Covers are important. Not only do they help popularize books and win over new readers—and believe me when I say that the first thing the book industry drills into you is that a book with a bad cover Will Not Sell, no matter how amazing the content—they also go a long way toward establishing the feel of a series. There are a number of authors and series that I can recognize from the cover art alone, and I'm always distraught when some publisher changes a cherished series' look for no good reason. (Granted, sometimes there is a good reason, and kudos to those publishers who raise great books out of the ghetto.) Dan Simmons's Hyperion cantos, Gordon Dickson's Dragon Knight series, Richard A. Knaak's Dragonrealms books which were my first introduction to Larry Elmore—these covers are part of the story to me, forever linked emotionally to the books they promote.
All of which puts a lot of pressure on those of us charged with ordering covers. Fortunately, though our aesthetic is always growing and changing, Planet Stories has gotten extremely lucky during its short history, and a perfect example of that is cover artist James Ryman.
James came on board for the second book in Leigh Brackett's Skaith trilogy, The Hounds of Skaith, and we were ecstatic over his vision of Eric John Stark and that dying planet in its galactic backwater. Naturally, we immediately signed him on to do the cover for the final book, The Reavers of Skaith, as well. Seeing the two side by side, there can be no question of the link between the books, more so than any cover line we could have run over the top of the art. The subtle juxtaposition of the positions of good and evil on the covers is masterfully done as well, and my only regret is that we weren't able to bring him on in time for The Ginger Star and make this a triptych.
You can expect to see more covers from James Ryman in Planet Stories' future, as well as some other fabulous new artists—for instance, the cover currently being finished up for Otis Adelbert Kline's The Outlaws of Mars may be my favorite to date—but if you want to weigh in and make your opinion known, hop over to the Planet Stories messageboards and let us know what you think. We're always listening.
Over the last year or so, we've been listening carefully to what people have to say about Planet Stories, and especially about the books' covers. While we all know that it's what's inside that counts—and with authors like Brackett and Howard, Moore and Moorcock, I think we're pretty set on that level—the cover remains the single most important factor in selling a book to somebody who may never have heard of it. I know that, especially as a child, covers often made my buying decisions for me. Did it have bright colors? A dragon on it? What about a weird alien landscape? My favorite science fiction novel of all time, Dan Simmons's Hyperion, I purchased based solely on the amazing cover, and it's my sincere hope that someone can someday say the same thing about one of our books.
But finding the right mix with covers isn't always easy. Should it be pulpy or sophisticated? Detailed and realistic or painterly and stylized? All of us at Planet Stories have our own personal tastes, but we're a relatively small sample, and as such we've been spending a lot of time on the Planet Stories messageboards getting reader feedback. Lately, it seems that we've really hit our stride, with the Swordsman of Mars cover and this fabulous Hounds of Skaith art from our old friend James Ryman being the hands-down favorites to date.
See, back in April I did one of these blog posts about The Ginger Star, the first of Leigh Brackett's three Skaith books. In it, I talked all about how she's my favorite Planet Stories author so far, and how The Ginger Star is hands-down the most fun-to-read book in our line to date. I was fair, but I was effusive, as the world she painted was a beautiful blend of fantasy and sci-fi (as is the case with so much far-future apocalyptic fiction), a work of a sword-and-planet genius that seems more akin to Tolkien or Star Wars than Edgar Rice Burroughs. It lit me up, and I shouted it from the rooftops. And now I'm in a bind.
In this sequel to The Ginger Star, Brackett has more of everything I loved from the first book. More strange aliens. More bizarre and yet immediately familiar cultures. More battle scenes, more fights with telepathic hound-beasts, more starships and political theory and morally ambiguous bad guys getting what's coming to them. New nations and landscapes (and an additional map of the world as well, courtesy of Rob Lazzaretti). Without the need to explain who Eric John Stark is and why he's there, Brackett is free to keep pushing the envelope and packing every scene with more wonder. One of the things I love most about Brackett is actually one of the things that originally attracted me to China Miéville (who was born just six years before her death... Ms. Brackett was light years ahead of her time). Both of them have so many ideas that they can afford to just toss them away with a line or two. The beautiful, perfect Yur men, for instance, whose women are like shrieking, pale grubs—Leigh may only have given them a paragraph, but the image has stuck with me ever since.
So what can I say? I spoke too soon. My only hope at this point is that, when it comes time to release The Reavers of Skaith, I'll be referring back to this post in much the same fashion. Call me crazy, but something tells me Brackett isn't quite finished yet.
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