"A book with plenty of pictorial content for at least a dozen good cover illustrations..."
-Bruce Penington, cover artist, quoted on the back cover of Poul Anderson, The Day Of Their Return (London, 1978) (see the attached image).
But that means, which I also believe, that the book is suitable for visual adaptations in different media:
sequential art story telling (comic strip);
animated film;
live action film.
When Desai and Uldwyr dine, their conversation could be illustrated with images of:
Tigeries and sea dwellers on Starkad;
Ythrians in flight on Avalon;
the joint human-Merseian scientific base on Talwin;
battle scenes during the McCormac Rebellion.
"[Ivar] saw each coiled blade of..."
-The Day Of Their Return, 2, p. 77.
Of grass? No:
"...the fire trava whereon he ran, felt how it gave beneath his boots and rebounded..." (ibid.)
In Poul Anderson's works, extra-solar terrestroid planets have ground cover other than grass:
"...an onyx tinged red and yellow which was the land's living mantle, fire trava." (p. 76)
"The sward [Ivar] lay on had started to curl up for the night, turning into a springy mat. Its daytime odor of flint and sparks was almost gone." (ibid.)
This would have to be shown on film although maybe not the odor.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Too many of Anderson's books, esp. paperbacks, had truly ghastly jacket or cover illustrations inflicted on them. But some, like Frank Frazetta's jacket cover for THE DANCER FROM ATLANTIS, were striking, interesting, and worthy of being associated with Anderson's works.
I have a copy of the December 1967 of GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION, where Anderson's "Outpost of Empire" was first published. Four interior illustrations came with the story--besides being featured on the cover. The one that pleased and interested me the most was of Ridenour interviewing the Arulian prisoner. The artist who created these illustrations was called "Morrow" (no first name was given). Morrow seems to have read "Outpost" with care, because I thought his depiction of what an Arulian looks like very satisfactory and true to how Anderson described these non-humans.
When Ace Books pub. A STONE IN HEAVEN in 1979 it was profusely illustrated, so much so that it was almost like a manga. I even thought there were too many and that some of the illustrations could have been omitted without loss to the book. Many of the illustrations in STONE pleased me because of how faithfully the artist, Esteban Moroto, based them on how Anderson actually described characters and places in the story.
Ad astra! Sean
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