The painting is courtesy of the brilliant Stephan Martiniere, who has also done artwork for such works as Ian McDonald’s River of Gods, Karl Schroeder’s Lady of Mazes, Larry Niven’s Ringworld’s Children, Charles Stross’ Singularity Sky… I could go on and on. Herr Martiniere has also been visual art director for Cyan Studios on their latest games in the Myst series.

I.e., the dude rawks.

And in case I failed to mention it before, the Solaris Books mass market paperback of Infoquake will also have a complementary Martiniere painting on the cover. Same style, different color scheme (although I don’t think he’s finished it yet). (Update 10/25/07: Here it is.) I believe the plan is to feature Jara on the cover of Infoquake, while Natch graces the cover of MultiReal. (Geosynchron, whenever it’s done, will presumably have Horvil on the cover.)

So what do I think about the new look? Honestly, I’m as giddy as a schoolgirl. No, I’m giddy as a very giddy schoolgirl.

It doesn’t exactly look like what I pictured the world of Jump 225 would look like. It doesn’t look much like it at all, in fact. The skylines I describe in Infoquake and MultiReal are low and curvy to take advantage of the “collapsible building” technology. It’s very difficult for tall, angular structures to automatically expand and contract, according to some bedrock architectural principle I shamelessly made up. Nor did I imagine anything like those circular mechanical things you see on the left-hand side, whatever they are. And when you enlarge the painting, Natch looks a little bit too much like Peter MacNicol for comfort.

And yet somehow, it captures the essence of the novel anyway. You’ve got Natch standing before a window surveying the city like he owns it. You’ve got a claustrophobic sense of information bearing down upon you from all sides. And you’ve got a warm color palette of greens, yellows, and browns.

Will this cover detract from the book’s crossover potential? Possibly. I’m not sure a besuited 42-year-old fund manager would feel comfortable whipping this book out on the subway, while he might feel at home with Infoquake. But the crossover strategy didn’t exactly win over the CNBC crowd for Infoquake; if you read the praise page, you’ll see that almost every blurb comes from an SF-flavored publication. Meanwhile, Charles Stross’ books are looking more and more like Atari 2600 video game boxes circa 1982, and he’s selling like hotcakes smothered with chocolate and money.

Much thanks and credit should also go to Jackie Cooke at Prometheus, who was responsible for complementing Martiniere’s painting with a wonderful, clean type treatment. And of course, my editor Lou Anders, who I predict will one day have so many Best Editor Hugos that he’ll be able to construct a large, pointy throne out of them.

So whattaya think?