preload
Oct 23

Starring Vin Diesel as Bobo, the microcephalic, mutant dwarf. Click for full image

Good Show Sir Comments: The hottie on the right is the mutant Mother of Blades. From the book:
“She faced him, her four calloused hands set firmly on her broad hips. Her eyes were reddened from staring into the furnace in which she heated her metal; sweat ran down her wrinkled face into the sparse gray mustache which disfigured her upper lip, and dripped onto her bare chest…” Spot on, cover artist Patrick Turner.

Published 2007

Actually, that cover IS a classical work of art!I would touch it without protective gloves.I've seen worse. Far, far, worse.Interesting, but I would still read it in public.Middlng: Neither awful nor awfully goodWould not like to be seen reading that!Awful... just awful...That belongs in a gold-lame picture frame!Gah... my eyes are burning! Feels so good!Good Show Sir! (Average: 7.39 out of 10)
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18 Responses to “Orphans of the Sky”

  1. THX 1138 Says:

    “No Zaphod, actually, nobody ever says ‘Two heads are better than four arms.'”

  2. Dead Stuff With Big Teeth Says:

    At 4:30 in the afternoon, one perilous Friday in the Baen cover art department, masked hoodlums with guns burst in and shouted, ‘Red and yellow on the covers! Or it’s your lives!

  3. B. Chiclitz Says:

    The great Heinlein aside, the close proximity of the words “Baen” and “literate” is kind of funny.

  4. B. Chiclitz Says:

    I’m seeing smug here, if not a wee touch of smirk as well.

  5. Bibliomancer Says:

    @B. Chiclitz – I’m seeing smug on left head and smirk on the right. Or is it the other way around?

    This is the fix-up novel of Heinlein’s short story “Universe” which was the first generation ship tale. It’s fascinating how Douglas Adams got the Zaphod Beeblebrox character from Joe-Jim the two-headed leader of the mutants (and the 4-armed Mother of Blades).

  6. fred Says:

    I am mesmerized by the elaborate construction of the letters in HEINLEIN, they look like delicious petit fours.

  7. THX 1138 Says:

    Now, have The New York Times ever used an exclamation mark in their reviews?

  8. Perry Armstrong Says:

    So, which body part does the bald guy have more of?

  9. Dead Stuff With Big Teeth Says:

    @Perry: Teeth. Mm, yes. Definitely teeth.

  10. Anna T. Says:

    This cover screameth not “generation ship”, but “Space Nightclub”. Or possibly “Space Pimp”. Judging by the quote from the book, I would say this cover’s been hit with the BAENIZER. I suggest a search-and-destroy mission for this legendary weapon of mass blindness.

  11. Bibliomancer Says:

    @THX 1138 – I agree. I’m calling bullshit on the NY Times Baen blurb. They never reviewed Orphans of the Sky. Also, I just did a Lexis Nexis search of the NY Times archive and there has never been an instance of “Heinlein” “literate” “exciting” and “informed” being in the same article. I got Heinlein+literate in a Stranger in a Strange Land review and Heinlein+exciting in a Friday review. They should have just let David Weber yell “Blew me away!” from the other side of the office and slapped that on the cover. Would have been more honest.

  12. B. Chiclitz Says:

    @Bibliomancer—Holy Cow! You mean, Baen lied? Just made stuff up? Prevaricated? Deceived? Defrauded? Fibbed?

    Shall I say—starked—us?

  13. A.R.Yngve Says:

    “Literate, informed and exciting!”

    Ahem — informed about WHAT? Four-armed mutants? That’s an odd thing to call someone “informed” about… I mean, I’m informed about the Xobots of Bylon IV, but it’s only in my mind

  14. THX 1138 Says:

    I get it – the quote is an ad for the New York Times, not about this book at all.

  15. RachelJ Says:

    @everyone. Well, Heinlein was probably literate, let’s give them that.

  16. anon Says:

    @RachelJ: He may have also been ex-citing and in-formed (whatever that means).

  17. A.R.Yngve Says:

    Vin Diesel is much shorter than I imagined.

  18. GSS ex-noob Says:

    I was ‘aving a larf over the cover posted in 2018, which was from some decades earlier, but it at least seems to depict the characters better, and has no Space Pimp Bondage Nightclub overtones. And the blurb is informative and correct, plus no font problems. Even the clothing’s better — ISTM that they’d more likely be down to giant undies instead of space leather.

    Apparently a red couch is important in both.

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