Notes from the Field: Covering it all!

I thought it was time to reveal the cover of The Overman Book One. Covers are the hardest thing to come up with and this was no exception. I think the first issue is generally the hardest and then each one after that needs to really carry along the over-arcing theme of the series as well as the contents of what's inside.


There is truly no formula for a great cover.

But the closest one to it would be something that is provocative with a hint of story or ambiguous moment that involves the audience. Ultimately my job is to get you to pick up our book even if it's for a quick flip through.

In the months to come I'll post the other covers and talk a little about the psychology and reasoning why we chose the images we did...though it may just blow up in our face if all our deducing and figuring amounts to nothing and the book gets cancelled. I hope by Crom that is not the case.

Next time I'll post all the thumbnails and roughs I went through just for this issue. It's quite mind-boggling I assure you.


=s=

The Story Behind The Writing: The Computer Fad

I dug into the ancient vault of Overman scripts this morning and found a page that references computers and compact discs. I made a conscious decision a few years later, during one of the many drafts of The Overman story, that I would make no mention of computers of any kind. While the setting is clearly futuristic science fiction, including some pretty strange technologies, I wanted to approach the story from the angle that there would be no recognizable computer imagery anywhere in the story.

It's reasonable to assume that in 200 years, computers will have evolved so radically beyond what we know today, that they won't even call them computers. This thought connects back to artificial intelligence motif, which has been explored in about a million science fiction stories, and it's nearly unavoidable in science fiction. I believe AI is coming, and it's not even a very startling concept for most people. The Overman was probably once written with that theme as the central focus, but like everything else in the story (well, most everything), the plot twists and turns into something entirely different. I don't think the concept of AI is even that interesting these days. If artificial intelligence is coming, I think the only interesting aspect is wondering how the world will deal with it.

Scott Reed
http://www.websbestcomics.com/