Sunday, August 06, 2006

Shelley Eshkar's Android's Dream

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

Someone asked why me why John Scalzi's new book, The Androids Dream,
looks so different than his Old Man's War and Ghost Brigade books. Simply, Android is not part of that series so we did not want people to buy it thinking that it continued the story of Ghost Brigade. (For that, we have a lovely John Harris painting waiting to be designed.) Since this book starts off with a fart joke and involves sheep stealing, I immediately thought of my friend Shelley Eshkar and his rather subversive sense of humor. His thoughts on creating the cover:

"The Android's Dream was a chance to play 'hot potato' with a truly iconic visual metaphor: from its shepherd origins, to cartoon insomnia, to Philip K. Dick's brilliant recasting of it as philosophical riddle. I wanted the cover to be almost rebus-like in its presentation of icons and phrases. I also liked the idea of the android automatron in vulnerable sleep, like an errant boy shepherd in the fields of Aesop.

John Scalzi has made a small step forward for the role of sheep
in science fiction, which are possibly overlooked. I am glad to have furthered the presence of sheep in science fiction cover art."
I feel privildeged that Shelley continues to design book covers for us at Tor, including Eastern Standard Tribe, The Tooth Fairy, and many others. More typically, Shelley spends his days and nights creating digital artworks with his partners Mark Downie and Paul Kaiser. Currently they have a piece on display at Lincoln Center, celebrating the 40th Aniversy of the Mostly Mozart festival. Other works include Biped, in collaboration with Merc Cunningham, and Pedestrian. (Both pictured below.) Anyone visiting their website should take the time to watch the many quicktime movies that show their works in motion.

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Once I played kung fu, I did not know how to get strong, someone told me that you must have World of Kung fu Gold. That he gave me some WoKf gold, and then he said that I could buy World of Kung fu Gold, but I did not have so much money, and then I played it in all my spare time. From then on, I have got a lot of World of Kung fu money, if I did not continue to play it, I can sell cheap World of Kung fu Gold to anyone who want.