Apr 14
Click for full imageScot B’s Art Direction: OK, I see a redheaded woman wearing overalls, but still half-naked, being gnawed on by ghost wolves while a dragon explodes from her crotch. The dragon’s chasing a guy with a flaming orange on his jumpsuit. And a purple polka-dotted gnome fortune-teller! It’s a masterpiece I tell you! What’s that, you say the name of the book is what? Well, just throw a spiderweb around everything, that’ll work.
Published 1980
(Rating: 9.33 out of 10)
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April 14th, 2011 at 10:57 am
Last line of this book: “…and so the computer genius was put off women for life.”
April 14th, 2011 at 11:44 am
Behold the only known SF book cover painted by Marc Chagall.
April 14th, 2011 at 12:08 pm
However do these covers get past marketing??
April 14th, 2011 at 12:20 pm
Y’know I actually quite like this one – all the weirdness … Words can’t describe – but I like it.
April 14th, 2011 at 12:31 pm
Beryl Cook meets Hieronymus Bosch.
April 14th, 2011 at 1:20 pm
+ Claire
Full-on awesome.
Sort of like a Charlie Sheen rant.
April 14th, 2011 at 1:56 pm
A genius of fashion it looks like! That flaming jumpsuit is HOT!
April 14th, 2011 at 2:09 pm
Not so much wtf as WTF?!!!!!! It did bring to mind Henri Rousseau’s “Unpleasant Surprise” http://www.museumsyndicate.com/item.php?item=6649 updated for the 1980s…
April 14th, 2011 at 2:30 pm
Maybe she’s giving birth to the dragon? Whatever the case, that is one oddly-proportioned woman.
April 14th, 2011 at 4:52 pm
I even forgot about Levitating Giant Inflatable Suit Guy. I love Levitating Giant Inflatable Suit Guy!
April 14th, 2011 at 6:10 pm
I like the tie-wearing Emperor Ming character in the background on his flying invisible armchair.
April 14th, 2011 at 8:19 pm
The blurb reads:
“He was a genius in a computerized universe… and they wanted to kill him for it.”
For what? For being a genius, or for that pesky computerized universe, or for some undefined “it”?
April 14th, 2011 at 9:24 pm
If I were him, I’d be running away too. o_0
April 15th, 2011 at 1:48 am
Is that Baron Harkonnen floating in the background?
April 15th, 2011 at 7:24 am
“Is that Baron Harkonnen floating in the background?”
Hmm…
“The duke…[snort] …will die before these eyes!! And he’ll know… he’ll know! That it is I, Blenemy Harkonnen, who encompasses his oh crap! I’m stuck in a giant spiderweb!”
April 15th, 2011 at 1:04 pm
Yet there are no angels in that web.
April 17th, 2011 at 6:38 am
I like the goblin in the purple polka dot shirt running a “find the lady” game in the bottom right.
April 18th, 2011 at 5:44 pm
Did Ted Alspach do this cover? He writes these Adobe Illustrator Bibles, and I swear these people escaped from his Ultimate Werewolf game (a photo of which he obligingly included in the book). His stuff always creeped me out.
April 19th, 2011 at 1:00 am
Actually this cover was done by the wonderful modern surrealist artist Terrance Lindall, known for his masterful illustrations of “Paradise Lost.” Though SF/horror fans may remember him more for his series of classic “Creepy” “Eerie” and “Vampirella” covers, and his early ’80s work in “Heavy Metal.” He’s a fairly important dude.
Anyway, I love this cover!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrance_Lindall
April 19th, 2011 at 3:16 am
I actually hadn’t checked who the artist was. Nobody’s credited in the book, but the internets say it’s Terrance Lindall.
April 20th, 2011 at 3:49 pm
Yes, it is the worst SF fantasy cover ever done! Simon & Schuster stopped commissioning me after that. I was getting tired of doing work for the publishers and was moving on to building a museum in upstate New York (the Greenwoood Museum – look on wikipedia)
Actually I love everybody’s comments. I now have to my credit some of the best and worst ever done in the 20th century! Sometimes art is so bad it’s good, and if it’s incredibly bad, it’s great..I can live with that!! Best Regards, Terrance
PS: Thanks Greg!
January 4th, 2012 at 11:30 am
Is that woman having anal intercourse with a dragon, or is just her strap-on novelty sex toy?
January 12th, 2012 at 7:19 pm
I am seriously unimpressed by Terrance Lindall’s explanation: “I was getting tired of doing work for the publishers and was moving on to building a museum in upstate New York.”
If his paintings had just been sold in galleries, only Lindall would have suffered if he produced a half-assed piece of work. Unfortunately, he was getting paid to paint book covers. That novel is someone else’s work, and Lindall screwed it up.
WEB OF ANGELS is an early novel by John M. Ford, who started out being a good writer and became an extraordinary one. It’s a fun book, and deserved better than it got. It was also arguably the first cyberpunk novel, clocking in well before Bill Gibson or Vernor Vinge, as the few of us who’ve read it keep pointing out.
Mike Ford’s writing career caught some bad breaks, and this cover was one of them. Mike’s dead now, so maybe it’s moot anyway. But seeing Terrance Lindall making light of it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It’s not a trivial matter. He screwed up someone else’s book.