Yes, it’s about that time. You know the one I mean. When a work-in-progress is just shy of completion, you want to get a sense of what it looks like. If you’re a writer like me, that’s when cover art comes in! And if you’re really like me, you don’t even wait until the book is nearing completion. You want to see it while it’s still in early development!

Somehow, it’s the next best thing to holding your novel in your hands for the first time. After all the labor you put into its creation, it’s like looking upon the latest addition to your family. With that said, here are the top contenders for the Transverse. The two immediately below are the current front-runners, but I’ve included some of the honorable mentions too.

Check them out, and let me know what you think in the comments!

The cover shown above depicts the interior of the Transverse, a generation ship that contains all Earth’s ecosystems within a single self-contained biosphere. The bright light above is known as the Sunband, a light source of assembled photons that simulates day and night and provides each ecosystem with the energy it needs to sustain the ship’s life cycle.

The cover below shows the exterior of the Transverse in orbit around Ararat, the largest planet in the Tōnatiuh system. As you can see, there’s a megastructure emerging from the planet, which is kind of intrinsic to the plot (no spoilers!)

Here are the honorable mentions. They are included not because they received many votes, but because my wife and I like them. The first is a representation of the Tōnatiuh system, while the second is a more compact version of the cover immediately above.