2009 Chesley Award Nominations

The 2009 Chesley Award Nominations are up.

And I am very pleased to announce that we have no less than 3 book covers up for awards.

In the hardcover category: Dan Dos Santos is up for his cover for Mike Resnick's Stalking the Vampire (wonderful design by Nicole Sommer-Lecht).

And for paperback: Todd Lockwood is up for his cover for Tom Lloyd's The Stormcaller (wonderful design by Grace Conti-Zilsberger ), while John Picacio is also up for his cover for my anthology, Fast Forward 2 (wonderful design by Jaqueline Cooke)

Of lesser interest, and a testament to the wonderful illustrators and in-house designers we have on our covers, I am also on the ballot. More important, I think, is that in a field that may produce 1000 original covers in a year, we have a whoppin' three Pyr books in the list.

Also, it should be pointed out, our pal John Picacio is nominated in FOUR CATEGORIES!!!

Check out his beautiful black&white artwork for interior illustration here (from Del Rey's Elric: The Stealer of Souls):

"The Chesley Awards were established in 1985 as ASFA's peer awards to recognize individual works and achievements during a given year. The Chesleys were initially called the ASFA Awards, but were later renamed to honor famed astronomical artist Chesley Bonestell after his death in 1986. The awards are presented annually at the World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon)."

Congratulations to all the nominees, and to the authors who are so lucky to have such wonderful art! I have always maintained that the history of SF&F illustration that we enjoy is a unique asset of our genre that should be celebrated, so this is very rewarding to see.

Feast Your Eyes...

Because I can't talk about artwork enough, here are the covers of three forthcoming Pyr books. On the left is Chris Roberson's End of the Century,as envisioned by Dan Dos Santos. (Full illustration, sans text, is here.) This is a tale of a young woman named Alice Fell, a teenage American punker who has been having visions of the London Eye all her life (and before there was such a thing), so follows her vision to the UK and falls into a conspiracy that moves through secret societies (and shadowy assailants) all the way back to the origins of the Holy Grail myth. One part urban fantasy, one part secret history, there are also odd parallels with a completely different Pyr book that was being written at the same time. No I won't say which one. But I will say this is the best thing Roberson has written thus far, and he's a damn good writer.

Then over here on the right we have Stephan Martiniere's cover for Ian McDonald's Cyberabad Days, a collection of all the stories that have sprung out of the brilliantly-realized future India he crafted for River of Gods.There's a Hugo winner, a Hugo nominee and a 25k original novella here, so what's not to love, right? I don't think it's unfair to say that this is going to be a talked-about book in 09.

Then back on the left is a cover by Todd Lockwood - our first time working with Todd, who was wonderful - for a really interesting debut fantasy novel, Tom Lloyd's The Stormcaller: Book One of the Twilight Reign.This is a tale of Isaak, a "white eye" - a person born with more charisma, more strength, and more anger than average people, created by the gods to be leaders of men, but limited by those gods as well, who is thrown from humble origins into courtly politics (and courtly intrigues, and, of course, killer battles replete with trolls and dragons). It's a really intricate, lush, fully-realized fantasy world, of the grim and gritty variety, a sort of Elric set loose in Middle Earth, that I am VERY excited to be releasing in the States. Todd's full cover is a wrap-around too, so this is only a taste.

More covers starting to appear on our forthcoming books page too. And here's a handy Amazon list too. Please also note that John Picacio's utterly fantastic cover for Fast Forward 2 is still being worked on, so as great as it is, it isn't final (and hence not reproduced here).