You need to upgrade your Flash Player The theme of this blog is not only and obviously space, but in particular “terrestrial worlds”, places that tend to have surfaces on which one could walk or at least attach oneself to. These places sometimes also have other earth-like familiar features such as atmospheres, weather, volcanos, geysers and perhaps, we are finding, even exotic oceans, rivers or lakes that are not necessarily made of familiar materials we are used to here at home. The second theme is imagery. Occasionally I do some retouching of images when needed if an image is incomplete or sometimes “dirty” or noisy. I will attempt to correct image shortcomings based upon other images or well-accepted presumed attributes. When this is done, notes will be offered as to what was added, why and sometimes how it was done. This way no one should ever wonder if something they are looking at is real or photoshop.

My Sci-Fi Bookcover Past III

Giant Leap Dustcover from Tor Books

This one was fun as it was supposed to be based upon real science, so we were able to take advantage of more reality based imagery. The idea was to get a good image of an astronaut with a suitcase and just have that with the title. A google search for astronauts turned up this excellent image of a guy looking like he is literally truckin to the launch pad. So we switched the color of his uniform, darkened the visor (one of the only things you cannot do with NASA images is show an astronaut’s likeness) and tried to make the case look a bit more like a suitcase than an oxygen unit of some kind. It really was perfect, but not high resolution enough to go large… so to fill the frame other astronaut legs were added to suggest the story is about mankind, not just the dude with the case.

Of all the Tor Books Chopping Block executed, this was always a favorite of mine.

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