Salvation’s Child

So, Paul Cornell and Lee Harris have started a comics company. The mission statement of Cosmic Lighthouse is to help speculative fiction writers produce graphic novel editions of their work. And their first project involves none other than Adrian Tchaikovsky.

The story that Adrian has chosen to write for his graphic novel is set in the world of his Final Architecture space opera series. I have reviewed all three volumes here. I very much liked those books, and both Paul and Adrian are friends so I wanted to support them anyway.

Specifically the story is about Xavi, the first ever Intermediary. That is, she is a person able to communicate it a limited way with the Architects, and more importantly to sense when they are about to emerge from Unspace. Before the creation of Intermediaries, Architect incursions seemed entirely random and unpredictable, which naturally kept everyone else on the back foot.

A key thing about graphic novels is that they are far more visual than plain text. Tchaikovsky’s aliens are refreshingly weird, but they are not always described in any great detail. For the graphic novel, artist Mike Collins actually had to draw these creatures. I suspect that a lot of readers will have imagined them somewhat differently—I know I did—but that always happens and Collins’ interpretations of the various alien species are certainly interesting. We get to see an Essiel, which is quite something.

Another issue that Collins had to deal with is the appearance of the Partheni. They are born by parthenogenesis, so they are pretty much clones. But does that mean they all look alike? Not necessarily. To start with their appearance will change with age, and each woman will have her personal style.

Collins found an interesting way around this problem. The audiobooks of the Final Architecture series were narrated by Sophie Aldred. She had got to know Adrian in the process, and obviously she knew Paul Cornell through the Doctor Who community. Given that Ace would not have been out of place amongst the Partheni (aside from the whole military discipline bit), Cornell suggested that Mike make her the model for the warrior women. Aldred is now much older than when she first played Ace, so Collins had access to an archive of photos of her taken over many years and with many different looks. These formed the basis of his Partheni characters.

As to Tchaikovsky’s contribution, the smart thing that he chose to do was to write a prequel. Salvation’s Child is set before the events of the trilogy, and tells a very important tale about how the events in those books came to pan out. So comics readers get a good introduction to the world of the books without any major spoilers.

All in all this is an excellent start to Comic Lighthouse, and a gather from Cornell’s happy comments on Blue Sky that the book is doing very well. Here’s hoping that a bunch of other SF&F writers get to see their work in comics form. I note that Lee Harris is the editor for Murderbot, so I know who I want to see them tackle next.

Title: Salvations Child
By: Adrian Tchaikovsky & Mike Collins
Publisher: Cosmic Lighthouse
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
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