Robin Hood and the Fallacy of Gilding the Lilly

There’s a strange tradition in book publishing which compels editors to decide periodically that a classic illustrated book needs to be reinvented and illustrated by a new artist to appeal to a contemporary audience. This decision is usually driven by the belief that you can sell more books if you can pass them off as worthy of purchase because of new art. There is risk inherent in this strategy when previous illustrators set the bar too high for their successors to exceed or even approach, leading buyers to reject the new edition as an inferior shadow of the classic.

The most famous example of this is Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland which went through three illustrators in its first 50 years in print with definitely mixed results. When the lack of color in the original extraordinary pen and ink drawings by the legendary John Tenniel seemed too pedestrian for a new generation accustomed to color, the publisher turned to Arthur Rackham. Not a bad choice since Rackham was already established as the greatest book illustrator of his age and arguably the greatest book illustrator of the last two centuries. Rackham had the skills and imagination to top Tenniel and not embarrass himself trying. But even Rackham’s classic work was not sufficient, and within 20 years it fell to the estimable Charles Folkard to try to top Rackham’s work with something more lush and with richer colors. Folkard’s illustrations are brilliant, but now largely forgotten, because fine though they were, they came after artists whose work was impossible to outdo. The publisher had essentially set Folkard an impossible task and the result was an edition which vanished into obscurity.

The situation with Alice is hardly unique, and as classic works go out of copyright it seems to become more common as more publishers have the opportunity to make bad decisions and desecrate classics with inferior illustrations.

Perhaps the most bizarre is the decision to publish books by writers who illustrated their own work with their illustrations replaced by someone else’s interpretation of their ideas. With some who were primarily writers and only nominally artists like J. R. R. Tolkein this makes some sense, but in other cases where legendary artists also wrote the texts they illustrated the decision just seems bewildering.

A case in point is a relatively recent edition of Howard Pyle’s classic The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood from Fall River Press which preserves Pyle’s stilted and archaic retelling of the tales, but replaces his remarkable and evocative illustrations with scratchboard vignettes by Scott McKowen. Now there’s no question that Pyle was an interesting writer and his version of the tales is a classic, but Pyle’s work as an artist and illustrator towers above his work as a writer. He’s not just an illustrator, he’s the greatest American book illustrator of the 19th century and the teacher who inspired subsequent generations of artists and revolutionized book illustration. To give any artist, no matter how skilled, the challenge of updating Howard Pyle is just ridiculous.

McKowen’s scratchboard illustrations are technically skilled, but sterile and a far cry from some of the more interesting illustrative work he has done for other projects, particularly graphic novels like 1602. I can only surmise that he was intimidated by the ludicrousness of being asked to do new art for a book Pyle had already illustrated and just fulfilled the contract, took his paycheck and walked off shaking his head at the absurdity of the assignment. The strangest part of the whole design concept of the book is that McKowen’s illustrations are effectively black and white sketches just like Pyle’s when the one area that you could argue there might have been a justification for redoing the illustrations would have been to add color, the one shortcoming of Pyle’s original work. Of course that problem was already addressed almost 100 years ago when Pyle’s student N. C. Wyeth added remarkable color plates to Pyle’s text.

My puzzlement at the editorial decision to reillustrate this Pyle classic seems well founded, because although I spotted one copy of the book on a shelf at Barnes and Noble, it appears not be available through Amazon which suggests that it has been a deservedly dismal commercial failure. Fall River Press is an imprint of Sterling Publishing which mainly exists to release reprints and specialty books through Barnes and Noble. Nonetheless you would think that their editors had more sense than to undertake such a wrongheaded project. Why spend the money on inferior new illustrations when the brilliant original illustrations are just as much in the public domain and just as free to use as the text itself. I’m sure McKowen’s work didn’t come cheap, making it a remarkably bad business decision, paying money to reduce the quality of the product, and the end result is a book which just seems sad and lackluster in comparison to the original.

It’s hard enough to make a profit in the print publishing industry these days, even if you have some guaranteed exposure through a big chain like Barnes and Noble. This kind of poor decision making is why there probably won’t be a Sterling Prsss or even a Barnes and Noble in a few years, though I bet that someone (probably Dover) will still be making money publishing facsimile editions of Howard Pyle’s books with the original illustrations and decorations intact.

Our Howard Pyle Font and Art Package includes many of the best illustrations from The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood and other classic works

Rating 3.00 out of 5

August 8, 2010 | Filed Under Articles, Review | 4 Comments 

James Blaylock – The Ebb Tide

James Blaylock has not been a prolific author in recent years, but with the release of Knights of the Cornerstone earlier this year, followed by the recent release of The Ebb Tide a new Langdon St. Ives short novel, he’s doing his best to make up for lost time.

Blaylock is the progenitor of the Steampunk movement in literature and his series of Langdon St. Ives stories are one of his most notable contributions to the genre. The Ebb Tide is a new novel which takes off where his short story collection The Adventures of Langdon St. Ives ended. It’s not terribly long at a scant 132 pages, but it’s very nicely produced, with a cover and illustrations by J. K. Potter, from specialty-press publisher Subterranean Press. Perhaps the best thing about the design of the book is that the titles are done in our Goodfellow font, which can be found in our Steampunk collection.

As for the story itself, St. Ives and his sidekick Jack Owlesby discover an underground shipyard beneath London and take a voyage by submarine into a nightmare realm beneath the sea and confront a villain named Dr. Frosticus. It’s not the easiest read in the world, but it’s certainly an interesting read, and the Steampunk ideas come thick and fast in a heady mixture of Jules Verne, H. P. Lovecraft and Arthur Conan Doyle. It’s a book worth reading and it’s good to see Blaylock back on the job and perhaps ready to bring us more unique steampunk stories in the future.

Rating 3.00 out of 5

August 26, 2009 | Filed Under Articles, Review | Leave a Comment 

The Art of Howard David Johnson

Some years ago I had the pleasure of working on some publishing projects with Howard David Johnson a local Austin artist who I met through a mutual friend. He was a classically trained artist who was working as a studio photographer at the time and was interested in getting back into art. I was working as an editor and art director for a couple of different publishing ventures and his style was very compatible with my tastes, so I encouraged him to start doing some illustration work and threw a few small jobs his way. It was at a time when digital art was really coming into its own and I gave him a shove in the right direction with some suggestions of ways he could combine his traditional style and techniques with digital technology and got him started experimenting and discovering things on his own.

It’s now years later and I recently stopped by his website and discovered some impressive new works and really remarkable developments in his skills and technique. He’s living proof that in advanced middle age if the will and imagination are there you really can learn new things and grow creatively. David always had a remarkable facility for copying the style of other artists and illustrators, and was particularly influenced by the great illustrators of the late 19th century and the artists of the pre-raphaelite period. For example, you can see the influence of Millais and Waterhouse in the first and last images accompanying this article. As he began to explore digital media he began combining these classical styles with his interest in photography and digital art to produce mixed media images where elements were hand drawn, scanned and then finished as digital paintings incorporating photorealistic elements and figures based on live models, a technique which proved to be very powerful when combined with the themes of fantasy and mythology which he favors.

His online gallery is a remarkable resource and provides a history of the development of his technique, because many of his works are dated on the site. When I first worked with him there was an awkwardness in how he combined these elements, and sometimes the relative perspective wasn’t quite right or the different textures of hand-drawn elements and digital elements was jarring. By the time of our last collaborations his style had become more integrated, but you could still tell where he was working freehand and where he was working from photos or live models, and in works he did quickly like his illustrations like Reiner Knizia’s game Res Publica he still sometimes lapsed into a kind of two-dimentional cut-out style which was distinctive but less aesthetically pleasing. Then, sometime in 2006, several years after our last involvement he seems to have reached a creative tipping point. Works from that period on show a seamless integration of styles and a fully developed awareness of depth and proportion and lighting. You can tell that he’s still using the same combination of traditional techniques and photorealism, but the two styles have met in the middle, creating works which are realistic but clearly original and stylistically coherent. Many of these are just magnificent, like “Queen Cinderella” (above and left) and “Valkyrie Maiden” (to right), with subtle shading and use of light and a kind of altered realism which is very effective at making the fantastical seem real.

In his latest works he seems to have come full-circle, moving through digital art and returning to traditional media, but bringing his new techniques with him. Some of his most impressive new works like “Circe the Enchantress” (to the left) and “Athene” (top right) are done entirely without digital modification, in pencil and oils on canvas respectively. That he is able to work in both digital and traditional formats and produce such similar results is a truly remarkable commentary on how completely his skills have matured and what a great command he has over his tools. I find “Athene” to be particularly impressive, with the realism of the figure softened enough to fit with the more painterly background, and a really excellent recreation of the style of the pre-raphaelites with a result which reminds me a lot of the work of Sir William Russell Flint.

When browsing David’s art, be forewarned that he does take the occasional foray into the “chicks in chainmail” genre in the tradition of Frank Frazetta and he does have a fondness for beautiful and scantily clad women. The site even includes a section of erotic pin-up art, though he seems to have removed some of the most provocative images. There are also some disturbing religious themes if that kind of thing bothers you — both from a pagan and Christian perspective. He’s been very productive in the last few years and has managed to do detailed illustrations for the major themes of Greek, Celtic and Norse Mythology plus Arthurian legends and elements of other mythologies as well, all included on his website. He also has extensive samples of his fairy and fairytale illustrations included on the site, as well as articles on his technique and some of his subject matter and even a set of short art lessons for beginners. And just to beat my own drum for a second, he uses my font designs extensively on his site, particularly Stonecross, Brandegoris and Durrow.

If it’s not sufficient to view his work on the web — and it really isn’t the ideal format for this sort of detailed artwork — he has collected many of his images into two books which are available for purchase online. One covers mythology and the other covers fairies and fairytales. Original paintings are available for sale and you can also purchase prints of many of his works. And it looks like more and more you’ll be able to see his work on book covers and other publications, because as his work has improved his marketability has also increased and it looks like after years of hard work he may be starting to get some of the attention he deserves. Bravo!

Dave

Rating 3.00 out of 5

June 28, 2009 | Filed Under Articles, Found Art, Review | Leave a Comment 

Giving Your Page a Favicon

You may have noticed that on many pages you visit there is a little icon to the left of the address line in your browser which is unique to that page. For example, this page has a little color decorative initial of an “S” in that spot. This is what’s called a favicon, and it’s a way of identifying your website which not only shows at the top of the browser, but also makes it stand out in a user’s browser history and bookmarks or favorites list, where it will show up on any listing of your site. Favicons aren’t essential, but it’s a clever little gimmick to make your site stand out to users.

Making a Favicon is relaly pretty simple, but despite that many find the process bewildering. For example, child-prodigy WordPress developer Matt Mullenweig wrote a comprehensive article on the subject which successfully makes the process so confusing and intimidating that he apparently scared himself into not putting a favicon on his own web page. I may be twice Matt’s age, but I think I can explain the process a little more clearly.

The Technical Stuff

A favicon is basically just a little tiny image. The trick is putting it in the right format and in the right location. The rest is aesthetics and there is some skill required in making an image that small which is still visually appealing. Here’s the basic procedure:

    1. Start with a larger image and shrink it down to 16 pixels by 16 pixels using the graphics program of your choice.

    2. Take your image, flatten any layers and save it as a Windows ICO file or a PNG file. Photoshop and Paintshop Pro both support these formats and Mac users can also use GraphicConverter, a powerful image manipulation tool from LemkeSoft which can even do the job in demo mode.

    3. Upload the file you just created to the main directory which hosts your web page. If you put it in the top level directory of your site and host multiple pages it will show up on all of those pages. If you want separate pages to have separate favicons put them in individual directories with a different favicon in each one.

    4. Add this code to the HEAD section of your page’s index.html or index.php file: <link REL=”SHORTCUT ICON” HREF=”/favicon.ico” type=”image/x-icon”>. Or if you’re using a PNG file use: <link REL=”SHORTCUT ICON” HREF=”/favicon.png” type=”image/png”>. PNGs have the advantage of being able to have a transparent background. The favicon does not actually have to be named favicon, so it is also theoretically possible to host your favicons in a separate directory and access different ones for different pages using code like: <link REL=”SHORTCUT ICON” HREF=”/absolute-path-to-favicon-directory/your-favicon-name.ico” type=”image/x-icon”>.

    5. Don’t be dismayed when your favicon doesn’t show up in your browser right away, or occasionally disappears when you change pages. At the very least you’ll need to quit your browser and you may need to clear out your cache before it appears. You may also notice that if your page stores some sub-pages in separate directories or uses a separate template for those pages you may need to add the favicon code in more than one location for it to show up on all pages.

That’s not too complicated. But like a lot of things, the technical aspects are easy and the artistic element may take years to master. It’s not at all easy to make an image which is only 16×16 pixels and is clearly recognizable for what you want it to be.

The Artsy Part

Now, I’d recommend starting with a source image which is at least four times the size of your final favicon. It’s just difficult to work on an image which is smaller than about 64×64 pixels. But remember that most of the detail you could put into a larger image will at best be wasted or at worst be confusing and muddying at 16×16 pixels. What works best in that small size is usually one or two very clear letters from a bold, distinct font, or a clear silhouette or outline image. In fact, the decorative initial favicon on this page is a good negative example, because it’s just too complex and has too many shapes and colors. It does give the impression of a decorative initial, but it’s hard to tell what letter it is. Strangely, Google made a recent change from a nice clear “G” character favicon to a muddled multi-color image, perhaps because it’s more unique.

You’re much better off with a clear, bold font like Aventine or a clean and stylized art deco style font like Falmouth or for something more quirky I’ve had good luck with Squiffy. For an image-style favicon nothing works better than the kind of outlines and silhouette shapes which also work well as printers ornaments as you can find in fonts like Caswallon Ornament, Sangrael or medtilesMedieval Tiles. The process required to make an image work as a font also makes it simple enough to work well as a favicon. It’s key to use bold colors, sharp contrasts and make sure that you don’t use lines so thin that they blur when reduced to small size. If you use letters you may even want to consider not using certain letters like A or R because the small spaces inside them don’t work well. You may even want to play around with plugins if you have Photoshop which enhance the outlines or contrast of the image.

Here are some sample favicons to critique:


First is the new Google favicon, which has nice bold colors, but I really can’t figure out what it’s supposed to be. Second is the favicon from this page made with a colorized version of the Morris Initials font. It’s too busy, but the colors come through nicely and you can tell it’s a decorative initial. Third is a favicon made with a character from the Caswallon Ornament font. It’s simple and attractive and you can tell it’s a leaf. The next two are made with Falmouth and Aventine. Both work well because the characters are so bold and have such clean lines. But the more letters you add the less clear they are. There’s just not much room in 16 pixels. The 6th example with two characters from Falmouth works fairly well, but I don’t think it would be possible to add anything more to it. As you can see the letters had to be made smaller overall to preserve their proportions with the greater width required for two characters. Last is a favicon using the chalice character from Sangrael, and it’s a good negative example because it’s just too small and too detailed to work well.

So the technical aspects of setting up a favicon are fairly easy. It’s the aesthetics which are most challenging, and you probably won’t get the hang of making a really great favicon until you’ve practiced and experimented a lot on your own. I know I’m far from perfect with it, and I’ve gone so far as to go in and edit them pixel by pixel in bitmap format.

Rating 3.00 out of 5

June 2, 2009 | Filed Under Articles, Review | 11 Comments 

Sighting: Valdemar Font in Age of Misrule

While browsing through our local bookstore over the holiday weekend my eye was caught by a whole series of books which were using our Valdemar font prominently. The Age of Misrule book series by Mark Chadbourn features Valdemar as the main title for the series, so it appears on all the books in the series — three have been published so far, World’s End, Always Forever and Darkest Hour. The interesting part is that cover designer Nicole Sommer-Lecht actually seems to be paying attention, and used not only the widely disseminated original version of Valdemar, but also the much newer Valdemar Alternate character set. In fact, all of the letters in the word “misrule” in the title are from Valdemar Alternate except for the “s” which is drawn from the regular Valdemar set. The overall result is excellent, and it’s just the kind of book Valdemar was designed for. I also quite like the cover art by John Picacio, which is surprisingly conceptually reminiscent of the cover Howard David Johnson did for my Ysgarth RPG. Special kudos also go to Jon Anders of Pyr for putting such a good design team together.

I haven ‘t read the entire series yet, but so far World’s End is quite an engaging read. It’s well written and fast-moving, thematically reminiscent of some of the work of Robert Holdstock or Neil Gaiman, but much more commerically written for broad audience appeal. In some ways it’s a bit of a mish-mash, throwing every possible element of Celtic mythology together in an almost overwhelming way, but engaging characters and a quest-theme plot which keeps moving along makes it work. As a part-time celtophile I even rather like the particular interpretation of Celtic mythology which Chadbourn has opted for and the integration of mythological themes with a realistic contemporary setting. It’s more approachable than some books with similar themes without descending into the lighter fairy story mode which is so popular. In fact, it gets kind of grim with a strong ending which sets up the scenario for the coming books.

A good read with a great font as part of a really appealing cover design. What more could you ask for?

Rating 3.00 out of 5

May 28, 2009 | Filed Under Review, Sightings | Leave a Comment 

Found Artist: Darren Minke

Earlier this month I got a chance to attend the 31st Annual Old Pecan Street Festival in Austin with my family. It’s a huge street fair with lots of live music and arts and crafts vendors which sprawls down East 6th Street and this year sprawled somewhat over to 7th Street as well. There’s always something new and interesting to see — along with some of the same old junk — and this year as the kids rushed me through everything way too fast, my eye was caught by the work of a local artist named Darren Minke.

The work Minke had on display basically fell into two styles, fantasy paintings done digitally from photographic source material and peculiar stylized images done on laminate siding with wood stain. The former seems to be his main oeuvre, but the latter is what really caught my eye. I suspect I was drawn to the wood stain works because I’ve been working with a lot of laminate siding in remodeling projects I’ve been doing and in finishing out our pool house, where I’ve decided to use laminate siding instead of drywall for a variety of reasons. With that heightened awareness of the medium, I found the work he did with stain to take the grain in the outer veneer of the wood and turn it into the basis for an interesting image. He even uses sheets with different types of wood veneer for variety. Some of the wood-stain pieces are rather abstract, some are more realistic, some are bizarre and grotesque and others are quite attractive. What makes them so interesting is that the nature of the work clearly stems from the grain of the wood, and if there’s an image lurking in the grain then Minke brings it out, but in others he just makes the grain itself into a work of abstract art. I found most of the erotic figures in the stain paintings to be unappealing, but the technique is fascinating regardless of the subject matter.

Minke’s digital art consists of highly modified photographic images with a lot of symbolism and a strong erotic content. Most of the images are of beautiful women, fantasized and combined with symbolic images to represent a mythological or spiritual theme. Some of them are very well done, some are more traditional. Some were quite reminiscent of the work of fellow Austin artist Howard David Johnson with whom I’ve worked on a number of projects over the years, though Minke’s work is more symbolic and less sophisticated than Johnson’s. There’s room for more technical development and sophistication in Minke’s work, but it’s got a strength of vision and a passion which is very appealing. Some of the fantasy pieces are very impressive and his integration of the photographic and illustrative elements is quite good, with an overall result which is both realistic and clearly original and creative.

Minke also does work in other media and custom work on assignment. He does very bold semi-abstract oil paintings, some of which I saw at the festival and more of which are on display on his website. He also does commercial photography and even some rather eerie animation work. He’s a hard working artist with a lot of irons in the fire, but I think he’s one to keep an eye on. His work may not show up at MOMA anytime soon, but that may be more their fault than his. He seems to be doing pretty well selling his originals at fairly respectable prices (I couldn’t justify the price for his wood stain dragon which I really wanted) and I think he has a lot of commercial potential as an illustrator as well. He’s very much an Austin kind of artist, combining high tech and tradition and fantasy with reality.

Rating 3.00 out of 5

May 13, 2009 | Filed Under Found Art, Review | Leave a Comment 

It’s Trendy, but is it Art?

Of the various legacies of the Barack Obama presidency, the one which seized the cultural imagination first and may last the longest is the enormously popular poster image created by artist Shepard Fairey. The high-contrast, vertically split image has gone viral on the internet and assumed a place in the visual lexicon of American pop art alongside Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe triptych (from which Fairey kind of stole the design idea) and the Eugene McCarthy dove poster.

Fairey got into a certain amount of trouble for infringing the copyright of an AP photograph he used as a source, but his payback is that everyone on the internet has since pirated his design concept for icons of themselves, their girlfriend or their dog to use on the web as a subtle dig at Obama or a statement of support and conformity.

Making your own Obama poster icon has been made much easier by the folks at Paste Magazine who have provided a handy little Flash tool which will let you take any photo, turn it into an icon in the style of the Fairey poster, tweak it and customize it and add a new slogan to the bottom and make it your own. You can use the tool to parody Obama, iconify anyone or anything else, or convey some more obscure message.

One of my personal favorites is the icon of “TOTUS,” Obama’s teleprompter, but I have to admit to doing a few of my own, including an image of Aleister Crowley titled “Beast” and a couple of myself. It’s kind of seductive in a narcissistic way.

Getting good results from the tool requires a certain amount of practice and it helps a lot to have the right photograph to work from. Some faces just don’t work well at all. My face and to an even greater extent Aleister Crowley’s face have the problem that there are too many light and dark areas and too many variations in shade and angle. Other faces have too little differentiation and just come out kind of one color. It helps to have a high contrast photo and to reduce it to black and white before working with it. Plus you need a knack for pithy one-word tags for your icons.

The idea is kind of fun to play with, but in the 6 months since the election it has really already been done to death. You’re not about to see the icon to the left on my Facebook page. It may be the mark of truly successful pop art that in such a short period it has gone beyond a fad and evolved into a cliche. The fact that Fairey’s design concept can be emulated so effectively by a simple Flash tool raises the question which has plagued pop art since the era of Warhol; it’s trendy and it’s popular, but is it really art?

Rating 3.00 out of 5

April 28, 2009 | Filed Under Found Art, Review | 2 Comments 

Review: Anchorwick by Jeffrey Barlough

Anchorwickis the fifth and newest novel in Jeffrey Barlough’s Western Lights series. The series is set some centuries after the “sundering” which has separated a cluster of counties inhabited by what seem to be early-Victorian Englishmen from the rest of the world and strangely plunged them into what seems to be the Pleistocene ice-age, complete with mastodons, sabretooths, megatheres and short-faced bears. The background has elements of mythology and the supernatural and a bit of a Lovecraftian feel, with a writing style which is somewhat reminiscent of the work of Dickens. It’s both very British and at the same time very strange.

In Anchorwick, ,young Eugene Stanley is visiting Salthead University to help his uncle, Professor Greenshields, complete work on a book. While there he gets caught up in the disappearance of Professor Haygarth and takes the lead in ultimately retrieving the professor from a shadowy otherworld and then subsequently assisting in the investigation of the background of the events which opened the gateway to that world. More than most of the other books in the series, Anchorwick explores some of the background and mythology of the setting, while providing a strong narrative, interesting characters and a mystery to solve.

It’s a good read and more satisfying than the previous entry in the series, Bertram of Butter Cross, which lacked both a main character and much of a storyline, though it was as enjoyable as 200 pages of pure atmosphere can be. Anchorwick has some peculiarities. It’s really more like two novellas with the same characters stuck together and related only by some overlapping themes and characters. It also has interesting enough characters that you’d like to see them carry over into a sequel or two, but Barlough makes it fairly clear that further adventures are not in the cards. Nonetheless, the book is interesting and different and if you like supernatural, dickensian, alternate-universe murder mysteries then you’ll probably find something to like in Anchorwick.

Rating 3.00 out of 5

March 3, 2009 | Filed Under Review | 1 Comment 

Review: New Books from James Blaylock

Sometimes it may seem like what I write here comes a bit out of left field, but rest assured there’s always method to my madness. In this case a bit of foreshadowing, or laying the groundwork for what’s to come a bit down the road.

Which brings us the James Blaylock and his work, including his most recent novel, The Knights of the Cornerstone. Blaylock is an outstanding fantasy writer whose works come too infrequently, but are usually worth the wait. Most of his recent novels like The Rainy Season and Paper Grail have fallen into the unique genre of character-driven, whimsical adult fantasy with a contemporary setting reminiscent of the work of his friend and sometime collaborator Tim Powers. The Knights of the Cornerstone is another tale of contemporary Californiam, with offbeat characters in a mundane setting who get involved with supernatural forces and find their heretofore aimless existence defined by the challenges which they face, a theme around which many of Blaylock’s novels are built.

The Knights of the Cornerstone is the story of would-be cartoonist Calvin Bryson, who gets a call from a relative who wants him to take a family heirloom out into the desert to his uncle who lives in New Cypress, a peculiar desert resort town on the Arizona border. Cal takes on the task and finds more than he expected in New Cypress, a town where everyone seems to be a member of the mysterious Knights of the Cornerstone, and which is under siege by dangerous enemies who want to control the occult secrets the Knights guard in their temple. He has to choose whether to continue to stand aside and observe life, or pick a side and fight for something he believes in. Blaylock does an excellent job developing the main characters and making them interesting, especially the character of the town of New Cypress itself. There’s considerably more direct action than there is in most of Blaylock’s novels, especially towards the end when the story comes to a head in a series of violent clashes between the Knights of the Cornerstone and those who want to plunder their secrets. There’s also a bit of romance to round things out.

The Knights of the Cornerstone is a good, quick read and perhaps more approachable for those unfamiliar with Blaylock’s style than some of his other more poetic and evocative novels. It has a more commercial character than much of his earlier writing, and it’s a strange irony that despite his excellent storytelling skills and readability, Blaylock has never found the mass market he deserves and as a result this novel was released by a specialty publisher, likely limiting its exposure and access to the audience which it deserves. Nonetheless, go get a copy. You won’t be disappointed.

Despite the contemporary themes of his most recent novels, those of you who are familiar with Blaylock’s work may be more familiar with him as one of the seminal authors in the Steampunk movement, where modern writers write science fiction from the in a Victorian setting using the science and technology of the pre-electric era, drawing on the tradition of Jules Verne, Arthur Conan Doyle and H. G. Wells. Blaylock’s novels Homunculus, Lord Kelvin’s Machine and The Digging Leviathan are classics of the genre, and he recently released The Adventures of Langdon St. Ives, a collection of related Steampunk short stories. The collection continues the adventures of the eponymous Victorian scientist and inventor who was the hero of Blaylock’s previous novels Homunculus and Lord Kelvin’s Machine. The stories are well written and full of inventive ideas, and the short format is appropriate for a genre whose origins are in serialized fiction and short fiction of the 19th century. The book designers also had the extraordinary good taste to use our Goodfellow font on the cover.

These two books come after several years of no new releases from Blaylock. However, the growing popularity of the Steampunk genre has led to new trade paperback releases of many of his classic novels, so they are widely available for the first time in years. Perhaps we’ll also see more new work from Blaylock soon.

Rating 3.00 out of 5

December 26, 2008 | Filed Under Articles, Review | Leave a Comment 

Seashore: Simple GIMP Image Editing for the Mac

When I previously reviewed the powerful but geeky GIMP image editor, I found fault with the difficulty of installation and unfamiliarity of the structure for novices and especially for Mac users. As it turns out, Mark Pazolli has adapted the basic GIMP engine to create Seashore, an image editor for the MacOS which addresses many of the concerns I had with GIMP. While the choice of names is somewhat inexplicable, the design is sound. Seashore is a user-friendly and simple image editor which is available for free and which offers essential image design capabilities as well as including some of the best advanced features of GIMP.
Read more

Rating 3.00 out of 5

December 6, 2008 | Filed Under Review | Leave a Comment 

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