More science fiction. I said a couple of weeks ago that I was up to date with all my cover art from last year but I’d forgotten about this return to Victoriana. In mitigation, I started work on the design in January last year. I’ve done a lot of other work in the meantime while waiting for the book to be announced on the publisher’s website, which it was last month.
Great Work of Time is an award-winning novella by John Crowley that Subterranean Press are reprinting in a numbered edition signed by the author. Crowley is an exceptional writer so I was very pleased to be asked to work on this one. I’ve also designed the interior—which will be printed with black and magenta inks—and created a small number of spot illos. The story concerns a group of select individuals, The Otherhood, who attempt to perpetuate the British Empire by manipulating history, a scheme that might be considered the colonialism of time as well as space. The unintended consequences that result from this are more complicated and weirder than you usually find in time-travel stories, while Crowley’s conception of time is a lot more sophisticated than the stereotype of a linear route which temporal voyagers enter or leave at different places. I could say more but doing so would expose the workings of a very elaborate piece of clockwork. This is one of those stories that you finish reading and immediately want to read again.
I’m still not sure when Great Work of Time will be published but the pre-order page is here.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Time Machine