Meet the Ni-Nins

Posted on November 17, 2005    Posted by John Scalzi      8 Comments

Charming looking fellow, is he not? He’s a Ni-nin, one of the alien races you’ll encounter in Questions for a Soldier, the limited edition signed chapbook written by me and published by Subterranean Press, which expands on the story of John Perry, the main character of Old Man’s War.

Subterranean contracted famed SF illustrator Bob Eggleton to do a number of illustrations to accompany the short story the chapbook contains, and I’m here to tell you that if you bought the chapbook just for Eggleton’s illustrations, I wouldn’t blame in you in the least. Mind you, I like the story I wrote just fine — lots of action, adventure and alien encounters, all in easy-to-swallow Q-and-A form — but Eggleton’s illustrations are truly cool. I’m particularly taken with the Ni-nin, which is why I’m showing it off to you now. Because, man, even I didn’t know they looked this badass.

This is one of the very exciting things about being a published author, incidentally: getting to work with talented artists who make your work better by their participation. Eggleton’s work for Questions indisputably makes the value of the chapbook far greater than it would be with just my words, and as for my novels, it’s possible that some other author might have had a better trifecta of cover artists for their first three books than I had in Donato Giancola, Mike Krahulik and John Harris, but off the top of my head I can’t think of any. I’ve been very lucky in my artistic company so far, and I’m immensely grateful for that.

Man, I’m still geeking on the Ni-nin. That’s tattoo-worthy, that’s what that is. I wouldn’t be at all surprised one day to see this guy on the shoulder of some bald and beefy Hell’s Angel named "Stinky" or "Tiny." Yes, that’s a compliment. You gonna tell Stinky that it’s not? Didn’t think so.

(If you want to see the rest of Eggleton’s illustrations — and incidentally read my text — you can get Questions from Subterranean, or through the online trinity of Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Powell’s. The chapbook is limited to 574 standard chapbooks and 26 signed traycased handbound copies, the latter only available via the Subterranean site. If you buy one of the latter (at $175 a pop) by all means let me know; I’ll send you an additional "thank you" of some sort, because that’s above and beyond, you know.)