Why are science fiction and fantasy books so crappy?

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

"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