Peter F Hamilton eBook Cover Winners

Revealed! The two pieces of artwork that will accompany the downloadable short stories

A few months back SFX teamed up with Tor for a unique competition: we invited you to design cover art for two stories in the eBook editions of Peter F Hamilton’s new short story collection, Manhattan In Reverse . Now we can reveal the winning entries: Ioan Dumitrescu ’s cover for Footvote and Andrew Parkes ’ artwork for The Demon Trap .

“ Footvote was a picture which just immediately grabbed me as soon as it downloaded,” says Peter F Hamilton, who was part of the judging panel. “Now normally I’d expect a cover for a single short story to contain some identifiable image from the story. This doesn’t. But frankly the picture is of such high quality that it simply overrides any hesitancy on my part. Ioan Dumitrescu who created it clearly has a future as a professional illustrator.”

“ The Demon Trap again doesn’t quite relate to any particular scene from the story, but Andrew Parkes’ figure dominates to a degree that makes me wish I’d managed to include something that stylish in the story. If I ever do a major rewrite, expect to find it.”

The author continues: “Overall the standard was excellent. Some with very literal treatments and other with fascinating flights of artistic licence. It makes me wonder if we should have a different cover for each story in the collection; it’s the only way we could have done justice to the talent and effort which went into this. So thank you to everyone who took part. I’m always intrigued by the way that my writing is interpreted visually.”

Manhattan In Reverse is published on 7 October.

Dave is a TV and film journalist who specializes in the science fiction and fantasy genres. He's written books about film posters and post-apocalypses, alongside writing for SFX Magazine for many years.