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).
― Daniel, Esq., Saturday, 4 August 2007 02:53 (sixteen years ago) link
THATS YOUR PROBLEM
― latebloomer, Saturday, 4 August 2007 02:54 (sixteen years ago) link
SHUT
― latebloomer, Saturday, 4 August 2007 02:56 (sixteen years ago) link
Those PKD covers were from 95/96, and totally look like my drunken experiments with Photoshop as an undergrad.
― kingfish, Saturday, 4 August 2007 03:56 (sixteen years ago) link
Man, every photo of me for a while, I insisted I hold that copy of Dune Messiah. What a phase.
― Abbott, Saturday, 4 August 2007 04:29 (sixteen years ago) link
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.
― kingfish, Saturday, 4 August 2007 06:03 (sixteen years ago) link
I love adverts just cos they capture an exact point in time
― Noodle Vague, Saturday, 4 August 2007 09:23 (sixteen years ago) link
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.
― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 4 August 2007 09:32 (sixteen years ago) link
I don't get why anyone would care what the crap a book's cover looks like
if you have to ask...
― kenan, Saturday, 4 August 2007 09:42 (sixteen years ago) link
http://www.hatrack.com/osc/books/songmaster.jpg
― dice in my pockets, Saturday, 4 August 2007 09:45 (sixteen years ago) link
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.
― kingfish, Monday, 6 August 2007 23:15 (sixteen years ago) link
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
― Shakey Mo Collier, Monday, 6 August 2007 23:20 (sixteen years ago) link
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1098/1223872643_129afc6526_m.jpg
― Ned Trifle II, Friday, 24 August 2007 18:20 (sixteen years ago) link
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.
― Ned Trifle II, Friday, 24 August 2007 18:24 (sixteen years ago) link
Gollanz -Gollancz - for shame...
― Ned Trifle II, Friday, 24 August 2007 18:25 (sixteen years ago) link
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).
― Maria, Friday, 24 August 2007 19:12 (sixteen years ago) link
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.
― stet, Friday, 24 August 2007 21:02 (sixteen years ago) link
probably intended to compliment to the hideous writing
― Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, 24 August 2007 21:05 (sixteen years ago) link
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.
― The Real Dirty Vicar, Saturday, 25 August 2007 16:48 (sixteen years ago) link
those 10000000 david weber novels that clutter the end of the sf section have the worst design.
― adam, Saturday, 25 August 2007 23:56 (sixteen years ago) link
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/
― koogs, Monday, 17 September 2007 18:14 (sixteen years ago) link
(bottom left is 'altered carbon' which i also already have - http://www.chronicles-network.com/forum/40727-the-gollancz-future-classics-range.html )
― koogs, Monday, 17 September 2007 18:17 (sixteen years ago) link
wrong link: http://www.uksfbooknews.net/2007/09/06/gollancz-editor-simon-spanton-on-the-future-classics-promotion/
― koogs, Monday, 17 September 2007 18:18 (sixteen years ago) link
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...
― Stone Monkey, Tuesday, 18 September 2007 10:41 (sixteen years ago) link
That photo I took is so out of focus when you click on it, sorry!
― Ned Trifle II, Tuesday, 18 September 2007 11:01 (sixteen years ago) link
ugh I couldn't get past the first dozen pages of Altered Carbon
― Shakey Mo Collier, Tuesday, 18 September 2007 16:19 (sixteen years ago) link
i second your ugh.
― koogs, Tuesday, 18 September 2007 16:53 (sixteen years ago) link
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
― Shakey Mo Collier, Tuesday, 18 September 2007 17:04 (sixteen years ago) link
the violence, specifically the violence towards women, was the main factor i disliked it, yes.
damn you amazon recommendations.
― koogs, Tuesday, 18 September 2007 17:18 (sixteen years ago) link
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.
― ledge, Tuesday, 18 September 2007 17:24 (sixteen years ago) link
i just made it through hyperion ... why?
― remy bean, Tuesday, 18 September 2007 18:51 (sixteen years ago) link
Because you're supposed to. (The only thing I've read from Simmons yet is The Terror and I quite liked it.)
― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 18 September 2007 18:53 (sixteen years ago) link
Simmons is garbage.
― Alex in SF, Tuesday, 18 September 2007 18:56 (sixteen years ago) link
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.
― Shakey Mo Collier, Tuesday, 18 September 2007 19:06 (sixteen years ago) link
'the terror' is awesome. i enjoy those richard k. morgan novels quite a bit.
also:
http://www.bookitinc.com/pictures16/902767.jpg
― omar little, Tuesday, 18 September 2007 19:09 (sixteen years ago) link
buttocks lovingly rendered
― Shakey Mo Collier, Tuesday, 18 September 2007 19:10 (sixteen years ago) link
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!
― koogs, Tuesday, 2 October 2007 14:47 (sixteen years ago) link
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
― kingfish, Tuesday, 28 April 2009 01:35 (fifteen years ago) link
christ why are so many sf authors reactionary dipshits?
― Bigfoot doesn't realize the Russian Spetsnaz are real (latebloomer), Tuesday, 28 April 2009 03:04 (fifteen years ago) link
Because of the Uncle Orson formula
1: Be reactionary asshole2: ???3: ENDER'S GAME HUGE SUCCESS
― Øystein, Tuesday, 28 April 2009 08:56 (fifteen years ago) link
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
― Zeno, Tuesday, 28 April 2009 09:04 (fifteen years ago) link
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.
― Carroll Shelby Downard (Elvis Telecom), Tuesday, 28 April 2009 09:15 (fifteen years ago) link
But they might read China Mieville and Charlie Stross.
― Øystein, Tuesday, 28 April 2009 09:19 (fifteen years ago) link
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?
― Carroll Shelby Downard (Elvis Telecom), Tuesday, 28 April 2009 09:25 (fifteen years ago) link
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.
― Carroll Shelby Downard (Elvis Telecom), Tuesday, 28 April 2009 09:37 (fifteen years ago) link
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?
― Pro Creationism Soccer 2009 (ledge), Tuesday, 28 April 2009 09:42 (fifteen years ago) link
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.
― guys i need to eliminate this business associate and im really nervous (Laurel), Tuesday, 28 April 2009 13:31 (fifteen years ago) link
Being a lesbian doesn't mean you have to know what you're talking about.
― kingkongvsgodzilla, Tuesday, 28 April 2009 13:37 (fifteen years ago) link
I mean, perhaps Ms. McCaffery is not actually a lesbian but was actually just raped with a tent peg and got confused.
― kingkongvsgodzilla, Tuesday, 28 April 2009 13:38 (fifteen years ago) link
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.
― guys i need to eliminate this business associate and im really nervous (Laurel), Tuesday, 28 April 2009 13:52 (fifteen years ago) link