While at Comic-con last week Scott Westerfeld revealed exclusive art from his upcoming book Behemoth, which (like Leviathan) was illustrated by the fantastic Keith Thompson, who describes his style as Victorian manga. One of the pictures was… An elephant TANK. Istanbul, where our intrepid heroes are headed next, is half Clanker and half Darwinist – they make machines that look like animals. And they look awesome.
Sadly those images have yet to be released, so here’s another Behemoth image from Scott’s website, of the Ottoman sultan’s airyacht Stamboul:
On the importance of working with Keith and the impact it’s had on his books, Scott pointed out that Sherlock Holmes’ famous deerstalker hat is nowhere to be found in the books. The infamous hat was actually the creation of Sidney Paget, the artist who illustrated Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s work. Can you imagine Holmes without his hat?
Here’s what Scott said about Behemoth before CCI, in an interview with Joe Monti:
SW: Vague but medium-size spoilers follow: In Behemoth, the second book in the trilogy, our heroes actually leave Europe and head to the Ottoman Empire, and in the third book they go a lot farther. Part of this was about leaving the well-known horrors of trench warfare behind, but also I wanted to show more of this alternate world. The two competing technologies have also been adapted by Islam, Japan, and the U.S., all of which will ultimately participate in the Great War, and all of which have put their own spin on Clanker and Darwinist science and aesthetics. As the war and the series go on, the history books are left further behind. My characters begin to change outcomes, in other words. I’m not sure yet how the military conflict ends, but the Great War in Leviathan may well be less apocalyptic than in our world.
You can read the entire interview here: http://www.tor.com/blogs/2009/10/joemonti
And for those who can’t get enough of Scott and Keith, here’s a three part interview they did together for Suvudu at Comic-con:
http://suvudu.com/2010/07/cc-interview-scott-westerfeld-keith-thompson.html
Behemoth hits shelves October, 5 2010.
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