Saturday, January 2, 2010New Art for Julian

It's been a quiet holiday season with us -- Sharry is recovering from minor eye surgery and working on a lengthy article for Broken Arrow, and I'm deep into Vortex (when I'm not reading T.C. Boyle's excellent The Women).  But I do want to wish everyone a belated merry Saturnalia (whichever version of it you prefer) and a prosperous New Year.

The paperback edition of Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America is due out at the end of May, and Tor was kind enough to send along the cover art:

The truncated arm of the Statue of Liberty does appear in the book, and it's part of a long tradition in SF art.  I suppose most people will remember the scene at the end of the original Planet of the Apes film (the one scripted by Rod Serling), in which Charlton Heston has a late-arriving epiphany; but the trope is older than that.  My favorite Ruined Liberty is from the February 1964 Amazing Stories:

The illustration is for Henry Slesar's "Beside the Golden Door."  The story doesn't quite live up to the artwork . . . but honestly, what story could?  This image was propably hovering somewhere in the back of my mind when I wrote the Central Park passages in Julian Comstock. 

Fans of the original hardcover cover art, meanwhile, will want to check out the artist's website.  Ross MacDonald turns out to be a multi-talented and many-faceted artist.  His illustrations are great: I particularly liked this one (which might also have served as a cover for Julian Comstock!).  And check out the movie props he designed.  Fascinating stuff.