

Or click here to buy a Google eBook via an indie bookstore!

Sorry, this sale is US only. But the UK Kindle version of Uglies is £3.99, which seems pretty cheap to me.

Again, this sale runs out August 26, so act now! (Or act in a week and a half, if you want to push it. That’s what I always do.)

And now, I give you Dr. Barlow . . .

Yes, Tazza is kind of squeezed in there, because that’s how they did portraits back then. It’s, like, symbolic.

I love the Darwinist stylings on the frame. So much life stuff!

Enjoy! See you soon for another art reveal, and for FAF.

(You can pre-order the Manual online: Powell’s, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, or IndieBound. It will land at your local bricks-and-mortar store on Tuesday, August 21.)

Are Reveal 5(b)

As promised, and as voted by you all, it’s time to reveal the Dr. Barlow and Tazza portrait from The Manual of Aeronautics!

But first a bit of money talk. For the next two weeks, my lovely publisher has reduced the price of Uglies and Pretties to $3.99, in ALL e-book formats. So now’s the time to replace that copy you loaned out and never got back, or to start a friend off on the series.

Click below to find the Uglies e-book at the following places:

iBooks (iPad)

Barnes & Noble (Nook)

Amazon (Kindle)

S&S (Adobe file)

Or click here to buy a Google eBook via an indie bookstore!

Sorry, this sale is US only. But the UK Kindle version of Uglies is £3.99, which seems pretty cheap to me.

Again, this sale runs out August 26, so act now! (Or act in a week and a half, if you want to push it. That’s what I always do.)

And now, I give you Dr. Barlow . . .

Yes, Tazza is kind of squeezed in there, because that’s how they did portraits back then. It’s, like, symbolic.

I love the Darwinist stylings on the frame. So much life stuff!

Enjoy! See you soon for another art reveal, and for FAF.

(You can pre-order the Manual online: Powell’s, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, or IndieBound. It will land at your local bricks-and-mortar store on Tuesday, August 21.)

Chinese Leviathan Cover

My inbox just received this boo-ti-ful image. It’s the painting for the Chinese cover of Leviathan. The artist is Li Tao. (Li is the surname, and the artist is male, just so you know.)

Click here for the bigness, because the bigness is bigger.

Needless to say, I love this cover image. It has a wonderfully exuberant forward motion to it, not unlike this Chinese propaganda poster. Or this one! (I mean, it’s just dying to be remixed into a poster, IF THAT SHOULD OCCUR TO ANYONE.) I also really love the styling of the Leviathan overhead, and the Hapsberg seal. So much heraldry!

Can’t wait to see the final version with text and my name in Chinese on it. (Just to be clear, this is the simplified Chinese version, for the mainland.)

Dr. Barlow portrait from The Manual of Aeronautics coming soon!

Art Reveal 5(a)

I have officially declared the voting for the Manual of Aeronautics art reveal to be over, and to be a tie between #1 (portrait of Dr. Barlow and Tazza) and #2 (rigger’s uniform).

SO YOU GET THEM BOTH. Now, we just need to vote again to see which one to show first . . .

“Um, but that would be stupid,” you say. And you would be right. So instead I shall flip a coin.

*flips coin*

*realizes hadn’t chosen which side was which*

*flips coin again*

We start with the rigger’s uniform!

compressed air rifle: check

rigger’s knife boot sheath: check

safety harness and clip: check

steampunk goggles: check

I don’t know how Keith remembers all this stuff, because I never do.

Oh, and I also promised you the rank and specialist patches that go on the shoulders:

There you have it! Enjoy, cosplayers! PLS SEND PIX 4 FAF.

I’ll be posting the portrait of Dr. Barlow in a couple of days, and the new and astounding cover for the Chinese edition of Leviathan very soon.

(Usual blah, blah: You can pre-order the Manual from Powell’s, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, or IndieBound. Or support your local bricks-and-mortar store by buying it on Tuesday, August 21.)

Voting for Art Reveal 5

The Leviathan series artbook, The Manual of Aeronautics, comes out on August 21. That’s just two and a half weeks from now, so it’s probably time for more art revealings.

Here are the previous art reveals, in case you missed them:

The Bridge of the Leviathan!

The Cyklop Stormwalker!

Clanker uniforms!

Flechette bat!

Shall we vote on this? We shall.

Would you rather see . . .

1) A portrait of Dr. Barlow? (with bonus Tazza!)

2) A rigger’s uniform? (with various specialist/rank patches)

3) Or the message lizard? (carried over from round 4)

And all of it in glorious color!

Please vote by number. As always, use this comment thread to wrangle, browbeat, and bludgeon your co-commenters into agreement. They like it when you do that.

Let the voting begin.

You can pre-order the Manual from the usual online joints: Powell’s, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, or IndieBound. It will land at your local bricks-and-mortar store on Tuesday, August 21.

Steampunk Taichi, Anyone?

So there’s this movie coming out soon called Taichi O . . .

From IMDB: Young genius Yang Luchan travels to Chen Village to learn the forbidden secrets of martial arts, but quickly learns that the village is menaced by a formidable battalion of Steampunk soldiers. The villagers realize that in order to save their home, they must trust this strange outsider with their knowledge of Tai Chi.

I love that the hero of this movie, Yang_Lu-ch’an, was a real person, an influential martial artist who lived from 1799-1872. For me, steampunk works better when wrapped around historical people, places, and events. I’m trying to work out exactly why I feel this way. (Maybe because technofantasy tends to drift off into isn’t-this-cool gadgetry unless grounded in the gnarly power relations and other unpleasant realities of the 19th century, or something.)

Anyway, steampunk soldiers versus soft-style martial arts FTW!

Click here to watch the trailer bigger, better, steampunkier.

PS This is not the first steampunk martial arts movie, by any means. That might be K-20, WHICH HAS A BIG-ASS TESLA CANNON IN IT. But there are no doubt earlier ones, depending on how much you’re willing to stretch the definition of steampunk.

FAF (Dalek Week Edition)

Greetings from Sydney, home of the on-time Fan Art Friday!

Also useful for getting this post up on time is that July 8-14 was Dalek Week over at Deviant Art’s Alek-and-Deryn group. Each day of that week, the Alek-and-Deryners posted art based on themes like “Obsession,” “Parents,” or “The Roaring 20′s.” The results can be found by clicking here.

Here are a few examples (not the “winners” of the day, just some random ones I like):

One of the themes was “Blindfold,” which inspired a lot of cool art. Some had Deryn and Alek tied up, others with eye injuries or sleep masks, but this one by CMCanary was elegant and matched the colors of this blog beautifully:

Love the inky goodness of this art. And you can tell how ANNOYING Deryn would find this.

Another theme was “Roaring 20′s,” imagining what Dalek would get up to in the decade after the war. This decade was called “roaring” because everyone basically decided to have a big post-war party (until the Depression came along, of course).

I quite like akatsukicloud227′s flapper version of Deryn:

I also appreciate that Deryn is enjoying the Roaring Twenties more than Alek. (Oh, yes. I think she would.)

The “Obsessions” theme generated lots of cool pieces. This one from Peachdust imagines Alek growing obsessed with the new art form just starting up in 1914, moving pictures!

And you would totally take Bovril to the movies, right?

The theme entitled “Generations” also took people in lots of unexpected directions, like this piece from Jurodo:

According to the comment thread, that’s a young Deryn and Alek if they’d somehow met when their parents were still alive, and had gotten to hang out together. Which is totally awwww . . .

There was also a “Parents” theme. Most of the entries for this imagined Deryn and Alek as parents in the future, but this one by stkidd points out that both of them had non-biological parental figures in their lives, like Klopp and Jaspert:

Also very awwww . . ..

Overall, Dalek Week looks like a huge success to me. The randomness of the themes seems to have inspired a lot of non-canonical extrapolations, which is the kind of fan art that I find most interesting. I love it when readers go off in strange new directions with my characters.

Like, um, this Legend of Korra-crossover piece (also from Jurodo)!

Yip, yip, yo.

See you next week, if not before! Don’t worry, I’ll be posting more regularly now that I’m back home, and what with the Manual of Aeronautics coming out in . . . 25 days!

CRAP.