Science Fiction Aficionados discussion
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Really bad covers
I don't like the Penguin-published covers for John Wyndham novels at the moment, like this one for Day of the Triffids.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37...
Rutger Hauer with weed rot.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37...
Rutger Hauer with weed rot.
Mod
LOL. That is bad. It's like a romance cover gone very awkward.
LOL. Is that a caterpillar or a.....Sffgeek wrote: "I've just been struck by how many of my paperbacks have really rubbish covers. These split, more or less, into covers which have nothing to do with the book, and those that are simply so bad artist..."
That cover for The Day of the Triffids is pretty bad. And, that's sad because this is one of my very favourite apocalyptic novels.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/photo/2...From the cover: "It was a battle I was not equipped for...." I'll say, since he's standing there bareassed. Really stupid looking.
J.P. wrote: "http://www.goodreads.com/book/photo/2...From the cover: "It was a battle I was not equipped for...." I'll say, since he's standing there bareassed. Really stupid looking."
Yeah, I think that wins hands down for the worst cover.
Lol! The Far Arena is easily the best so far. Thumbs up!
Haha! Was a blurb ever more appropriate?
Heh, there's a certain "Gentleman Broncos" feel to that second one you list, Sffgeek, (if you've seen that film).
Jenn wrote: "Heh, there's a certain "Gentleman Broncos" feel to that second one you list, Sffgeek, (if you've seen that film)."I haven't - must look it up...
It's done by the folks who wrote Napoleon Dynamite-- but all about a kid who writes pulp sci fi tales, meets his writing hero at an SF writing conference, and the amusing issues than stem from it.
Sffgeek wrote: "I've just been struck by how many of my paperbacks have really rubbish covers. These split, more or less, into covers which have nothing to do with the book, and those that are simply so bad artist..."Lol. The caterpillar cover looks like it should be on the front of a National Geographic magazine. And additionally, I've tended to notice that the covers of a lot of Poul Anderson's books really are ugly.
Anyway, I've got a couple who I've always never liked.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/64...
The author of this book once told me that he's learned to keep a sharp eye on the cover art of his novels. Apparently, people just drew on whatever they felt like, not caring that a bad cover means its less likely people will buy it.
Here's another.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40...
If the author wasn't orson scott card, I wouldn't have bought it. the cover is scary.
This one is really weird and awful:
Boy that is lousy. What's with the way he's holding his arms? It looks like he's being confronted yet he hasn't drawn his weapon.
J.P. wrote: "Boy that is lousy. What's with the way he's holding his arms? It looks like he's being confronted yet he hasn't drawn his weapon."Yep, that sure is weird looking.
But weirder even is that alien. A mix of a scarecrow and an ostrich with a bowling ball as a weapon? What the hell?
I don't know if this relates to any story contained inside though. It would be funny if it didn't.
I have some other sf books with ugly covers:
The bottom one is inadvertantly hilarious. What we've got here is a punk alien who has an identity crisis because he has the hands of a bird and a nose like a dog so he's rebelling with a mohawk. Then we have a woman with three asses who must not have enough money to spend on clothes. Then a giant left his foot in the background. You don't have to be on drugs to think up a cover like this but it sure helps. I've noticed British science fiction covers are the most bizarre
Ha, J.P.-- it's going to take me a while to scour the tri-butt image from my mind. :) All I can think is what fresh hell that would be when having the intestinal flu.
The baby cover is hilarious! And the placement of the publisher logo makes it look like a football helmet, not a planet.
That baby is terrifying. What a bizarre cover image choice.
J.P. wrote: "I've noticed British science fiction covers are the most bizarre "I just have a few cool british books that were given to me. Some are decent looking but those I've showned here are really inexplicable.
Jenn wrote: "
All I can think is what fresh hell that would be when having the intestinal flu."
Gross! lol
By the way, that Gentlemen Broncos movie looks really weird. I got to see it now. No idea it existed, thanks for mentioning it.
Scott wrote: "The baby cover is hilarious! And the placement of the publisher logo makes it look like a football helmet, not a planet."
Riona wrote: "That baby is terrifying. What a bizarre cover image choice."
That book collection has a lot of photo-collages covers that are not that great (some older covers are amazing looking though) but that one wins the competition in ugly and weird. :P
J.P.- You're welcome! I didn't know about it either until Netflix suggested it. It's got one of the guy from Flight of the Conchords in it. Sort of that level of weirdness. ;)
I collect vintage science fiction and pulp paperbacks with really cheesy covers. I'll scour any thrift store and used book store in hope of finding far out covers.
OMG, you guys crack me up every time I manage two seconds to come read the group!! Thank you thank you thank you for never failing to make me happy for a minute :)I loved JP's comment in #7 "From the cover: "It was a battle I was not equipped for...." I'll say, since he's standing there bareassed."
LMAO, JP, thanks!
Since I just went through 3 completely different designs and then hired a "professional designer" to do a new (4th) concept for my first release (coming soon), I'm scared to say anything about other people's covers. Even a little afraid to mention I just updated mine but the topic of SciFi covers is almost a genre unto itself.
Thank you Michael Whelan for raising the bar so high no human on Earth can ever create a comparable cover again. His art is really "it" when it comes to SF covers as far as I'm concerned. Anything less is just cheezy.
-Friday (wearing a Whelan on the Red Carpet)
Wait, am I missing something or did The Far Arena get a new cover? I don't see any bare-assed man ...just a big turquoise blue rock hanging in space. Dumb as a rock, yeah, but bareassed idiot? Where. It was a funny review, JP, regardless ;-)
I wanted to play so I did a quick search of GR for Science Fiction and saw the list of "exciting books coming out in 2011" allegedly tagged "science fiction." This is the thing that pisses me off (as both a reader and an author of science fiction). Why is there so much of this paranormal vampire and other werecreature crap being tagged science fiction?? That's not SciFi, sorry, try again. I mean, you don't have to blow up a space ship but at least speculate on science based in reality rather than just making it all up like a 5 year old.Simon & Schuster (who own Baen Books for frak's sake!) should know better. They tagged this Children's Fantasy as "science fiction" (I only searched for "tagged as science fiction" books)
or this one, which maybe could fall into the Alt History subgenre but is steampunk really generally accepted as "science fiction" nowadays? We look to the past now, and NOT the future?
What happened to "hard core" science fiction? Where have all the hardSF authors (like Robert J. Sawyer gone? Okay, I searched under the "Space Opera" subgenre and got this gawdawful Extremely Rare & Valuable Collector's Edition Uhh, not so much.
And since when is children battling lizards "space opera"? I would have guessed "fantasy" genre. It's not as bad as the 4 yo crayon drawing Sffgeek posted in the original post but ... I miss the days of covers like OSC's Ender's Game and Scalzi's Old Man's War. Simple and clearly SciFi
Maybe the lizard battle is just one part of the story? I don't know. It certainly doesn't sound like space opera from the description.Jack McDevitt's novels have very nice "real SF" covers.
Yes, relevant at least! I'm happier to see a really bad but relevant cover than one I find attractive but which isn't at all connected to the genre (or worse, mistagged books)-Friday
Yes, relevant at least! I'm happier to see a really bad but relevant cover than one I find attractive but which isn't at all connected to the genre (or worse, mistagged books)I actually like the one for Polaris, but since I haven't read the book I cannot say if the aurora ike light on the cover is relevant or just really pretty :)
-Friday
I think it is relevant, and I believe I know what sequence in the story it represents. The ones on the next two in the series follow suit as well (that's as far as I've gotten yet.)The scan of Chindi here is kind of low quality; it looks much better on the actual book.
I think I just hit the jackpot my friends. :)I was just browsing through goodreads when I found this "beauty":
O Sexo na Moderna Ficção Científica
That's so ridiculous and bad that it becomes good. I would be more than happy to find it in a used book store.
Aparently this is a portuguese anthology of french short-stories from the 70's. The translated name would be "Sex in Modern Science Fiction"
Here you can see a bigger picture of the cover:
http://memoriasfc.blogspot.pt/2011/01...
Mod
Sergio, I think you win the best worst cover prize! That splatterpunk is so awful and the blue and pink together just... eww. Wow. I like sex with my science fiction but I think even -I- would have to pass on that one!-Friday
Friday wrote: "Sergio, I think you win the best worst cover prize! That splatterpunk is so awful and the blue and pink together just... eww. Wow. I like sex with my science fiction but I think even -I- would have..."Thanks!
From the little I've read about this book, it seems like a serious anthology that might be an interesting read.
I would like to know how the hell did they think that it was a good cover for a book. I guess that in the 70's it made sense, maybe...
ahhh, right it was from the 70s. That explains it! Too many drugs in the 60s ^_^
Here's an entire website dedicated to bad scifi/fantasy book covers. Some are all right, but there are some that are just terrible.http://www.goodshowsir.co.uk/
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Mod
I like the The Shadow Reader cover, even if it does look exactly like dozens of other covers currently on the market.
Omg, this is absolute hilarious. The Interworld cover is so bad that it´s almost good. If this is Paul McCartney I´ll eat my shoes! Thank you for these, smile :D Now, I can´t get it out of my head, lol
Here's a really ugly Crystal Singer cover I found in my local library. I think it's a book club edition, and it undoubtedly predates the familiar Whelan cover.
These are not all Scifi covers, but this page is hilarious, as are the captions. http://flavorwire.com/378513/20-embar...Somewhere I have some really weird classic Scifi covers - I think there was a stage when publishers thought that "more was less" on the cover of a book. More not necessarily relating to the actual story.
And then there was one cover of "Dragonquest" by Anne McCaffrey (not linked because I couldn't find the actual cover on Goodreads) which had a photograph of a naked woman - blurred - riding what looked like a pinada dragon on it. It was in our local library, and I was going through my Anne McCaffrey stage in the late seventies, and as a fourteen year old girl, it was always very awkward to put it on the librarian's bench to be stamped.
@Leonie Is this the cover you meant? That's horrendous!
Esther wrote: "@Leonie Is this the cover you meant?"
Oh yes! That's the one - tried to find it online earlier, but no luck. Where did you find it? You can imagine the embarrassment of a fourteen year old in the late seventies... I had to reassure my family that the cover had very little to do with the story (mostly!) I always used to put it upside down on the desk :)
You do wonder what was going through the publisher's mind when they decided to put a cover like that on the book. Particularly when you consider some of the gorgeous covers that came later. And yes, there was sex in the book, not graphic, or massively described, mostly implied, (and one encounter, that in retrospect now makes me wonder what Anne McCaffrey was thinking when she wrote it, but totally passed me by as a youngster) but never naked women riding pinada dragons... Just weird and very, very, bad!
Leonie wrote: "Esther wrote: "@Leonie Is this the cover you meant?"
Oh yes! That's the one - tried to find it online earlier, but no luck. Where did you find it? You can imagine the embarrassment of a fourte..."
I found it with Google images but I do have a certain Google-fu :0)
I think the worst covers are from the 1970s. My mother bought an Emile Zola for which the cover art was 3 ladies in corsets and suspender belts!!
Even when the covers weren't embarrassing I can remember several where the cover art had simply no connection to the story.
I know what you mean - I attached a link (above) which leads to some abysmal covers - they're not all Scifi, but they are well known novels - and some of the comments are hilarious!Corsets and suspender belts - yes...well...amazingly classy...(irony) for such a well known writer.
Leonie wrote: "You do wonder what was going through the publisher's mind when they decided to put a cover like that on the book. Particularly when you consider some of the gorgeous covers that came later. And y..."Gah! I can imagine what Anne must have thought of that one.
The "sex scene" flew right over my head as a teen, too.
I have a late 50s(?) pulp paperback of Frankenstein that I bought just for the terrible cover. http://pulpfictioncoffeehouse.com/wp-...
For those of us who didn't know that Roger Zelazny wrote romance novels:http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/z/r...
Science Fiction Aficionados
Books mentioned in this topic
Crystal Singer (other topics)The Shadow Reader (other topics)
O Sexo na Moderna Ficção Científica (other topics)
Chindi (other topics)
Polaris (other topics)
More...
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12... - a caterpillar has no relevance what so ever to the story...
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36... - I wouldn't have paid anyone over the age of 4 for this "art"...
Have any of you got any really stupid or ugly ones?
Maybe we could have an award?