{"id":170,"date":"2008-08-12T15:20:00","date_gmt":"2008-08-12T23:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=170"},"modified":"2008-08-12T15:20:00","modified_gmt":"2008-08-12T23:20:00","slug":"i-steampunk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=170","title":{"rendered":"I, Steampunk"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http:\/\/rifters.com\/real\/uploaded_images\/PoleDancer-737356.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"http:\/\/rifters.com\/real\/uploaded_images\/PoleDancer-737353.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><span style=\"font-style: italic;\">\u015alepowidzenie<\/span> is out in Poland.  The cover makes it look kinda like a Jules Verne retread, and I mean that in a good way; in terms of literal, technical detail it gets pretty much everything wrong, but in terms of thematic ambience (and basic artistic skill) it rules.<\/p>\n<p>This is just as well, because I was never consulted on this cover despite a clause in the contract stipulating that I would be (a clause I have insisted on, for obvious reasons,  in every contract subsequent to the Tor edition).  Once again I am reminded of how fucking impotent authors are, and how utterly meaningless contracts are.   Over the past year, various contracts have promised me input on cover art; interest payments for late advances; consultation on audio performances; and unabridged transcription of text.  And whenever these commitments have failed to solidify, I&#8217;ve always been told that there&#8217;s fuck-all I can do about it; the contracts contain promises but no penalties. They&#8217;re universally described as essential things for authors to have, yet there doesn&#8217;t seem to be any recourse when a publisher breaks them.<\/p>\n<p>But I digress;  I&#8217;m very happy with the way <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">this<\/span> cover turned out.  And initial reader reaction seems to be pretty positive too;  Google translation software isn&#8217;t all it might be, but this <a href=\"http:\/\/209.85.171.104\/translate_c?hl=en&amp;sl=pl&amp;u=http:\/\/ksiazki.wp.pl\/katalog\/recenzje\/recenzja.html%3Frid%3D38733&amp;prev=\/search%3Fq%3D%25C5%259Alepowidzenie%2B%2522peter%2Bwatts%2522%2B%2522peter%2Bwatts%2522%26ndsp%3D18%26num%3D100%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26safe%3Doff%26sa%3DN%26as_qdr%3Dall%26pwst%3D1&amp;usg=ALkJrhj2IrIayuuXLFKa6Mi03Ju9NhxnEA\">nine-star rating<\/a> is pretty unambiguous.  And others seem to be using words that port over as &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/blog.maeg.pl\/slepowidzenie-peter-watts\/\">best book published this year<\/a>&#8221; and &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/metzli.wordpress.com\/2008\/08\/07\/peter-watts-slepowidzenie\/\">deserve the highest praise<\/a>&#8220;.<\/p>\n<p>So overall, a good start in Poland.  I just wish there were more than fifty people in that country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u015alepowidzenie is out in Poland. The cover makes it look kinda like a Jules Verne retread, and I mean that in a good way; in terms of literal, technical detail it gets pretty much everything wrong, but in terms of thematic ambience (and basic artistic skill) it rules. This is just as well, because I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}