Pete Crowther of the estimable PS Publishing and I have commissioned all new color artwork for our edition of Ray Bradbury’s seminal collection, The Martian Chronicles. Edward Miller has contributed five brand new paintings that we feel are more in keeping with Bradbury’s vision of Mars and its settlers than the illos for the proposed Hill House edition that, excellent though they were, didn’t evoke the book as well for us. You can see a couple of the new illos at book page.

Now, the update: We expect the introductions by John Scalzi and Joe Hill to be arrive in our inboxes in the next two weeks. The book itself has already gone through one thorough proofing (Thanks, Gwenda!) and will get another. In the meantime, we’ll be printing ARCs, and have the book scheduled to head to the printer in September, which means the numbered edition should be out by December if all goes well.

Our other Bradbury projects are going well. We’re putting Where Everything Ends, the gathering of MR. B’s semi-autobiographical mystery novels, through one final proofing while we wait for the cover, and have to proof his chapbook, The Shop of the Mechanical Insects, once more, and then it’s off to the printer for that full-color chapbook.

Posted on Thursday, June 4th, 2009 at 9:09 am.