Christmas Cards.
So before I disappear for the holidays (or more accurately, before the holidays give me an excuse to feel less guilty about my continued dereliction of the ‘crawl), I thought I’d leave you with an assortment of visual stocking stuffers that have been piling up over the past few months. Behold, and click to embiggen:
 Vadim Marchenkov’s “Wurlitzer of Doom” cover for the Russian Special Edition Blindsight rerelease! |
 Vladimir Gurkov’s “Ferris Wheel of Death” cover for the upcoming Russian premiere of Echopraxia! |
 Angus McIntyre’s “Drones of Debauchery”, featuring Amanda Bates and the Kevlars! |
 Ken Lubin and the Corneas of Consternation, from Petr Vorontsov! |
See what he did there?
And finally, the awesome visual pun of Beyond the Rift (or whatever that translates into in Bulgarian, which is the language of this particular edition), in which cover artist Zhivko Petrov shows us both a literal rift and an evocation of “The Thing(s)” therein that would take us beyond it. Very nice job, Zhiv.
As usual, these have all been archived in the appropriate galleries for posterity. Enjoy at your leisure.
That does it for me. In the spirit of the season I might get around to a quick blog post on this new fad that has fetishists the world over inserting slimy alien eggs up their vaginas and/or asses using a specially-designed strap-on.
But if not, see you in the new year.
Beautiful stuff. N’Am publishers should maybe start building a Russian artist rolodex.
Only one pic caught my eye over the past few weeks for this year.
Is it better to give or receive…Alien head?.
Wonderful arts.
Hallo, Mr. Watts. I readed your last novell, Echopraxia. I ask you: is it trilogy, or it is a end-book of circle?
And of course, merry Christmas!
I’m anticipating a third book to close the story, working title Omniscience. I’ve been working on plot points and the like, but I have a couple of other book-length projects to get out of the way first before I can really dive into it.
To you as well! (Although Christmas 2015 is extinct as of this writing.)
Are you working on the two another novells, i understand right? And, what it is a novells?
How soon issue technothriller about a sea biologist?
(About Christmas: i have two Christmas in the year).
Does anyone know why Mr Watts uses the word “haploid” in Rifters? I’d never seen the word before. Google’s definitions – a cell with half the number of “normal” chromosomes – makes it seem as though Watts is using the word as a kind of slur or insult. Is this correct? Is “haploid” a Wattsian phrase for “dumbass”?
@Trent
Gather it means random {happenstance} gene sequence a la natural birth as opposed to altered/enhanced. Transhumans are likely to have some self defense rationale to counter being thought of/referred to as freaks.
I figured it was an insult along the lines of calling someone a jackoff, a sperm cell… as an insult, verbally reducing someone to a more primitive state is pretty basic (same logic as calling someone a baby, or a monkey)… and all of us were at one point haploids… but, calling someone a “sperm cell” is kind of inherently sexist, because it’s just as correct to call someone an “egg”, but that doesn’t sound as good as an insult. But haploids has a certain ring to it that just sounds insulting, sharing sounds with halfwit and unpleasant words ending with oids, and you have the added benefit that anyone not educated doesn’t actually know what it means, so if they want to know how you just insulted them, they have to humiliate themselves and ask. However, all of that is likely scaffolding, and the fact is most people probably use it because they heard other people use it, and it’s grown to popularity regardless of it’s origins… maybe it was just a popular insult because, 2 years before it started, some schlocky but popular sci-fi show used it as an insult without even knowing what it meant, and it caught on.
And a double entendre on hapless. Makes sense.
As a matter of fact, this was an insult that was actually being used at UBC among my friends back when I was in grad school— it’s not futuristic at all, it’s actually retro. The connotation I took from it was a lack of genetic diversity (i.e., only half a deck); a cooler, more concise way of saying someone was splashing around in the shallow end of the gene pool.
So, what about a technothriller about sea biologist in the not far future?
@Docbrain: look back about one year. One proposed novel is Intelligent Design. Maybe it is from the same fiction universe as “Rifters” trilogy (“Starfish”, “Maelstrom”, “βehemoth”). Maybe it is just technothriller about near-future marine-biologist but not from same future as “Rifters” trilogy. We can expect it will be quite good, however it’s done.
“In the spirit of the season I might get around to a quick blog post on this new fad that has fetishists the world over inserting slimy alien eggs up their vaginas and/or asses using a specially-designed strap-on.”
This splorch thingie would do a lot to kink up the newly trending and way too rosy babypod affair. 😛
OH my gosh. I love these. So cool. especially the Blindsight ones.
This one got deleted, so had to recreate it. A celebration of the Canadian healthcare system is I think the real message.
Aliens.
The Bulgarian title is Отвъд разлома, which simply a literal translation of Beyond the Rift. I understand Bogdan Rusev translated it, and I was wondering if it’s the right fit for your style. He does deadpan humour well as a writer, but in a bit of a show-offy way that defeats the purpose a bit. But a friend already read it and he thinks it’s good.
Interesting shifts. February “Author earnings report”.
Whoa. That is interesting.