Cover controversy
There’s been some controversy with several speculative fiction covers lately. An editorial at The World SF News Blog summarizes the issues. I must agree that the cover of the Asian anthology is particularly baffling to me because one would want to differentiate it from standard dragon anthologies by using an Asian-inspired dragon. Yet the dragon in the cover (which you can see if you click here) looks very Western. It bugged me so much that I decided to make my own fan cover. I used stock images. I do have books with art I could have scanned, but the stock library proved faster and more efficient. I did some slight work in Photoshop, then finalized it in InDesign. I could have done more, but it was a quick and dirty job to approximate what I was visualizing. You can see my final results by clicking on the thumbnail to the right.
By the way, not all is bad news, the cover for King Maker published by Angry Robot looks amazing and it immediately made me want to buy the book.
January 20th, 2010 at 7:45 am
For something made out of stock images and whipped up in quick order, that is a VAST improvement on that actual cover. Thank you for the effort =)
January 20th, 2010 at 7:58 am
Thanks!
January 20th, 2010 at 3:39 pm
This is beautiful, and better yet it emphasizes the stars. The first time I looked at their cover I assumed it was an anthology of dragon stories, then I assumed it was an anthology of fantasy stories (maybe with some dragons). Only now do I realize it’s science fiction too.
Wow, their cover really doesn’t work. -_-
January 21st, 2010 at 11:25 am
I saw your cover linked somewhere else and hunted down your website just so I could tell you how gorgeous it is.
It clearly says Asian Diaspora Dragon Stories & Other Tales Of Magical Fantasy
Thank you for creating it
January 21st, 2010 at 5:58 pm
Merci Avalon Willow!
January 22nd, 2010 at 10:48 pm
I can’t even begin to express how much it means to me that you made this cover. Just - Thank you. I’ll be linking your cover sometime on my book blog.
January 25th, 2010 at 1:30 am
[…] Silvia Moreno-Garcia » Cover controversy: […]
February 7th, 2010 at 6:07 am
[…] off” by the unknown or misunderstood. Silvia Moreno-Garcia, who wrote about this in one of her post, quickly made up a new cover for Dragon and the Stars that brings a whole different perspective to […]