Paul Davey's "Lights Please" and "Nothing Left To Say"

Click on thumnbnails to visit artists' gallery

Robert Chew's "Lycans: Goliath" and "Lycans: Huntsman"

Click on thumbnails to visit artist's gallery.

Will Focus' "Haki" and "Arisen"

Click on thumbnails to visit artist's store.

Robert Chew's "Big Five: Rhino 2" and "Big 5: IAPF Special"

Click on thumbnails to view images in artist's gallery.

Will Focus' "Angelic" and "Hip Hop"

Michal Kus' "Warlord Seal Rider" and "Warlord Commanders"

Concept art for ISOTX's "March of War":

Robert Chew's "Big 5" Parts 2 and 3

Proceeds from Robert Chew's Big 5 prints will be donated to the International Anti-Poaching Foundation.

See more of the "Big 5" series.

Sohaib Awan's JinnRise

Comic book writer Sohaib Awan combines Middle Eastern mythology with scifi, pitting powerful genies against alien invaders in the JinnRise series.

Jabal and Yunus

JinnRise Issue 7

Haya

Julie Dillon's "Breaking Through" and "Planetary Alignment"

Click thumbnails to view larger images in artists' gallery.

Acaciathorn's "Modern Texcatlipoca" and "The Walls of Jericho"

Pintakasi's "The Lam-Ang Experiment"

"The Lam-Ang Experiment" is futuristic science fiction based on the medieval Ilocano epic of Lam-Ang.  This 3-volume graphic novel is written by Michael A.R. Co. and illustrated by artists from the Creative Media and Film Society of the Philippines ("Pintakasi").

Fasole's "Cyperpunk Samurai"

Snow Crash fanart by Fasole (paradanmellow). Click thumbnail to view larger image in artist's gallery. Finally, a quality Hiro portrait that actually respects the author's character description. ;-) (Snow Crash is a cyperpunk novel by Neal Stephenson. The protagonist is of African American and Korean descent.)

Has anyone noticed that most of the official Snow Crash covers with Hiro on them show either a silhouette or back view? And the few covers that have Hiro in profile or three-quarter view portray him with Caucasian features. One Hiro illustration, which made it into Spectrum some years ago,  didn't even get the hair right. (That particular illustrator portrayed Hiro as someone with white skin, European features and lank hair.)

This isn't an issue unique to Snow Crash covers. Another example is the treatment of Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea books. As the author herself describes in Slate article A Whitewashed Earthsea, publishers seem to go out of their way to avoid showing non-white faces on book covers, out of fear that doing so might hurt sales.

John Jude Palencar's cover art for Octavia Butler's Patternist series

Mass market paperback covers:

Wild Seed (1999) and Mind of my Mind (1994). (click thumbnails to view larger images on on artist's site)

Clay's Ark (1996) and Patternmaster (1995), Click thumbnails to view larger images on on ifsdb.com.

Broeck Steadman's cover art for "The Ear, The Eye and the Arm"

The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm is an award-winning science fiction novel first published in 1994. Set in 22nd century Zimbabwe, the plot follows three mutant detectives hired by General Matsika's wife to track down the three missing Matsika children.

On the left is the cover art for the first edition. Click thumbnail to view larger image on artist's site. The leftmost character is the Arm, whose mutant powers include the ability to sense what others are feeling and peer into their memories, the latter skill being something that he tries not to use out of respect for others' privacy. He is described as "black" and is a member of the Shona ethnic group.

Todd Lockwood's Stone Car

Magazine illustration.

Click thumbnail to see full size image on artist's site.

Michael Dashow's "Adorable Alien" and "Mummy Attack"

Mummy Attack


Adorable Alien

Click thumbnails to visit Dashow's site for more image information.

Frank Kelly Freas' Caravan

Book cover painted by the late Frank Kelly Freas

Caravan is a speculative fiction novel by Stephen Goldin. Set in the 1980s, it was published in 1975.