Skip to main content

CAVALCADE OF HORRIFYING SCIENCE FICTION COVERS


Those of us who read science fiction know that even SF of the finest quality can be represented by truly fugly covers that cause us embarrassment while riding the bus. The two major ways they tend to go wrong are: 1) attempting to depict scenes in the book photo-realistically while failing in knowledge of basic anatomy, and 2) having way, way too many things (and fonts) going on at the same time. No wonder e-books are so big with the fandom.


This is the one that allowed me to finally realize my dream of having something on Good Show Sir.  Why, hello there, giant-brain-eyeball-octopus-bat-guy! And what’s behind your head? It’s not the moon, because it doesn’t go all the way around. An enormous cantaloupe, perhaps?



This one just has too many elements. Do we really need a blue alien, a rocket, purple tomatoes/pumpkins, pseudo-Mayan panther/snakes, AND a bug-eyed alien with one antenna holding a wine glass? 





If this is about a human who swaps minds with an alien, should he be photo-realistic while the alien looks like a child's drawing? Or is he turning into a child's drawing? It seems the artist was like, "OK, I took the guy from a photo and put it through one of those artistic Photoshop filters, but how the heck do I make the alien? I know, I'll get my 10-year-old son to do it!" That mouth just bothers me.




If you are an artist who can't create the illusion of three dimensions, should you really emphasize the fact with a "3-D" font?  Take a look at the guys nose and hair, not to mention the spaceships, which are like the kind of toys you find in a vending machine. The font, too, is like something I would have doodled in my 7th-grade notebook. What is a "ram song",  anyway, or do I even want to know?


 If you have any favorites, feel free to share, or post them on GSS.  








Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TOP TEN LIPSYNCH FOR YOUR LIFE SONGS FOR A DRAG KING EQUIVALENT OF RUPAUL'S DRAG RACE

 The Advocate has suggested that the greatest (i.e. only good) reality show ever, Rupaul's Drag Race , have a drag king contestant.  That's fine, but it would be much more entertaining to have a whole drag king competition. One of the best parts of Drag Race is seeing all the different types of queens compete: beauty queens, funny queens, conceptual queens, androgynous queens, scary queens, singing and dancing queens.  I want to see punk kings, gangsta rap kings, cock-rocking metal kings, panty-dropping R & B kings, country kings, baggy-pants burlesque comic kings, and of course, Elvis. I picked out some songs that make me think of different aspects of masculinity:  swaggering men, heartbroken men, lustful men, romantic men, philosophical men, and suicidally depressed men (interesting fact: I can think of dozens of songs by men about suicide, but only one female one: "Gloomy Sunday". What's up with that?) "That's Life" - Frank Sinatra
Post a Comment
Read more

WOMEN IN, ON AND AROUND FILM

Over at the Bitch Blog , they were talking about female movie directors, so I had to make sure psychotronic faves like Stephanie Rothman and Doris Wishman were given their due. I hadn't known that one of my favorite female badasses, the Kill-Bill -influencing Dag from Bury Me An Angel (introduced to me by Dr. S ), was also a woman director's creation (should've known). Then I put in a word for the woman who started me on my movie-obsessed path, the fabulous Pauline Kael . She taught me to own my loves and hates and call 'em as I see 'em. Maybe some people wouldn't consider her a feminist icon because she didn't always like the "right" movies, but read her review of Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore for some keen feminist insight. She totally terrified those guys in the movie boys' club. I mean, George Lucas named the villain in Willow after her! Here's Kael on the New Testament: Pasolini's The Gospel According To St. Mathew
Post a Comment
Read more

Things I Learned in 2020

Well, this has been quite a year, yessiree bob. But I’m being thankful right now of what I have and how my powers of Super-Introversion were activated by the current crisis as a laser-focus on learning stuff. Not that there weren’t many long hours of being too tired and paralyzed to move from the couch to the bed and vice-versa. And dusting and many other cleaning activities that didn’t aid in bodily sanitation were left by the wayside. Anyway, I hope that you too can make a list of things that you learned other than the details of the Electoral College.  How to make quick pasta sauce with canned tomatoes How to make instant oatmeal How to make creamed spinach Basic ASL Basic Inkscape Video conferencing with Zoom/Teams/Webex/Meet/Jitsi How to make ink-jet Shrinky Dinks Basic screencasting with Screen-Cast-O-Matic and Camtasia Online training creation with Niche Academy Online playlist transfer with Soundiiz Mask making Cuttlebone casting Intermediate Tinkercad Slide digitization Basic
Post a Comment
Read more