Scott Westerfeld's Blog, page 20

Rusty Ruins Revealed!

When I was checking out artists for Uglies: Shay's Story, aka the Uglies Manga, there were a few key things I was looking for. Most of them, of course, had to so with drawing humans—expressions, faces, and actions, especially the sort of flying action you get with hoverboard chase scenes.

But I also wanted Shay's Story to have the right settings. In science fiction, of course, setting is often a character. How many times have you described a science fiction movie or book by starting with something like, "It's on this planet where . . . " or "It's in this future where . . . "?

The word where always plays a big role when talking about SF.

There are two main settings in the Uglies series—cities and nature. Indeed, a lot of the Uglies saga is about the relationship between the city and the wild. All four of the books start in a city, then include a voyage into and across the wild, and then return to a city in the end. The city represents control as well as civilization; the wild is danger as well as freedom. These are the two poles of the Uglies universe.

At the intersection between the city and nature is, of course, the Rusty Ruins. It's the city that nature has taken back. It's also the warning of what happens when humanity gets out of control. So the Ruins have to rock.

I am here to assure you that thanks to the skillz of Steven Cummings, they do:

Click here for the BIGNESS! And make sure to zoom in.

As you can see, that's the tallest tower just ahead, where so many scenes in all the books happen. And in the big version you can see our heroes headed there on their hoverboards, surrounded by a bit of supernatural lighting so that you can see them.

It's just one of many awesome nature/city settings that Steven has done.

Anyway, Uglies: Shay's Story comes out March 6, which is two weeks away! That means there will be only one more reveal. What do you guys think it should be?

Feel free to think outside the box. Do you want a random special? The Smoke? A hoverboard scene? A hole-in-the-wall? Something completely different?

Let me know in the comments below.

You can pre-order Shay's Story at Indie Bound, BarnesandNoble.com, or Amazon. Or buy it on March 6 at a proper bookstore or comics shop!

Fan Art Friday (V-Day edition)

Yes, it's a Valentine's-Day adjacent FAF, which means . . . smoochies!

But not to worry, smooch-o-phobes, there weren't that many of them sent in this year.

In fact, let us start with a kiss-free Bovril Valentine card, from @cherryteapots:

This reminds me of my motto when writing the series: Bovril makes everything better.

I found this on Twitter, and forgot to remember who it's by, but it's clearly pre- or post-smooch:

But enough of this pussy-footing around! Melissa gives us for realz mid-smooch:

She explains:

Alek knew that he needed to give Deryn SOMETHING for Valentine's Day, and, broke as he is, all he could muster was a homemade card that looks like it was made by a five year old (It can be seen flying through the air as Alek lets go of it when he gets smooched). He was afraid that Deryn would scoff at it because she could do so much better, but she loves it and surprises him with a kiss in return. Poor Bovril is hiding near the chair and covering it's eyes because of what it is seeing.

Indeed.

Next, we have Tobulshi, with an amusing cartoon of thwarted smooching:

Here's another funny one by Tobuishi.

And for our last entry in the smooching sweepstakes, Uglies-style, here's a lovely Valentine featuring David and Tally:

Hope you had a good V-Day, and told all the ones you loved that you loved them!

And now back to regular FAF. I also saw this on Twitter, and I don't remember who did it. So who did it? As you can see, it's Gundam/Leviathan crossover!

All characters from walking machine universes should meet at some point and compare notes, I think.

From Jonathan, here's Count Volger's special walking machine. (No doubt with a special motion-control system to reduce illness and grumpiness.)

And finally, in honor of the Dr. Cable reveal, here's Serena Marie with some Uglies cosplay:

It's fairly canonical, now that we know Dr. C wears a white coat.

Okay, that's it.

Next Monday, I'll be revealing the Rusty Ruins from Uglies: Shay's Story, which comes out in only about 17 days. (Or 18, depending on your hemisphere.) ALSO, very soon we will see the Shay's Story book trailer!

You can pre-order Shay's Story at Indie Bound, BarnesandNoble.com, or Amazon. Or buy it on March 6 at a proper bookstore.

Dr. Cable Reveal

The voting was fierce and furious, and David won in the end. (I think so, anyway. Counting is hard.) And yet there is a prize for second place, Dr. Cable-lovers, and this is it!

So here in all her full-page glory is Dr. Cable from Shay's Story, the manga adaptation of Uglies!

And don't forget to click here for the BIG version!

Hope you like her. I think she's the right mix of pretty, intimidating, and older than all the other characters. (She's been around a while, after all.) Of course, it would be cool if we could hear her razor voice too . . .

Can you figure out where this scene is?

Shared Worlds Workshop

I recently contributed to a cool fundraising effort for Shared Worlds, a teen fantasy and science fiction writing camp in South Carolina.

Artist Jeremy Zerfoss created a tableaux of fanciful monsters, and each writer chose one to write a short description about.

Click here to see the full-size work, and click on any monster for its description. See if you can find mine!

From that page, you can donate to Shared Worlds or register if you think attending would be fun. It's open to 8th through 12th Graders.

Here's the press release from Shared Worlds:

Neil Gaiman, Lev Grossman, Scott Westerfeld, and thirty-seven more of the most imaginative writers from around the world have contributed to Shared Worlds' "Critter Map," a webpage of fantastical beasts. Their whimsical descriptions of imaginary creatures created by pop artist Jeremy Zerfoss are in support of the Shared Worlds registration and fund drive for 2012. Every summer up to 50 teen writers come to Shared Worlds SF/F Teen Writing Camp at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina, from as far away Japan to participate in this unique camp. This year, registrants include teens from all parts of the United States as well as Germany and Indonesia. Wofford College provides a structured, supervised environment in which the students can excel and demonstrate their creativity.

At Shared Worlds, the students form teams in classrooms to build entire fantasy or science fictional worlds in the first week and then write stories in those worlds the second week. Top professional writers are on hand to provide feedback and to conduct workshops. The guest writers for the 2012 include New York Times bestsellers Julianna Baggott, Naomi Novik, and Tobias Buckell as well as Prix Award Winner Karin Lowachee and Hugo Award winner Ann VanderMeer. The teens also get to attend author readings, take fieldtrips to bookstores, and create videos about their imaginary worlds. Shared Worlds also publishes an annual book of the students' writing.

"For many of our students, Shared Worlds is a transformational experience," said the camp's assistant director, fantasy writer Jeff VanderMeer. "They not only learn more about writing, they also get to have fun solving problems in in the world-building groups, and they form what will probably turn out to be life-long friendships with like-minded teens."

The "Critter Map" is the cornerstone of a donation drive intended to ensure that attending the Shared Worlds Teen Writing Camp can be a possibility for all registered students, no matter what their financial need.

Click here for more info about Shared Worlds.

Fan Art Friday (Actually on Friday Edition)

It's Friday (in the US, anyway), which means it's time for excuses about why I don't have Fan Art Friday up yet. But this week I thought I'd do something different, and put up some fan art!

Let us start with this fantastic video by The10thDecision, which is a sort of greatest hits of Leviathan fan art—plus some I haven't seen before.

I quite enjoyed that. It's a lovely reminder of how talented and wonderful you all are!

This is a pretty cool picture from one of my favorite settings in the Leviathan series—the ratlines! It's by leaffystar19.

It's cool to see a super-dramatic event like this that's non-canonical. Because, you know, Alek could have slipped and almost fallen at some point while he was first getting used to the ratlines, and it wasn't even worth mentioning in the novels.

Here's a very . . . interesting picture of Volger from aieeetheygotfrank, who explains:

I'm not really used to drawing Volger, and there's something very off about this… I think it's because of the hair, but that's the whole point of this so I don't really know, lol. So anyway, this is kind of if Volger like lost his hair in the war or I don't know? Like he had his scalp blown off? And now he has to wear a duck to cover it up? I don't know? Question mark?

So I give you, Duck-Head Volger!

Can Duck-Head Volger fan fiction be far behind? (Thanks to our own Tobu for suggesting this.)

For you Uglies fans, here's a cool Tally-wa triptych from totalimmortal220akasean:

These are pretty cool, especially because they remind me of the German covers of the Uglies trilogy, which looked like this:

See what I mean? Kind of like dolls, in the scary-doll sense.

And finally, here's the obligatory Goliath Bonus Chapter fan art of the week, "Lad in a Dress," from Caroline:

Alek has a sort of "Does this bustle make my butt look big?" vibe here. (YES, ALEK, IT DOES.)

Okay, that's it for FAF. See you next Friday!

In the middle of next week, I'll be revealing Dr. Cable from Uglies: Shay's Story, aka the Uglies manga. I'm sure you'll be TERRIFIED of her.

In the meantime, keep the fan art coming.

David Revealed

The voting for the next character reveal has swayed back and forth for the last week. It's been so tight between David and Dr. Cable that I'm not even going to count the votes. I shall declare David the winner, and reveal Dr. Cable next week.

So without further ado, here is David:

Wouldn't you love to see that dialog box on the left side? WOULDN'T YOU? Well, you're not going to, because that would be wrong.

Shay's Story begins about six months before Uglies, back when Shay and Zane are pals in an ugly gang known as the Crims. And, as related in the novels, Shay and Zane were going to run away to the Smoke with David's help, but they "chickened out." At least that's what they told Tally.

Of course, the stories we tell about uncomfortable events in the past are often oversimplified. So I decided to come up with a more interesting reason for them to bail, resulting in Zane becoming pretty and Shay moping around until she meets Tally.

I won't reveal here what really happened, but I can say without spoilage that Shay and David do spend a certain amount of time arguing . . .

Of course, as we all know from the novels, they do get together later in the Smoke.

There's also some cavorting on the roller coaster . . .

One thing I liked about writing Shay's Story (with Devin Grayson) was revisiting key locales from the original novels, like the roller coaster. Especially since we get to SEE them now. I love the way that artist Steven Cummings has made the Rusty Ruins come alive. (Well, it's kind of dead. But you know what I mean.) In fact, I think I'll do a whole reveal just for the Ruins.

Anyway, that's it for this reveal. Next week it's the deliciously evil Dr. Cable!

You can pre-order Shay's Story at Indie Bound, BarnesandNoble.com, or Amazon. Or buy it on March 6 at a proper bookstore.

Fan Art Friday (Actual Friday Edition!)

So David and Dr. Cable are pretty much tied in the voting for next week's character reveal, and I'm missing some final images for them, so I thought I'd do an actual Fan Art Friday while the election continues!

Without further ado . . .

Here are three pieces from kikane on DeviantArt, showing Deryn and Alek in a semi-chibi mode:

They are so sweet! And I love all version of chibi-flying-whale.

From Savannah comes the unlikely genre of Legend Zelda/Goliath crossover!

I kind of like steampunk in its cute-comic form.

From Abigail, another in the new genre of Goliath Bonus Chapter art, aka Alek in a dress!

Of course, if they're going up to Scotland to visit Deryn's mom one day, we might get something like this scene from from Camille, featuring Deryn and Alek in kilts:

And here's some cross-dressing cosplay from Lauren:

And from McKenna, a drawing of Deryn on a Huxley, looking down at the ground with a pensive expression:

From Ashley-wa, an entry into the classic put-yourself-in-the-ugies-cover genre:

And from Sophie, an Uglies cover collage:

I also got a huge PDF of Clanker and Darwinist designs from a class in Edwards, Colorado. Here's one of them by "BBA":

I'll be featuring more of these works in future FAFs.

And finally, I don't know who this is from. Identify yourself!

Okay, that's it for today's FAF.

Don't forget to keep voting between David and Dr. Cable, and remember that Shay's Story now comes out March 6. That's in

Everything Is Late

Fan Art Friday is super late now, so I'm just waiting till . . . Friday. #isuck

But as you can see, I've made up for it below.

But first, shall we vote on the next character reveal? Here are your choices:

David

Astrix

Ho

Ryde

Dr. Cable

Random Special

Hmm. This one might be a bit easy. In any case, use this comments thread to vote, argue, and otherwise inveigle!

In the meantime, please enjoy this entire PAGE of art from Shay's Story. It's from early in the books, when Shay, Zane, and the other Crims are sneaking into New Pretty Town.

But what you really want to see is the BIGGER and ZOOMABLE version!

So click here for that.

And now to repeat the annoying news: The release date for Shay's Story has been delayed a week due to paper shortages. (Because we decided to make it bigger, so you can see all the art better!) It now comes out March 6, 2012.

Pre-order Shay's Story at Indie Bound, BarnesandNoble.com, or Amazon. Or buy it on February 28 at a proper bookstore.

Tally Revealed!

I was all ready to reveal the manga version of Tally this week, and then realized that I didn't have the final versions of the right pages. Oops. Then there was a bit of miscommunication, but now at last I have them!

So we are delaying Fan Art Friday (often known as Fan Art Sunday) for the Tally character reveal.

Remember that Shay's Story (AKA "The Uglies Manga") is all from Shay's POV, and therefore starts about six months before the events of Uglies, back when Shay and Zane are pals. So Tally doesn't enter until Zane and Shay have planned to run away and then "chickened out." (That's what they told Tally in Pretties, but it's more complicated than that in reality.)

But when Tally appears, we are fully into the same events as Uglies, so some of the scenes below will be familiar. It's kind of interesting, duplicating some Uglies scenes almost exactly, but in an entirely new context and from a different point of view.

Of course, there are some times when Devin and I decided to skip over a lot of the scenes in Uglies, using the wonder of montage! You may recognize these flashes from the book, when Tally and Shay are getting to be friends.

Here's a close-up of a familiar scene in Uglies that gets swept past in this montage:

This scene is also directly from the book, but here only lasts one frame. It's quite illuminating to see Steven's vision of it:

What's interesting is, when you read the book, Tally is the protagonist and is therefore the center of attention in this scene. But in the version above, you can see that Shay is the featured character. She's literally foregrounded.

And finally, here's an argument between Tally and Shay at a certain key point in the story:

Click here for a bigger version of this one.

The dialog is directly from the book, but as you can see, Tally has her back to us and we see Shay's expression.

I didn't realize any of this (at least, the visual aspect of it) until I started to look for shots of Tally, and realized that there were very few of her. Most of the time, she's in the background and Shay's doing something. Because the comic is all about Shay.

But there is a great shot of Tally from near the end of the book, when they're in the Smoke. So here's frizzy-haired, not very confident, under-suspicion Tally:

Hope you like her.

Fan Art Friday (For Realz)

Okay, it's time to get rid of our protest-y black boxes, and check out the real version of FAF. My apologies for making you wait!

Here's CatieKay's rendition of a CERTAIN SCENE from Goliath.

Super atmospheric, with lightning! For some reason, the katakana in the lower left is defeating me. Can anybody translate? (Ka-i-ri-so? My Japanese sucks these days.)

And from Unforgiven-Unloved, check out Alek's expression. He is in LURVE.

And the last of the SOPA-edits is AvistheArtistGeek, with her Leviathan Xmas decorations. 3-D FAF!

Just imagine little wee Deryn climbing up a Christmas tree on the tinsel ratlines. SO MUCH KAWAII.

But wait. There's more!

Here's a cartoon from fellie220:

There's just not enough marker in fan art! Love the lurid colors! (Love typing "lurid," too.)

And here's some bonus chapter fan art, from Melissa M:

Volger looks funnier in a lizard head than I imagined him. But of course, IT'S VOLGER IN A LIZARD HEAD. (Not to mention: TAZZA WITH A HALO!)

This one's for all of you who want the Leviathan series updated to World War II. It's also a fandom cross-over move, with Deryn and Alek in Hetalia mode. (Hetalia is a web-comic that anthropomorphizes the countries of WWII in comical and stereotypical fashion—and, as pointed out in the comics below, has been adapted into a manga and anime.)

Interestingly, it's actually a collaboration between top-cap and magic-the-echidna, who did half each of the image. Click here for a larger version.

And from RakWel we have an Uglies cover redux!

Everything is very manga and Japanesque today, isn't it?

And now for a vanishingly rare species: So Yesterday fan art!

Anybody remember the purple hand scene? ANYBODY? (Seriously, SO Yesterday is my book that the least people have read. GO FIX THAT.)

We've seen work from Art-Band Geek a few times here, but I thought this was a touching scene:

Dalek looks happy there. Happy Dalek is a good Dalek.

And finally here's an alternate Clanker walker from Tyler:

It's not from the books, but it totally has that clunky Clanker look.

That's it! Don't forget, there will be a reveal of Tally from Shay's Story (aka the Uglies Manga) early next week. Like, Monday or Tuesday.

Also, some slightly annoying news: The release date for Shay's Story has been delayed a week, due to paper shortages! But that's only because the publisher wanted to make it bigger, so you can see all the lovely art.

It now comes out March 6, 2012.