William Gibson, "Virtual Light" — Book Cover

The basis for the cover of William Gibson’s “Virtual Light,” published in Ukrainian by Vydavnytstvo in early 2024. Work began in mid-2023, when Ilya Strongovsky, one of the publisher’s co-founders, commissioned the cartographic foundation for the future cover.

“Virtual Light” is the first novel in Gibson’s Bridge Trilogy, set in a near-future San Francisco fractured by earthquake and economic divide — a city where the ruined San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge has been taken over by an off-the-grid community living entirely outside the law. The map answers that setting directly: the street grid of San Francisco, rendered as the foundation for the cover.

Building footprints from OpenStreetMap and SRTM elevation data were assembled and processed in QGIS, then rendered in 3D in Blender — relief and built environment combined — and reworked into the publisher’s green-and-violet palette, in keeping with the spirit of the novel and in tune with the publisher’s other books.

Translated from English by Nata Hrytsenko. Cover and series design by Ilya Strongovsky.

Published 2024 · 312 pages · 16.5 × 21 cm · Ukrainian · ISBN 978-617-7818-46-4

Blender — 3D part of the map

QGIS — Combining 2D terrain data and OpenStreetMap with 3D renderings

Detailed part of the working version of street planning

The final version is on the publisher’s website

Data: OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL); SRTM elevation data courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey (public domain). Assembled and processed in QGIS, with relief and built-environment visualisation in Blender.

Available on the publisher’s website.