Why are science fiction and fantasy books so crappy?

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