Aliette de Bodard » Blog Archive

October 27th, 2010

Via Andy Cox, the upcoming art for “The Shipmaker”, which is going to be in the next issue of Interzone (out November 12th).

Art by Richard Wagner.

Isn’t it pretty?

Aside from the obvious (though you’re going to laugh, but it took me a while to notice the pregnant woman at the top-right), notice that the background on the left is a traditional Chinese brush painting of trees; the top part has the same traditional brush rendering of mountains; and the bottom part has schematics of electronics. Since the story is about using traditional elements of Chinese art and Chinese literature and applying them to ship design, that’s awesomely appropriate.

BTW, the November issue is a Jason Sanford special (three stories and an interview with Jason); and you can get it for free if you subscribe to Interzone, or Interzone and Black Static for two years:

To receive this special offer, simply order a 12 issue (two-year) subscription to either Interzone or the Interzone/Black Static combination through the TTA Press online store. Then, in the Shopper’s Reference box, enter JASON SANFORD. That way you’ll receive the special issue for free.

(quoting Jason because I’m lazy)

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3 Responses to “Shipmaker art”

Jason Erik Lundberg

Says:
October 30th, 2010 at 4:22 pm

Is the story about Zhang Ziyi?

aliette

Says:
October 31st, 2010 at 11:32 am

Well, no–I hadn’t realised until some people pointed it to me that she’d been used as a model. My main problem with it when I received it was that the main character looks Asian, but most definitely Chinese and not Vietnamese, which was what I had in mind when I wrote the story. Then again, if you don’t have a smattering of Vietnamese, I’m not sure how clear it is in the story what she’s supposed to be, other than Asian and not Chinese.
But I did think that the artist nailed quite a lot of other things in a really great manner: the transition from the traditional Chinese art to the electronics, the layer of ship architecture in the background, and the pregnant woman. And I was having nightmares of having a very sexualised Asian girl as an illustration (I’ve seen it before), so I’m mostly letting it slide due to the other sources of awesomeness (and writing another story with Vietnamese protagonists )