Why are science fiction and fantasy books so crappy?

If they're trying to sell to sci-fans, then it has to look like a sci-fi book? And if they're trying for lit crossover, then it needs to not look like a sci-fi book? (first example that popped in my head of a recent sci-fi book with a decent cover)

Aylett's books all look great, imho. M. John Harrison's stuff gets a nice treatment. Gene Wolfe's serials can be cheesy, but has several collections that are well-designed. In general I think the Brits do it better (Jeff Noon springs to mind). These editions of Pelenev that I just started also look great.

er Pevelin

man I am terrible with Russian names

aarggh Pelevin!

Then there's the Science Fiction Book Club, which aren't Folio Society bindings by any stretch but do allow for something a bit more than the norm.

The author's name is huge b/c that's the main selling point. SF is a genre where a author with a successful book gains a lot of interest in his other books.

I actually perfer the smaller back-pocket size to the $13 TPB.

Also, genre books aren't meant to be collectible to much as just "consumed"(esp. with licensed titles, like all the D&D stuff, e.g.)

OTM on the crappy cover art. I have like 35 Philip K. Dick SF novels and none of them have anything even remotely relevant on the cover.

Depends on when those editions were printed. Remember, cover art changes with design trends. As on the book cover thread, even "Canticle for Leibowitz" went from basic medieval-looking lineart in the early 60s, to the classic ornate painting in 1979, to the Neil Gaiman-looking thing today.

for example:

http://images.barnesandnoble.com/images/11030000/11030048.jpg vs http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/n0/n970.jpg

On the other hand, sometimes I'd prefer the cover art NOT to be relevant, like in this edition of Dan Simmons' Hyperion: why do we need some artist's impression of how the Shrike looks? Can't we imagine what he looks like from the descriptions in the book?

http://i13.tinypic.com/646t92o.jpg

I don't even look at the covers any more. Never judge...etc. Especially in sci-fi. I'd have missed out on a whole load of great books if I hadn't picked them up 'cos they had crappy covers.

Having said that the covers on the Gollancz Sci-Fi Masterworks series (there's a few here) are pretty good.

By which I mean the new covers (maybe only on the UK editions?).

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/51DQA2HN9EL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_OU02_AA240_SH20_.jpghttp://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/516%2BhxxwHaL._AA240_.jpg
Same book!

wow. hello, amazon UK

Personally, I'd rather pay I5 than $7 for the same book if it was published in an elegant, spacious edition, but I'm also the guy that argued on ILM against the "value" of CD bonus tracks because they clutter up the distinction or whatever of an album proper.

Well, yes, but bonus tracks and covers are bad comparisons. Either you compare both media (?) for their cover value or bonus chapters/tracks. I didn't say that in the right way but I guess you understand my point.

So why are they so crappy? Well, because there's so much out there, published, which means you just have to wade through it and find the good stuff. Same goes for detectives/thrillers and romance novels. Although I rarely buy the latter.

I recently read Iain M Banks's excellent The Algebraist and was pleased to see the beautiful Cassini image used for it's UK cover; I like all his Culture books too, to differing extents, and they seem to have undergone a similar facelift in more recent editions to make them look less "sci-fi", presumably to draw in readers who would not be seen dead with a book cover showing the kind of spikey fella depicted on the Dan Simmons book above.

I don't agree with pandering to snobbery, but if it sells more good sci-fi then so be it. Quite a good example of compare-and-contrast below too:

http://covers.fwis.com/algebraist

(original image for The Algebraist cover, pretty stunning)
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/jupiterflyby/gallery/gl_pages/PIA02879.html

argh - possessive apostrophe on "its" scuppers my credibility...sorry...

Philip K. Dick's current editions are nice to have and hold

the Vintage (the publisher, not the adjective) editions i have are literally the ugliest books ive ever seen. the covers alone have prevented a close friend/graphic designer from reading them despite my high recommendations.

yeah fuck those things

> Also, genre books aren't meant to be collectible to much as just "consumed"(esp. with licensed titles, like all the D&D stuff, e.g.)

is this true? don't sf fans usually have more than the usual number of books? isn't that the definition of collectible?

last thing i bought that wasn't alastair reynolds (which are the epitome of spacecraft above planets*) was Rogue Moon (http://books.regehr.org/reviews/roguemoon.html) which was great because the design was obviously of its time)

(*that said, they are rather nice. plus they all match)

The Orion SF Masterworks covers are great: http://www.orionbooks.co.uk/browse-results.aspx?subID=7

must read more SF.

I think a lot of peoples notions about SF and Fantasy are stuck in the era of the pulp magazine.
This has a lot to do with the kind of covers books get (though UK covers do tend to be a bit better than US ones).

One of the few good covers awarded to a JG Ballard novel - 1991 edition of The Crystal World:

http://www.rickmcgrath.com/jgballard/jgb_pix/crystal_easton300.jpg

And I like the mid-'70s-ness of the 1975 US edition of High-Rise:

http://www.rickmcgrath.com/jgballard/jgb_pix/highrise250.jpg

.. Especially compared with the god-awful '77 UK edition:

http://www.rickmcgrath.com/jgballard/jgb_pix/highrise_panther250.jpg

b-but... that has everything that the first one does PLUS half nakid woman...

the bookshop in w12 has the sf and fantasy in an alcove at the back alongside the erotica. i can never decide whether that's very stupid or very clever shop design.

That last is such a classic of NEL style covers.

Aha! Now I understand - all of those PKD books I have are from Vintage, indeed. (several xposts)

(is blood music any good?)

the english cover to Pattern Recognition is a favourite of mine btw, was a transparent cd case over a shiny white on matt white page of the london a-z. bought mine from a bookshop on said page of a-z.

http://www.rumble.net/blog/index.cgi/books/index.html?_start=6

(can't make out the map on this one, it was white on white)

the related thread, full of examples: S/D: Freaky/psychedelic pulpy book cover design

best cover ever:

http://www.efanzines.com/EK/eI14/rb309.jpg

if liking "cheesy" sci-fi book covers is wrong then i don't want to be right

and, hey, to people who don't frequent i love books, i am always looking for good tips here:

School Me On Some Sci-Fi My Astral Brothers And Sisters!

and i don't care what the covers look like.

Ha, skot! Just looking at the picture (three posts above) I would never have known who the author was on that one. Actually even looking at the words gave me a hard time figuring out who it was, the name is kind of tiny.

It comes down to what kind of design or iconography a person particularly wants on their cover. Do you need explicit literalism(actual spaceships and actual space people), or would more an iconic abstraction(relevant or not) work?

I recall Ray Bradbury had some nice covers back in the day, maybe because he was a crossover artist, but the ones that come up nowadays on a google image search are kind of cheesy.

My dad had this version of this book, and the cover image haunted me for some reason

http://home.wlv.ac.uk/~in5379/covers/fullsize/ill_man5.jpg

Yeah, that one and I Sing The Body Electric used to haunt me too. (And Camus's The Stranger, with the black and white and red all over theater actors on the cover)

I like how the font used will date a book better than any image.

So why are they so crappy? Well, because there's so much out there, published, which means you just have to wade through it and find the good stuff. Same goes for detectives/thrillers and romance novels. Although I rarely buy the latter.

well, let's narrow down what you mean by crappy. You mean in terms of cover design, the typesetting, or the quality of the paper, printing & binding?

I actually happen to own this version of this particular book
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/c0/c1194.jpg

Which not only has the derivative, crappy and obvious cover typical of the 70s but also appears to be printed on tracing paper and stuck together with spittle.

And don't get me started on the title - I'm fairly sure I detect the hand of an editor who must've thought "If we call it something shitty the geeks'll lap it up in droves."

They were trying to crossover to the all the Charlie Watts fans from the Stylus Best Drummer thread.

it's FIVE TIMES farther away than the Stones! Extreme!

well well well, when did this start?

http://www.avclub.com/content/blog/the_box_of_paperbacks_book_club_1

I don't get why anyone would care what the crap a book's cover looks like, unless it's got a giant golden statue of Moroni on it. Ugly. But if so, what are you doing reading the Book of Mormon, anyway?

I like that Tiptree cover. :(

I do too...I liked all the covers on the trippy book covers thread & even when they have crap covers, who cares.

I love scifi.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b9/A-Deepness-in-the-Sky-book-cover.jpg

I love this book so much.

i just bought the collected vinge story collection. gonna read it soon.

I'M IN YER FICTION. SPECULATIN'.

http://home.sprynet.com/~dbrukman/Vernor-Vinge-at-1999-Lunacon.jpg

CORDWAINER SMITH IS IN DA HOUSE!

http://www.fantascienza.com/magazine/imgbank/ARTICOLI/cordwainer-smith_1.jpg

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/n2/n12854.jpg

i think it is so cool that cordwainer was also the ultimate psy-ops expert:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f3/Psychological_Warfare_Linebarger.jpg

HAI IM UGLY

http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/imageDB.cgi?isbn=9780679734468

http://www.tomandmaria.com/st197/images/dick%20cover.jpg

ha, i remember those dick covers. when did those come out? were they for generation xtasy?

I have at least 25 of them on my shelf; usually I droop a handkerchief over them :(

80s paperback editions of Dune and Dune Messiah had fantastic, mysterious covers. They were also two of the best books I've ever read (and I mostly can't stand science fiction).

THATS YOUR PROBLEM

SHUT

Those PKD covers were from 95/96, and totally look like my drunken experiments with Photoshop as an undergrad.

Man, every photo of me for a while, I insisted I hold that copy of Dune Messiah. What a phase.

Also, who's fucking idea was it to stick adverts in the middle of paperbacks?

http://www.avclub.com/content/files/images/flagellator%20interior.jpg

I have a few of the late 60s/early 70s printings with this shit. Its as gaudy as seeing pepsi commercials before a movie you already shelled out a shitload of dough for at the theater.

I love adverts just cos they capture an exact point in time

I really like those 'crappy' covers w/shit paper - saw an old for a Burroughs paperback ("The Wild Boys") last week and besides the fact that I hadn't read it I couldn't resist.

Frank Herbert's "Whipping Star" ws another recent-ish cover I saw.

I don't get why anyone would care what the crap a book's cover looks like

if you have to ask...

http://www.hatrack.com/osc/books/songmaster.jpg

Thomas Disch wrote about the shitty covers in his "The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of", and talked about how most sci-fi covers are representational only in terms of marking their genre, and little else. His own "334" had a British printing w/ a rocket & planets on the cover, and the book has nothing to do with space travel.

I kinda like something between the abstract photoshop garbage of those Vintage PKD printings and the bleedingly literal representational portraits of specific characters in specific ships.

I have this copy, which fits the book better perhaps
http://g-ec2.images-amazon.com/images/I/513G30W2DFL._BO2,204,203,200_PIlitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_OU01_AA240_SH20_.jpg

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1098/1223872643_129afc6526_m.jpg

It's a bit small but you can click on it to see it bigger. Anyway it's a display for the new Gollanz editions mentioned upthread. Look great together.

Gollanz -Gollancz - for shame...

Oh, but I love those PKD covers! They're bright and fun and not overly literal illustrations of events in the books (I hate that).

There's a new series of PKD's lesser-known books just out, I snagged it from the slush pile at work. The covers are very Jeff Noon-esque. There are also some Neal Stephenson reprints which have completely hideous covers.

probably intended to compliment to the hideous writing

80s paperback editions of Dune and Dune Messiah had fantastic, mysterious covers.

I think I know the ones you mean, they were srsly excellent, and they kept being good up to God Emperor... and then someone decided the whole series needed a new totally lame cover redesign.

those 10000000 david weber novels that clutter the end of the sf section have the worst design.

i bought blood music based on the cover posted above (they all die!) and have just ordered two of the others. (£4 each on amazon)

(what's the bottom left? i haven't seen that one. i also have revelation space (top left + bottom right) in the original size / cover so...)

the top right appears to be that sculpture in manchester The B Of The Bang - http://www.bofthebang.com/

(bottom left is 'altered carbon' which i also already have - http://www.chronicles-network.com/forum/40727-the-gollancz-future-classics-range.html )

wrong link: http://www.uksfbooknews.net/2007/09/06/gollancz-editor-simon-spanton-on-the-future-classics-promotion/

The depressing thing about those Gollancz books is that I actually own most of those books with their original shitty covers of spaceships and the like...

That photo I took is so out of focus when you click on it, sorry!

ugh I couldn't get past the first dozen pages of Altered Carbon

i second your ugh.

I just couldn't believe that anyone was still trying to get mileage out of dressing up noir tropes in pseudo-science mumbo jumbo (with a little extra violence thrown in) and passing that off as somehow "forward thinking" or an "alarming vision of the future" or whatever

the violence, specifically the violence towards women, was the main factor i disliked it, yes.

damn you amazon recommendations.

I'm mid way through Evolution. The small mammals and primates didn't really get my sympathy but now we're onto homo whateverus things have picked up, interesting to see how we could have got from primate society to this sick sad world. Quite good on the big geological stuff too - e.g. 5 million years ago the Mediterranean may have filled up and evaporated fifteen times, over a million year period.

i just made it through hyperion ... why?

Because you're supposed to. (The only thing I've read from Simmons yet is The Terror and I quite liked it.)

Simmons is garbage.

I've never heard of the guy before but looking at this excerpt (from Amazon):

The Hegemony Consul sat on the balcony of his ebony spaceship and played Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C-sharp Minor on an ancient but well-maintained Steinway while great, green, saurian things surged and bellowed in the swamps below. A thunderstorm was brewing to the
north. Bruise-black clouds silhouetted a forest 0f giant gymnosperms while stratocumulus towered nine kilometers high in a violent sky. Lightning rippled along the horizon. Closer to the ship, occasional vague, reptilian shapes would blunder into the interdiction field, cry out, and then brash away through indigo mists. The Consul concentrated on a difficult section of the Prelude and ignored the approach of storm and nightfall.

... regardless of whether or not I find the subject matter/plot outline engaging (which I don't), this writing is fucking horrible.

'the terror' is awesome. i enjoy those richard k. morgan novels quite a bit.

also:

http://www.bookitinc.com/pictures16/902767.jpg

buttocks lovingly rendered

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Schilds-Ladder-Gollancz-S-F-Greg/dp/0575081112/ref=pd_sim_b_2/202-7650890-9767033

turned up yesterday, one of that series mentioned above that i largely bought for the covers. they are nicely done (i got fairyland as well, both half price), slightly odd looking without the titles on the front and tactile as well, nicely textured. plus the above glows in the dark!

Sticking this here b/c i don't know where else to put them:

Dan Simmons posting a short story three years ago about how all them dirty muslims were gunna kill us all

AND!

Anne McCaffrey's comment on how she knew this one guy who was raped with a tent peg and how this forced him to start acting totally nelly and all gay n' shit

christ why are so many sf authors reactionary dipshits?

Because of the Uncle Orson formula

1: Be reactionary asshole
2: ???
3: ENDER'S GAME HUGE SUCCESS

back to the original question:
cause they tend more topwards the plot, less towards the depth or uniqueness.
and because most of them are so unrealistic they become stupid

christ why are so many sf authors reactionary dipshits?

With a couple of few exceptions, the genre itself is still stuck in the Campbell/Heinlein 1940s and 1950s and the readers have balkanized their own political naivety. Most Simmons/McCaffery fans aren't at risk of reading Stanislaw Lem.

But they might read China Mieville and Charlie Stross.

But they might read China Mieville and Charlie Stross.

Totally subjective, but I kinda doubt that. Cult writers that don't merit sufficient shelf space in the Mass-Market Book Conglomerate of choice.

More to the point, hasn't the pool of potential SF readers abandoned the field for comics these days?

Anyway it certainly seems like the best SF these days is in comics.

With a few exceptions, hasn't the entire mainstream SF field now become an exercise in cargo cultism? It's like everything regressed back to libertarian reactionary era that promised moon colonies, jet packs, and basement-portable home nuclear reactors. Since none of that ever happened, the fans have gone into retreat.

Fuck, as much as I mourn J.G. Ballard I really really wish Thomas Disch and John Brunner were still around.

Who are these mainstream SF authors? I don't know about them but I know what I like - Reynolds, Banks, Egan, Bear... I guess they're mostly hard sf which is probably not mainstream?

Isn't Anne McCaffrey a big lesbo herself?? I heard this from an Irish person, someone's mum who knew blah blah. It made sense at the time, but it doesn't make her comments make any sense at all.

Being a lesbian doesn't mean you have to know what you're talking about.

I mean, perhaps Ms. McCaffery is not actually a lesbian but was actually just raped with a tent peg and got confused.

No, but being gay would imply that you might not be abjectly stupid about the subject -- or at least at lower levels than an older STRAIGHT person under the same environmental pressures. Too much to ask, I guess.

Who needs yr jet-packing moon-pods anyway? SF Themes Today:
- the grand, undefined Singularity will come and it will save us all
- the grand, undefined Singularity will come and it will destroy us all
- the grand, undefined Singularity will come and it will be, like, weeiird, man [700 pages of batshit explosions follow, leaving the reader unsure whether everyone was saved or destroyed or entirely imaginary]
- hello we are surfing thee cyberdelik drugspace from our gang-kult squat and the MAN is after us and you wanted a swearier Count Zero / Snowcrash set in the grimy edgy not-far-from-now while still ignoring 20 years of actual technological development, yes?
- never mind all that boring plot stuff, here's some rampant inter-species shagging between every possible subset of characters and a few items that yr retrograde 21st century minds expect to be inanimate but turn out to be made of, like, writhing psychic fish-worms. wooo!

Lock thread.

I think science fiction is a great idea, but why isn't genre fiction integrated into other literature? It's like these people read nothing else. I know only a little of science fiction from my childhood, I liked the genre, but when the same people read the same books, you're not selling the genre to a wider audience.

Oh boy.

The Hegemony Consul sat on the balcony of his ebony spaceship and played Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C-sharp Minor on an ancient but well-maintained Steinway while great, green, saurian things surged and bellowed in the swamps below. A thunderstorm was brewing to the
north. Bruise-black clouds silhouetted a forest 0f giant gymnosperms while stratocumulus towered nine kilometers high in a violent sky. Lightning rippled along the horizon. Closer to the ship, occasional vague, reptilian shapes would blunder into the interdiction field, cry out, and then brash away through indigo mists. The Consul concentrated on a difficult section of the Prelude and ignored the approach of storm and nightfall.

How can anyone read this? It's like he wrote it using Mad Libs.

Thanks to a passing spacecadet's summary, I can safely return all of my about-to-be-overdue sci-fi library books today.

brash away through indigo mists

okay what the hell is that from

Presumably one of the Hyperion books.

Building a bit on Elvis T.'s point, the older SF that thrives in the wider imagination is the one that ended up being the most 'real' to that audience. Philip K. Dick has gone from cult-within-a-cult status to being seen as one of the best writers of the time in general in large part because he was able to readily combine gee-whiz stuff with settings that were generally crappy and not good for your health, mental or otherwise -- which rather sounds like where we are right now, in the absence of jet packs and so forth.

How can anyone read this? It's like he wrote it using Mad Libs.

riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to
Howth Castle and Environs.
Sir Tristram, violer d'amores, fr'over the short sea, had passencore rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: nor had topsawyer's rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse to Laurens County's gorgios while they went doublin their mumper all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartpeatrick: not yet, though venissoon after, had a kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all's fair in vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe. Rot a peck of pa's malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface.
The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early in bed and later on life down through all christian minstrelsy. The great fall of the
offwall entailed at such short notice the pftjschute of Finnegan, erse solid man, that the humptyhillhead of humself prumptly sends an unquiring one well to the west in quest of his tumptytumtoes: and their upturnpikepointandplace is at the knock out in the park where oranges have been laid to rust upon the green since devlins first loved livvy.

Now that I like. Which sci-fi writer is that?

more like philip k penis

zing zang zung

I think science fiction is a great idea, but why isn't genre fiction integrated into other literature? It's like these people read nothing else. I know only a little of science fiction from my childhood, I liked the genre, but when the same people read the same books, you're not selling the genre to a wider audience.

&_&

"these people" = me, basically

them nerds i seen onna news

Here's the Amazon list of best selling SF/F: http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/25/ref=pd_ts_b_nav

Why is Atlas Shrugged number 6 on this list?

Not to mention that the wider audience has, until recently, rejected anything that smacked even slightly of sci fi. For decades. Which is why a bunch of authors had to publish their "speculative" or "fantastical" works as children's books or borderline young adult lit. Blah blah etc.

One good book out of 25 (maybe 2 if you count Red Mars and 3 if you love Gaiman). Nice job Amazon.

world war z is totally good v. funny reads quickly also lol @ d&d supplementary books this is just for last week i guess????

Anne McCaffrey's comment on how she knew this one guy who was raped with a tent peg and how this forced him to start acting totally nelly and all gay n' shit

this is really weird considering there's some pretty obvious pro-gay stuff in her later work

this is really weird considering there's some pretty obvious pro-gay stuff in her later work

in an unreasonable display of fairness to McCaffrey's stupid statement, stating that getting raped can make someone gay does not automatically mean that one thinks getting raped is the only way someone could be gay or that being gay in and of itself is a bad thing

pretty fucking stupid statement, tho

Stupid is an understatement though! It's bat-shit insane!

I was still in "unreasonable display of fairness" mode.

"It’s a proven fact that a single anal sex experience causes one to be homosexual."

I mean whether you think she's judging homosexuals or that this is the lone cause of male homosexuality is sort of beside the point isn't it when you are saying stuff like this.

lol i need to start working "it's a proven fact" into my conversations more

I've read (it's not a proven fact though) that TWO anal sex experiences can make you DOUBLE gay, but that three can sometimes turn you straight again.

I'm just saying Shakey's logic doesn't follow, ie it's possible to not condemn gay people en masse and still be crazy.

which, you know, is spending way too much time on this but I'd rather have a pointless debate about Anne McCaffrey than rewrite software

only if of those was a negative anal sex experience

xp

Note that the quote's source in the wiki referenced above is just another message board.

Actually I think the second and third have to both be negative, but the studies are kind of inconclusive.

Ooh, I thought this thread was about how sci-fi and fantasy are crappy as genres, and I was ready to bust out the popcorn before thread reading.

I like the question:

"Q: *audible pause* *sounds of paper rustling* But, uh, some people say one experience, especially under the control of outside forces dosen't really make you *emphasis* gay."

someone shouldve asked her if the square root of a negative anal sex experience was pure fantasy

once i touched my butt in the shower and couldnt stop thinking about chris o'donnell for like a week

^^^^ proven fact

it's pretty weird that simmons seems like a rightwing nut considering the really sympathetic portrait of a gay couple in 'the terror' of all places (which i guess was somewhat balanced out by the grotesque gay serial killer-ish character in the same novel).

Simmons is such a shitty writer that I can't bring myself to care what his politics are.

Aside... Am I just being a SF rockist by getting annoyed by current state of things?

(stupid kids with their Twilight books ruining the scene... back in my day SF meant something maaann!)

It's sucked for so long, I can't imagine getting worked up about it.

If TWILIGHT led kids to read other, better SF/F, I would be really happy. But unfortch I don't think that's the main pay-off of the books. Although I do try to bend young minds by giving away books that I think are actually GOOD.

And considering sci-fi as we love it mostly started from crappy adventure serials, it's kind of hard to complain about crappy vampire serials now.

That just reminded me to go find some books for a certain teen.

i'm just trying to read older sci-fi these days, like joe haldeman, vernor vinge, steakley, heinlein. still a big richard k morgan fan, too, and i hear weird (but good) things about his new fantasy novel.

the genre's in kind of a dire state now - and a lot of my favorite stuff doesn't always get classed/marketed as sci-fi (Victor Pelevin is a prime example, but also some of Moorcock's recent stuff - which doesn't even get printed in the US - or things like Kelly Link and Jonathan Lethem). I didn't really dig Richard Morgan but there are still some decent big names that seem to get some level of attention - Gene Wolfe, M. John Harrison's last couple of novels (Light and Nova Swing).

altho Alex otm in general - the genre has pretty much always been awash in tired concepts, hackneyed writing, and terrible pandering

every genre has though, i just think sci fi's are more obviously ridiculous

I've been tending more towards fantasy than SF recently; I still enjoy Erikson even though he's becoming more and more florid with every book he writes and I'll always rep for Tad Williams.

"If you like to underline (like I do) or write in the margins (which I think I find inexplicably annoying), you're screwed if you have to erase."

Haha this is a weird behavior that I appreciate especially when coming across in used trashy books. Some dude who wrote 'baba booey' all over this one section of a bukowski collection totally made it worth reading. Thanks, anonymous stern fan!

I whole-heartedly endorse crap uneraseable paper for the sake of preserving these reading enhancements.

i read a lot of fantasy back in high school, i read a shitload of those terry brooks 'shannara' books

haha I read two and a half Shannara books before going "wait, no"

His "Magic Kingdom For Sale" series was way better IMO.

Was that Black Unicorn book one of those? Someone gave that to me out of order, I think.

yeah i think i got through 3 shannara books, which felt like a shitload. it was basically a watered-down LOTR, right? i even remember some black-clad horsemen pursuing these midget heroes or something.

That was only one watering-down of many.

Was that Black Unicorn book one of those? Someone gave that to me out of order, I think.

Yeah, that's the second one. I don't remember a word of it now but I must have enjoyed it at the time since I read the first four of that series.

yeah i think i got through 3 shannara books, which felt like a shitload. it was basically a watered-down LOTR, right? i even remember some black-clad horsemen pursuing these midget heroes or something.

IIRC the biggest Tolkein rips were in the second book, which was also the best one (and the only one I'd consider rereading).

Agreed on the second. (Actually that had the least rips IIRC.)

i read countless crappy fantasy & sf books from about grade 7 - 11, shannara included.

oh haha I am thinking of the first book plotwise

lmbo, i remember now:

Skull Bearers, "winged black destroyers"[14] who "sacrificed their humanity"[14] to become the Warlock Lord's most trusted servants. They fly around at different points of the novel, demoralizing troops. They are usually seen only at night, though one does fly during the day over the city of Tyrsis on the last day of the battle. One found Shea, Panamon and Keltset and almost killed them before Shea could bring the Elfstones to bear.

this thread seems pertinent: I have just read the wrongest scene in a fantasy book ever written.

Orl Fane, a "Gollum-like"[19] Gnome who "covets the Sword as Gollum does the ring."[19] He stole the Sword and forced Panamon, Keltset and Shea to track him down. He was driven insane and killed by the Warlock Lord after he took control of his mind and forced him to try to take the Sword.

You forgot the deep pit into which the wizard fell doing battle with a demon. Yup.

Mind you, in terms of ripoff stakes, nothing but NOTHING beats McKiernan's Iron Tower Trilogy. All he did was change the names.

this is the one i remember, it was definitely the longest book i had read at that point (think i was in middle school): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wishsong_of_Shannara

oh yeah that one

i remember those books as all being pretty entertaining but shameless

also read so many of these fuckin' books:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Forgotten_Realms_novels

oh how embarrassing, I read The Cleric Quintet in COLLEGE

Ugh I wish all those books would transmogrify into John Crowley's books. Where's that "small wish" thread?

http://www.penguinsciencefiction.org/index.html

Monkey Planet!

http://www.penguinsciencefiction.org/images/download.gif

Okay for some reason I can't select the image, but the Demolished Man cover is fucking awesome.

yeah I can't figure out how to post single covers either

Nevermind. Just replace thumbnails with images:

http://www.penguinsciencefiction.org/images/2536_ALFRED_BESTER_The_Demolished_Man_1966.jpg

That's a demotivational poster waiting to happen

my friend matt made me read the thomas covenant books when i was in the 9th grade. i never read fantasy. mostly horror as far as genre stuff went. i thought it was cool that he was a leper. i think i made it thru 4 of them and then i stopped. so i still don't know what happened to the dude.

i thought lord foul's bane was a cool name for a book too.

I think it's awesome that the tagline is "Together we could rape the universe."

That's gonna sell like hotcakes!

'I think it's awesome that the tagline is "Together we could rape the universe."'

Did anyone else hear the laverne and shirley theme song playing when you read that?

since someone brought him up, are the later john brunner books worth picking up? dude wrote so much stuff. anyway, at the used book store around the corner they have a ton of his later paperbacks. like, mostly 80s, maybe some 70's stuff.

i'm still intimidated by my copy of stand on zanzibar. i wanna read it, but i'm kinda slow and it looks like i'd have to clear my schedule to read it. (though i appreciate the fact that he modeled the book on the u.s.a. trilogy by dos passos. one of my faves.)

(i've mostly read his short stories from the 50's and 60's and i like those a bunch.)

excellent username fodder imo

I find Stand intimidating too. Shockwave Rider, The Sheep Look Up and Squares of the City are all amazing and less uh long.

I read Stand on Zanzibar a few years ago. It was okay. I was kinda irritated at the way the narrative just skips over large chunks of critical action - conflicts are set-up and then resolved in a completely unsatisfying manner.

Would still totally pick up Shockwave Rider if I ever see a copy

Have you read the second two I recommended Shakey? They are both amazing (much better than Shockwave Rider actually despite not being used for Royal Trux song titles).

not yet - they have copies of Squares of the City at Borderlands tho, which I am planning on picking up

Yeah I got it there for like $2. Brunner wrote like 100 books or something so there is probably more great stuff there. I've got two or three more sitting on shelf (including Stand.)

stand on zanzibar was my favourite book for a period of time as a teenager but i do not want to look at it again because i do not trust said teenager's aesthetics v. much

interesting that the marber grid never really took hold of penguin's SF line.

Ah, apparently Facetti decided all those covers also had to be composed of a pre-existing abstract painting. Hum.

oh, and I'll rep for the first 2 Richard Morgan books, tho I was disappointing he dropped the hard-boiled noir vibe partway thru the first book.

Still, stories involving xenoarcheology are always fun for me, be it Rendezvous w/ Rama or Lucasarts' The Dig.

Can anyone recommend any other xenoarcheology tales? I've already read Ringworld, and some of you protested loudly when I wanted to start a thread on New Wave sci-fi, like when Playboy would run short stories, which of course would feature the intrepid hero ducking some greenskinned Orion slave chick or something.

don't know what everyone's complaining about. fantasy at least is doing just fine. this book http://www.tachyonpublications.com/book/New_Weird.html is amazing (and the cover isn't tacky, nor the spine or type chintzy), especially the stories by steph swainston and alistair rennie. the thread m. john harrison kicked off the vandermeers reprint is like the best ilx one that never happened

Can anyone recommend any other xenoarcheology tales?

My favorite by a million light years is a short story: R.A. Lafferty's "Continued On Next Rock" - it's in one of Damon Knight's Orbit anthologies.

Also, er, At The Mountains Of Madness

Also, er, At The Mountains Of Madness

bah! i'll wait for Guillermo's version

Jack MacDivett (or however you spell his name) has written a series of okay-ish books that are solely (pretty much) about xenoarcheology starting with The Engines of God

Is Fifth Head of Cerberus xenoarchaeology or just xenoanthropology?

"don't know what everyone's complaining about. fantasy at least is doing just fine. this book http://www.tachyonpublications.com/book/New_Weird.html is amazing (and the cover isn't tacky, nor the spine or type chintzy)"
http://www.tachyonpublications.com/images/covers/NW_BookPg2.png

I'm not a graphic designer, so I can't articulate with any authority what's wrong with this cover (it feels representative of a more modern but equally cheesy trend, but I don't have the vocabulary to describe it), except to say that I think most people would be more moved by "Together we could rape the universe."

Graphic designers, weigh in, please.

im not a graphic designer but i am on the internet which makes me an expert, and that design sucks

corny/ugly font

drop shadow on the bug thing but not on the lettering, so the typography feels like it belongs to some kind of different world

reinforcing this: the way that the space created by the ragged ends of the left and right-aligned lists doesn't create any kind of coherent shape

border just a really confusingly pointless choice

also pretty sure m. harrison, m. moorcock, c. barker, c. mieville, p. de filippo don't belong in any kind of movement with 'new' in front of it. (well, the first two did forty years ago, admittedly)

I was about to say, let's not completely forget history here!

"drop shadow on the bug thing but not on the lettering, so the typography feels like it belongs to some kind of different world"

Is this a designer mistake? Wouldn't drop shadow on the lettering put the words on the same plane as the bug, instead of in the background (where it seems like they were intended to go)?

That border is a baaaaaaaaaaaaaadddddd idea because every time that fucking prints the cover is going to be a scootch to the left or right or top or bottom, and that black line is going to get trimmed unevenly (or even completely off) and someone is going to be pissed and it's all the DESIGNER'S FAULT.

"design" is the worst but designers are even worse

xp to kingfish:

Feby. 27, 1933

Dear Morse:---

By the way--since you have such a charitable opinion of my fictional attempts, you may be pleased to hear that my last story--The Dreams in the Witch-House, written exactly a year ago--will appear during the present twelvemonth in Weird Tales. I had become disgusted with the whole business, but Derleth (to whom it was lent) happened to show this story to Editor Wright. The latter asked if he might purchase it for $140.00, and I decided (sorely needing the tangible return) to let him have it--even though it most emphatically fails to satisfy me. Wright asked for radio dramatisation rights, but I set my foot down there. I shall never permit anything bearing my signature to be banalised and vulgarised into the kind of flat infantile twaddle which passes for "horror tales" amongst the radio and cinema audiences!

Yrs. most cordially and sincerely,
HPLovecraft

Clearly he had already seen a version of the Dean Stockwell Dunwich Horror in his nightmares.

pretty sure m. harrison, m. moorcock ... don't belong in any kind of movement with 'new' in front of it

I didn't say they did (don't think anyone else did either).

There is not a lot of good new stuff - my point was that much of the good new books that I consider sci-fi is often not marketed as such, and I listed several authors who fall into that category.

is are

(fwiw M. John Harrison and Moorcock may not be "new" writers but they are still publishing new material)

dude

go back and re-read that post, and the posts above it

"new weird" was coined apparently in 2003/4 according to a discussion kicked off by m. john harrison, who you think would know, recounted in the book. a couple years ago isn't so old. collected in an origins section, old dudes people have heard of are outnumbered by the newbies later on, some of whom are published in this 2008 anthology for the first time. it's not all good, but the good stuff is definitely refreshing -- steph swainston, alastair rennie, and felix gilman especially. but seriously go ahead and talk font

ah sorry I couldn't see the tiny names on that book cover

Can anyone recommend any other xenoarcheology tales?

Algis Budrys: Rogue Moon - fucking ace
Ian Reynolds: Diamond Dogs - pretty good, if a bit pulpy, and explicitly pays tribute to the Budrys

Rogue Moon already have. Sweet idea. Surprised they haven't made a video game from it

Alastair Reynold's Diamond Dogs is pretty much the same idea as the Budrys (he's said as much in interviews and is the reason i bought Rogue Moon off ebay) (and also film The Cube. and the 42 episode of doctor who). the puzzling machine thing crops up a lot in his full length novels as well - the city maze in Revelation Space, the having to vary paths in Pushing Ice...

(that said, the Budrys doesn't spend as much time in the pyramid as i'd like it to. too much talking)

I like that Tiptree cover. :(

M. John Harrison's stuff gets a nice treatment.

i believe the cover of "her smoke rose up forever" is actually a recreation of one of klimt's paintings that was destroyed?

Maybe. Seems like the back cover IS by Klimt. Found something where the front cover illustration is said to be "Reconstructed by Andrew Smith," whatever that means.

Oh yeah, inside back dust jacket (in the copy I have at hand slightly obscured by library security device) it says "The front cover presents Zug der Toten (1903; destroyed in 1945) by Gustav Klimt, in a reconstruction by Andrew Smith; the back cover is Klimt's Tod und Leben (1915)." Thanks for clearing that up, Gott Punch.

I just read Simmons' The Terror and I honestly don't know what to think. Well, I mean, I do. I think that 800 pages was way too long, and even though the myth-y stuff that wraps it up helps, it was honestly a slog to get through hundreds and hundreds of pages of hyper-detailed winter survival stuff with scurvy, and frostbite, and starvation, and cannibalism, and murder, and ice and ice and snow and ice and ... oh yeah, once in a while an indomitable snow monster just shows up with no warning and dismembers people, and then it's immediately back to the scurvy, and military surgery, and frostbite, and starvation, etc.. And yet virtually no one ever discusses the monster, which I thought might be some sort of metaphor, except the book didn't need a metaphor and the monster is not a metaphor and ... I dunno. I guess I'm trying to say that the book would have been OK with no monster at all and didn't really need a monster any more than it needed several verbatim burial services for felled crew. And yet the addition of the monster definitely made it more intriguing, especially in light of the denouement. It was definitely some sort of arduous achievement, regardless, not just for me as a reader but Simmons as a researching and the book as semi-historical fiction.

I am suspicious of the forthcoming TV adaptation. Ultimately the novel probably works best as a read-only-once mood piece and having read it only once, I'm good. (I'm a sucker for Polar literature/explorations as such, so said details intrigue me more than anything else. Personally I still can't get over the fact that the crew really did haul all that seemingly useless stuff with them for no reason.)

Yeah, reminded me of the coffee grinder or whatever in Into Thin Air. "Men, only bring the barest of essentials! So, 100 kegs of rum, 300 gold candlesticks, a phonograph player, one pair of socks, one Welsh cap, 250 sets of silverware ..."

You know one of the problems I had with it, something that wasn't really a problem but sort of was ... a problem? Because we all know the expedition failed and everyone disappeared/died, it became something of a suspense-free endurance test. Like I wrote before, the last 100 pages or whatever brought a fresh vantage to what preceded it, but that almost could have been a different book in its own right, separate from all the survival stuff.

to the original question, there are a handful of books getting prestige editions or rereleases with covers by well-known artists but it's generally works that are decades old

Ted Chiang hated the cover art on the initial release of one of his books enough that he spent his own money to commission art for a cover and the publisher still was a dick about it and wouldn't use it! He eventually was annoyed enough to change publishers
http://withboots.blogspot.com/2005/02/adventures-in-publishing.html
http://www.cityartsmagazine.com/issues/eastside/2010/07/ted-chiang-vs-tor-publishing

the art for William Gibson's recent books makes no sense to me, either, and it's amazing how much better the covers (and sometimes the binding and printing) are on the editions released in other countries. I have at least one UK version because the cover is better.

this is possibly the worst sf cover I have ever seen
https://sciencefictionruminations.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/the-knight-of-kadar.jpg?w=474&h=770

awesome

little n large, the early years

what is going on here
https://sciencefictionruminations.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/the-hand-of-zei-sprague-de-camp-1.jpg?w=768&h=1281

is this like Catchphrase?

"trunk line?"

Samuel Delany's generally entertaining on facebook and he went through a series a few weeks ago about how he feels the newer editions of his work, that tend toward the abstract shapes and colors school of covers, are racist for not portraying main characters, who are mostly people of color in his work

I mean, that's fair! Also kind of a market thing where a lot of science fiction books are tending toward more abstract covers, especially a decade ago during that series of reissues

also wondering right now if the L. Sprague de Camp book above actually features trains with elephant-like creatures instead of locomotives because lol

An author's name has rarely been so apposite.

i could tell you some tales about *my* viagens interplanatarias