Oil, 20 x 24, March, 2002.
This is my (unused) design for the cover for my Silicon Valley SF thriller, The Hacker and the Ants. I like having the hacker being a skull, a pirate, and a light bulb—and that he’s wired into the ant. In my novel an evil computer hacker creates an ant-like virus which destroys television. My character rides a virtual ant through cyberspace to an encounter with the hacker. Here’s a description from the book:
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“My ant under me bowed forward repeatedly, making slavish obeisances to the figure with the white face and the zippered padlocked mouth—the one I thought of as Death. Such bizarre cartoon-like or mask-like body images were common in the screwed-up cryp and phreak circles that criminals and teenagers involved themselves in. Death’s dark, cowled body rippled. The ant regurgitated my data gloves, simultaneously releasing a substantial heap of what looked like reflection hologram memory ribbon from the cloaca at the back of her gaster. Gently stridulating, she inched back to the furthest corner of the room and crouched down there, the light glinting off her great, facetted eyes.
“I regarded the face of white canvas, the dark eye-sockets, and the cruel metal mouth zipper hasped shut by a brass padlock with a steel shank. One of my companions , corkscrewed himself into the shape of a wizened mandrake root, a shape that moaned and whinnied and stained itself with shit and blood. My carrier ant continued her dirge-like chirping.”