{"id":5040,"date":"2014-08-07T09:21:37","date_gmt":"2014-08-07T17:21:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=5040"},"modified":"2014-08-07T09:53:28","modified_gmt":"2014-08-07T17:53:28","slug":"the-giant-georgia-okeefe-like-vagina-of-flame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=5040","title":{"rendered":"The Giant Georgia-O&#8217;Keefe-Like Vagina of Flame!"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_5043\" style=\"width: 208px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/echopraksja_d.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5043\" class=\" wp-image-5043   \" style=\"margin: 10px;\" alt=\"Not quite sure why MAG would use this cover for Echopraxia. It's basically the cover for Blindsight with tweaked gamma.\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/echopraksja_d-685x1024.jpg\" width=\"198\" height=\"294\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-5043\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Not quite sure why MAG would use this cover for Echopraxia. It&#8217;s basically Blindsight with tweaked gamma.<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"attachment_5042\" style=\"width: 208px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/echopraksja_uw_d.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5042\" class=\" wp-image-5042   \" style=\"margin: 10px;\" alt=\"Ah.  That's more like it.\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/echopraksja_uw_d-688x1024.jpg\" width=\"198\" height=\"294\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/echopraksja_uw_d-688x1024.jpg 688w, https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/echopraksja_uw_d.jpg 1651w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 198px) 100vw, 198px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-5042\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ah. That&#8217;s more like it.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>So <i>Echopraxia<\/i> isn&#8217;t just coming out in North America, from Tor. It&#8217;s also coming out from Astrel\/AST (in Russian), Fleuve Noir (in French), Heyne (German), MAG (Polish), and Tokyo Sogen (Japanese).\u00a0 Hopefully it&#8217;ll eventually come out in other jurisdictions as well, but these are the guys who signed up sight unseen.\u00a0 I can only hope the book justifies their faith.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s also coming out in English. Not US English, but <i>English<\/i> English.\u00a0 The <i>Queen&#8217;s<\/i> fucking English.\u00a0 It&#8217;s being released in the UK (and other Commonwealth nations, if a certain bit of Australian \u00a0cover art is anything to go on) by London&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/headofzeus.com\/\">Head of Zeus<\/a>.\u00a0 This is a first for me\u2014 not just because I&#8217;ve never had a separate English-language release outside of N&#8217;Am, but because this is the first time I&#8217;ve actually had a hand in the cover art.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not just talking about being allowed to provide input on someone else&#8217;s art. I&#8217;m not talking about being handed a sketch and asked <i>What do you think?<\/i>, and saying <i>Cool but this detail isn&#8217;t accurate<\/i>,<i> <\/i>and them saying <i>Well tough this is how we&#8217;re doing it<\/i>. <i>\u00a0<\/i>I&#8217;m talking about actually being one of the cover artists.\u00a0 Because if you look at the big beautiful cover at the bottom of this post, you might recognize that model of the <i>Crown of Thorns<\/i> I cobbled together in an obsolete version of Photoshop.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_5044\" style=\"width: 196px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/FIREFALL-Theseus.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5044\" class=\"wp-image-5044 \" style=\"margin: 10px;\" alt=\"A vote for verisimilitude.\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/FIREFALL-Theseus.jpeg\" width=\"186\" height=\"279\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/FIREFALL-Theseus.jpeg 444w, https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/FIREFALL-Theseus-200x300.jpeg 200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 186px) 100vw, 186px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-5044\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">One vote for verisimilitude.<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"attachment_5045\" style=\"width: 202px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Firefall-Australia.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5045\" class=\" wp-image-5045  \" style=\"margin: 10px;\" alt=\"Firefall-Australia\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Firefall-Australia.jpg\" width=\"192\" height=\"280\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Firefall-Australia.jpg 444w, https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Firefall-Australia-205x300.jpg 205w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 192px) 100vw, 192px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-5045\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">I think this is how it looks in Australia.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>You might ask why the <i>Crown<\/i> is in orbit around Big Ben, when everyone knows that it was <i>Theseus<\/i> that went out there? Well, that was one of the iterations we tried out\u2014 one I still prefer very slightly, just because I have a stick up my ass about narrative consistency. Aesthetically, though, Nic Cheetham at Zeus points out that the <i>Crown<\/i> is easier to see against the background. Mesopone, offered the same choice, opts for &#8220;the fat one&#8221;. And Caitlin, most eloquent of us all, opines that the <i>Crown of Thorns<\/i> constitutes &#8220;a more significant presence next to the giant, Georgia O&#8217;Keefe-like Vagina of Flame.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>You can see why I married her.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_5041\" style=\"width: 431px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/FIREFALL-ensmallened.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5041\" class=\" wp-image-5041\" style=\"margin: 10px;\" alt=\"FIREFALL-ensmallened\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/FIREFALL-ensmallened-684x1024.jpg\" width=\"421\" height=\"629\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/FIREFALL-ensmallened-684x1024.jpg 684w, https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/FIREFALL-ensmallened-200x300.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/FIREFALL-ensmallened.jpg 739w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 421px) 100vw, 421px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-5041\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Three for aesthetics.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>You might also ask why <i>Echopraxia<\/i> is coming out as <i>Firefall<\/i> in the UK, and the answer is: it isn&#8217;t. <i>Firefall \u2260<\/i>\u00a0 <i>Echopraxia<\/i>. <i>Firefall<\/i> = <i>Blindsight<\/i> + <i>Echopraxia<\/i>, released as an omnibus volume in celebration of its UK debut. <i>Echopraxia<\/i> will be getting its own standalone release a few months down the road, so nobody&#8217;s forcing you to shell out hard-earned bucks for words you&#8217;ve already read just to get a crack at words you haven&#8217;t. (In fact, Nick actually asked me to write an introductory note for the omnibus, warning potential re-readers up front that they&#8217;d be paying for \u00a0two books instead of one. It&#8217;s a nice change from <i>\u03b2ehemoth<\/i> days.)<\/p>\n<p>So that&#8217;s the story. Except for the fact that I&#8217;ll also be providing HoZ with an illustration of <i>Theseus<\/i> for the <i>Blindsight<\/i> half of the omnibus (no, not the LEO picture from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=5030\">my last post<\/a>\u2014 although both are based around the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=1047\">incredibly cool model work of\u00a0 Andrew Chase<\/a>. So if you&#8217;re into that kind of thing, the omnibus might be up your alley even if you <i>have<\/i> read the first half.<\/p>\n<p>Also, that tag line: is it awesome, or what?<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So Echopraxia isn&#8217;t just coming out in North America, from Tor. It&#8217;s also coming out from Astrel\/AST (in Russian), Fleuve Noir (in French), Heyne (German), MAG (Polish), and Tokyo Sogen (Japanese).\u00a0 Hopefully it&#8217;ll eventually come out in other jurisdictions as well, but these are the guys who signed up sight unseen.\u00a0 I can only hope [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ink-on-art","category-writing-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5040","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=5040"}],"version-history":[{"count":34,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5040\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5079,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5040\/revisions\/5079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}