The year's first post will be short and simple. Let's start with a long-awaited arrival, a book about which I have written before in 2011: 'Demain, les animaux du futur'. The literal translation is 'Tomorrow, the animals of the future'. Here are two older posts on the subject: here and here. As I wrote then, the book will be written by Jean-Sébastien Steyer and Marc Boulay. If you search my blog for their names you will find out more about them, and then you could also have a peek at their work, for instance at Marc's site. Actually, Marc's website shows some giant posters on bus stands and buildings, but that is not all. There are also some very nice images from the book on his site, so if you will simply browse through it, you will find the following images, and more besides:
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| Click to enlarge; copyright Marc Boulay 2000/20015 |
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| Click to enlarge; copyright Marc Boulay 2000/20015 |
Once or twice I read that people doubted the book was really on its way. Well, if anyone still thiks it is a hoax, perhaps the following link will convince you otherwise: have a look at the French Amazon site. That shows you that the book will cost 23 Euro and will be published on April 10, 2015. You can find it on the UK Amazon site too. I pre-ordered mine already! But I'll want to have it autographed too, so I will have to go to France to see the authors and toast their success...
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After my Loncon adventures someone asked me why I did not give similar talks in the Netherlands. Basically I hadn't thought of that, I am sorry to say. But after that I did look around for Dutch SF conventions and contacted the organisers of one. The happy result of that is that I will present a talk on Furaha during the Imagicon meeting, on March 21, 2015, in the town of Ede in The Netherlands. The talk will be based on the London one, but it will be a bit longer; I will show paintings, including a few never published, videos, etc. The talk will obviously be in Dutch though! Dutch readers can access a bit of blurb regarding my lecture on the page reached by clicking 'programma/lezingen' (lectures).
When you get the book will you translate pages for us non-French speakers? So far it looks really neat, a lot of emphasis on birds and bats.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous: I definitely will, but the condition is that I will not compromise the chances of my friends getting their book published in English as well as in French; and the chances of that are pretty good.
ReplyDeleteSo that means I am ready to translate all material in French that will be made public; 'allons y'!
Hey I know you're always looking for new fictional biology to look at, so I thought I'd recommend Man of Steel (the new Superman movie, which was in itself pretty fun movie, even if the part on the other planet is relatively short). They have these neat ram-like tortoises (http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ut0Cu_pLGns/Uo9p_smhtUI/AAAAAAAABgM/83oOpjq3x8g/s400/GOM+2013-11-22+16-24-38-04.jpg) and flying multi-winged seals (http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Mq0tSMWCGbA/VKU4712xp7I/AAAAAAAAspk/9D3mUBjImuU/s1600/Hraka-MOS.jpg). They've even got a neat concept art book where it shows how they came up with the new world of Superman (again, you've been warned that the speculative biology section isn't too thick, but I would recommend it for your paintings because of the interesting art in it that could give you inspiration for your Furaha). It was a geeky blast applying the knowledge I have to Superman (such as why his species would need to the sun to survive instead of going the traditional heterotrophic route... maybe because the planet is less fertile and they need the extra energy wherever they can get it, and whether he's many times more efficient than plants on Earth and hence the added energy of a brighter sun would need to be released somehow as laser beams through his eyes... I dunno, I'm going off an another one of those tangents again). Anyway, Sigmund, keep climbing away on Planet Furaha, your blog is a real oasis to us.
ReplyDeleteMerci beaucoup Gert ;-)
ReplyDeleteLe livre sera en vente (en France) en mai/juin 2015, c'est ce que nous a dit notre éditeur.
J'ai encore quelques visuels à terminer.
Il y a des expositions/conférences/dédicaces de prévues en 2015 sur le livre alors je fais des 90x70cm (10600x8200px) minimum à 300dpi certains sont plus grands encore... cela prend un peu plus de temps (...)
En attendant, nous avons ouvert un blog : "Demain, Les Animaux du Futur" à cette adresse >>> http://demainlesanimauxdufutur.blogspot.fr/
On se voit bientôt à Paris, il me semble ;-)
MB
I'm posting here because I can't seem to on your message board. Some engineers have built a robot that swims exactly like a cloakfish!
ReplyDeletehttp://youtu.be/UQG05uGTmzQ
Marc: parce que mon blog est en Anglais, j'écrit ma réponse en Anglais aussi.
ReplyDeleteDigital pixels at 300 dpi of 90x70 cm: that is large... I usually aim for the same formats I used when working in oils, 35x50 cm and 50x70 cm. We all look forward to seeing the streets of Paris filled with posters of 'Demain'.
Hi Spugpow,
I have neglected the message board lately; sorry. Thank you fort the link. I had seen it and it was on my list for a possible post. The engineers who deigned provided two ways of movement I had not thought of: you can have the animal rotate around its longitudinal axis, and by beating two cloaks in unison it can 'jump' up.
Sharon Novak from Animal Planets Lost Tape?
ReplyDeleteDeep Sea Submarine