Here's my favourite book covers for titles that have arrived in Planet Books during November picked for design and execution. Two titles actually came in October but I had overlooked them at the time. I didn't think anyone would mind.
November 2009 Archives
Reg Mombassa is coming to Planet!
To celebrate the publication of The Mind and Times of Reg Mombassa, a career retrospective on this legendary pop surrealist, Planet Books will be hosting an appearance of Reg at the Astor Theatre, Mt Lawley (over the road from the Planet complex) on Friday 4th of December at 7.00pm.
This is a rare and very cool opportunity for funky artists and designers in the Perth area to meet a pop art hero.
For further details please contact Planet Books - books@planetvideo.com.au or ring 08 9328 7464 closer to the event.
Outside of the Heidelberg impressionists of the 1890s and Sydney Nolan's Ned Kelly series there isn't much in the world of painting to speak of that is readily and easily identifiable as uniquely Australian. Yes, certain Brett Whiteley works and some contemporary landscape artists but an artist where you immediately understand as creating art depicting the Australian geo-cultural being (and please, let's not talk of Ken Done).
Foremost to come to mind is Christopher O'Doherty. You may better know him as Reg Mombassa or the guitarist with the scraggily hair that was in Mental as Anything and is in Dog Trumpet or as the guy who does the Mambo t-shirts.
Now let's avoid the issue that he's actually from New Zealand, well, for a moment anyway. Reg has been a force in Australian culture since 1976 when he began his career as an artist and formed with fellow art students what is my fav Aussie party band (he was with the Mentals till 2000 when he decided to concentrate on his art). He still performes with his brother as Dog Trumpet.
From the beginning he was an iconoclast but with affection for his subjects. A humourist and satirist, who feels a cultural connection to the things he depicted in broad bold strokes.
In the mid-eighties, the Mambo clothing line was created and Reg was soon a stable member of their artists/designers. Despite the quality and originality of the other artists, I think Reg's work has way ahead become the instantly recognizable iconography of Mambo and thus the contemporary Australian t-shirt and from there been at the forefront of Australian larrikin art.
Yes, he is the visual epitome of Australian larrikinism. Certainly with his series of paintings of the Australian Jesus, the bestower of pies and beer to the masses. He formalizes the ocker rituals, enshrining Australian middleclass as the bastions of cultural identity with pseudo-religious icon art of BBQs and Bondi landscapes.
Though rich with parody there is a serious message underneath the buffoonery, that though we can make fun of these things they are still who we are. A sense of humour about oneself is the first getting of wisdom. Regardless of everything else, the fundamental importance of Reg Mombassa as artist in multi-disciplines is to be a bestower of that wisdom.
And we may have to appreciate that he was born in a foreign land (although New Zealand is as least foreign to Australia as you can get) and he adopted Australiana as his own rather than having it thrust upon him. He is an outsider/insider who has successfully achieved outsider/insider art.
Australian pop culture owes a lot to Reg Mombassa who has melded the styles of fine art and commercial design to create a pop surrealist identity that has achieved a status as the branding of twentieth century Australian suburbia. He is the jester as cultural hero.
There's a movement of British writers who take the familiar tropes of generic science fiction, the real sci-fi ones of spaceships, alien worlds and the like, apply sociological or political dogma and turn them into kick-arse statements on the modern world. At the forefront are Iain M Banks, Ken MacLeod, Charles Stross and Ian McDonald. But there is another who is too often overlooked, that being Paul McAuley.
Too many of Paul's books have not stayed in print. This has been to his detriment in keeping his name up with people like Banks who's space operas are increasing becoming mainstream bestsellers. So I was pleased to see Gollancz do a reprint collection of choice McAuley novels, a relaunching, so to speak.
Now it's not like Paul McAuley is a nobody in the world of SF. His first novel 400 Billion Stars, a far future space opera, won the Philip K Dick Award in 1988. No small business. The sequel Eternal Light also received good recognition and was recently reprinted as part of Gollancz New Space Opera collection.
Right from the start, with his short fiction and 400 Billion Stars, Paul McAuley employed his specialist knowledge as a research biologist. Before fulltime writing he worked in places like Oxford and UCLA, plus six years of lecturing in botany at St Andrews University. All this science stuff is a crucial part of his vocab.
But he's a smart goog in the other fields too. All coming together - futurism, terraforming, politics and poetics - in my favourite novel of his, Red Dust. I can't try to describe this book. In fact, I'll cheat and give you the book's blurb:
"Mars has been partially terraformed by the Chinese, but now it is dying. With the help of Yankee Yak herders, a hardwired assassin and a little girl god, Wei Lee, dupe, womanizer and holy fool, stumbles on a plot that has been spinning for decades, and is catapulted on a journey that will take him to the summit of the biggest volcano in the Solar System and a battle in virtual reality for the future of Mars and humanity. Sex and drugs and rock'n'roll . . . and Mars."
Come on, how can that not entice you? It's a dream fever of a novel. My fav book set on Martian soil and, having a thing for Mars, I've read a lot of them.
That post-cyberpunk, post-new wave thing McAuley can turn on is full bore in his other groovy novel Fairyland. Full of designer drugs, gene manipulation and high-powered consumerism this is a lovechild of William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. If you are into early Neal Stephenson then you should check out Fairyland. And it scored The Arthur C Clarke Award and The John W. Campbell Memorial Award as well.
It's good to see Pasquale's Angel is part of this set of reissues; it won him the Sidewise Award and is a superior alternate history novel - 16th Century Florence where Leonardo Da Vinci's machines reign supreme. It really shows he's a clever clogs. I also recommend you seek out White Devils, his corporate thriller with gene splicing and Ballardian jungles.
I have to admit I've yet to read his two most recent novels. Cowboy Angels is alternate histories and multiple worlds manipulated by crazy right-wing Americans. But I might jump over it and go to his latest The Quiet War. Shortlisted for The Arthur C Clarke Award, this book is getting the big attention. It's his return to way out there space opera utilizing all his science and psychology. It is being compared with the best, even hailed as the leading surfer on the wave of New Space Opera. The sequel Gardens of the Sun is due in paperback round Feb '10
Meantime, I hope that this relaunching of the McAuley label means more of his other out-of-print books are to follow. I particularly hope to see his far-future Gene Wolfe influenced Confluence trilogy, his distopian thriller Whole Wide World and The Secret of Life, one pf his best, a biological disaster epic with more of Mars. Did I tell you I have a thing for Mars?
Entering the main door of the Planet complex you will be greeted by a full-sized Terminator endo-skeleton, equipped with laser rifle and glowing eyes. Why is he there? Cause he's cool, you don't need any better reason than that. The Terminator is as a cool as icons get.
Twenty-five years ago The Terminator first appeared and despite all incarnations it is that Terminator that has remained the icon. It's the first Terminator film that remains iconic. It came at a time of the mid'80s when the romance and paranoia of developing gee-whiz technologies were at their ultimate clash. Termi turned up in the perfect incarnation as the glorious image of super-strong man and shiny killer robot.
Terminator is actually a holy trinity, three icons in one. First he is Arnie himself. But not any Arnold Schwarzenegger. We're talking the Arnie that was in the first Terminator film. That specific one, of that age, of that look, of that restricted level of performance - that accent saying Uzi 9mm. Cause that's when you perceived The Terminator as Arnold Schwarzenegger not later when it became Arnold as The Terminator. The distinction is important. The original Terminator remains distinct from the star and celebrity of Arnie, something that was impossible later on.
The second incarnation is the endo-skeleton. A joint creation by effects man Stan Winston and writer / director James Cameron. It's this image of chrome and claw and ball sockets and glowing red eyes and those nashie teeth, which is the real cool part. It's the symbology of pre-millennial techno-angst at its most, well, shiny. And it's a lovely piece of design.
The third incarnation, and not to be underestimated in its importance with the three, is the merging of the other two. The portrait of Arnold with half his face torn or burnt away, revealing the endo-skeleton. Here it's not the whole body image that sticks, but simply the close up shot of one Arnie eye and one glowing red orb. This is ultimate bio-tecnofetishism. David Cronenberg and Shinya Tsukamoto couldn't do better than this to express future shock fascination.
This third image is actually the only one that was properly established by the second film rather than the first. Terminator 2 aka T2 : Judgement Day is inferior in all respects to the first except in its huge budget, but that allowed Winston to create a good make-up job with Arnold and thus images from the second film replace the lesser-executed ones from the original.
However, the cult is for the first, the rest is fanboy crap, fun as it might be (and yes, I think it's fun). And as each film (and TV show) diminishes in importance and strays further away from a film that is of its time and also encapsulates that time, its iconography only grows in stature. The real Arnold gets older, the subsequent films as they come out become less and less relevant to the zeitgeist of tech culture but the original three pre-21st century icons remain signs of future fantasy portent. Signs through a darkly groove or, if you prefer, glowing red eyes.
Here's the best book covers for titles that have arrived in Planet Books over the last month. And by "best" I do mean my favourites. I try not to pick through a particularly intellectual process, but it is easy to see I am attracted to the artwork or the overall layout, usually the combination of the two.
Click on the image to get a bigger pop-up for inspection. The certain hairy book with eyes is Wild Things by David Eggers.
