Coming Attractions | This Census-Taker by China Miéville

We all have our bad habits. Happily, I have far fewer as we approach the close of 2015 than I did in years previous, but there's at least one I haven't been able to give the boot to: my tendency to hoard books I have every reason to believe will be brilliant.

I'm still sitting, for instance, on a number of new-to-me novels by Guy Gavriel Kay and Catherynne M. Valente—a pair of my foremost favourite authors. But the knowledge that I'm entirely likely to love the likes of Palimpsest and The Lions of Al-Rassan has led to me saving them for a rainy day; a long-delayed rainy day during which I'll be able to luxuriate in these reading experiences rather than have to rush headlong towards their respective ends.

I can now add to that list Three Moments of an Explosion by China Miéville, another of the writers I'm not afraid to place on a pedestal. Admittedly I've already read a fair few of the short stories said collection brings together, but I'm hoarding the assemblage itself—not least because I wasn't sure when to expect Miéville to put out anything else.

I'm sure enough now, needless to say. A new novella, name of This Census-Taker, is coming out in January in the United States, and in the UK a full frustrating month later. I'll be buying the limited edition Subterranean Press are in the process of putting together, however, in large part because of Vincent Chong's typically terrific cover art:

Here's a bit about the book, too:

A boy ran down a hill path screaming. 

This running, screaming boy has witnessed something terrible, something so awful that he cannot even properly articulate it. All he can do is run. His story is investigated, but no evidence is found to support it, and so in the end, he is sent back. Back up that hill path to the site of his terror, to live with the parent who caused it.  

The boy tries to escape. He flees to a gang of local children but they can't help him. The town refuses to see his danger. He is alone.  

Then a stranger arrives. A stranger who claims his job is to ask questions, seek truth. Who can, perhaps, offer safety. Or whose offer may be something altogether different, something safety is no part of.  

In This Census-Taker, multiple award-winning writer China Miéville offers a story made of secrets and subtle reveals, of tragedy and bravery, of mysteries that shift when they appear to be known. It is a stunning work, full of strangeness and power.

Since I seem to have squirreled away plenty of Miéville already, I'll be reading This Census-Taker just as soon as humanly. You should too, to be sure.

Cover Identity | Chong Takes Embassytown

As per the Subterranean Press site, the cover art has been released for the limited edition of Embassytown the exclusive publishers aforementioned will be putting out - apparently before the Autumn's upon us. And good Google, is it a sight for sore eyes or what?

Oh, for a high-res image of this lavish wraparound...

I expect a fair few of you will recognise the work as that of one Vincent Chong. Brownie points to you all.

For myself, the small print puts me out of contention: after all, not so very long ago I reviewed a rare art book which brought together some of Chong's most striking work to date. That piece is here, if you please. But though Altered Visions made for a truly impressive portfolio - "a modest but gorgeous collection of the work of one of the most promising new artists to have arrived on the scene in recent memory," I called it - you know what? I tend to think the man's gone from strength to strength since.

Is this his best piece yet? Well... personally speaking, I wouldn't say so, no. But near as dammit.

And that might just be me, because the yellows and browns and blues of the imagery above make for a distinctly different colour palette than that I'd imagined of Embassytown and its alien surrounds. At a push, I'd have to say I pictured deep reds and purples, slick and viscous rather than weather-worn. This seems a touch too Modern Warfare for my tastes.

But all the same, it's a beautiful image.

Beautiful enough I might just have to invest in a third copy of this incredible novel... which, now that I think of it, I should have an extensive review of - in which I make the case for China Mieville as a God of genre literature - ready for you all to read sometime within the next week.

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Source: Subterranean Press

Book Review: Altered Visions by Vincent Chong

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from Telos Publishing

"Vincent Chong burst onto the horror and fantasy scene several years ago with a sequence of incredible artworks. Since then he has gone on to provide cover artwork for authors such as Stephen King, and has worked with publishers all around the world, as well as providing illustration for record covers and websites. Now some of his incredible artwork is collected in Altered Visions."

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In his brief and down-to-earth introduction, noted horror author Simon Clark - whose latest novella, Humpty's Bones, is adorned with an atmospheric collage of red brick and bloody bones originating from the pen of the subject of this gorgeous art-book - admits that he is not "fluent in the language of artistic techniques," deferring to his "emotional response as a human being to Vincent Chong's work." In this review, I mean to do the same. Whilst I can tell a pretty picture from a child's idle scribblings, The Speculative Scotsman is no high-falutin' art critic, and so I'll spare you from a woefully uninformed appraisal of what lies between the pages of Altered Visions - save to say that assuredly, you will not soon forget it.

It is difficult to reconcile how new Chong is to the proverbial game with the sophistication of his body of work. Having emerged from the murky depths of Manchester a mere six years ago, he has in that short time come to be near synonymous with some of the most memorable art in the medium: his efforts have graced the covers and interiors of exclusive limited editions of fiction by a veritable who's-who of genre authors, including the likes of Stephen King, John Scalzi, Carlos Ruiz Zafon and Joe Hill. Today, his work is not only highly sought-after, but surer than even to imprint itself upon your psyche, stealing, as Simon Clark testifies, "into your midnight dreams" and informing your impression of those stories to which a Chong cover is the only certain imagery.

Going from Altered Visions, Chong, it seems, is a man of few words. On his cover for the Subterranean Press edition of Richard K. Morgan's The Steel Remains, he remarks: "I wanted this image to be very simple and striking and for the figure to look imposing and have a statuesque quality about it." This on a piece that is perhaps the least remarkable of all the artwork brought together for this 48-page, A5 format hardcover collection - an iteration of that fantasy figure with a sword archetype made distinct only by a texture that puts me in mind of handmade paper.

When the occasion calls for it, however - and that piece aside, it does more often than not - Chong goes into greater detail on the inspiration behind his art, even detailing the practical aspects of the composition of a few covers. His talk of building plasticine Obin figures and lighting them for a piece published in John Scalzi's The Last Colony makes for a fascinating insight into Chong's process; as does the artist's admission of the inspiration frequent Neil Gaiman collaborator and Cages creator Dave McKean has been to him. Indeed, there are clear allusions to McKean's body of work throughout Altered Visions, most presciently in a revelatory interior for Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy, but Chong does not seem to imitate or ape the masters who inspire him, rather stitching from of the fabric of their art something wholly unique.

Altered Visions is a modest but gorgeous collection of the work of one of the most promising new artists to have arrived on the scene in recent memory. The work of Vincent Chong brought together herein functions both as an object of stark and often darkly fantastic beauty and as a high watermark for the artists of a fledgling tomorrow to measure themselves against.

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Altered Visions

by Vincent Chong

April 2010, Telos Publishing

Buy this book direct
from Telos Publishing