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Mar 11

You might be wondering... how do I put on make up?Click for full image

Noel Comments: Having not read the book, I have no idea what the hell is going on. If anyone could give me a head’s up, I’d appreciate it.
Published 1974

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: 7.00 out of 10)
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34 Responses to “Pavane”

  1. THX 1138 Says:

    “The gun is good! The penis is evil!”

  2. Perry Armstrong Says:

    GOP Presidential Inauguration 2017 + one day.

  3. anon Says:

    E.C. pinches it — no finer act
    E.P.A. VAN
    Trike Bothers

  4. Dead Stuff With Big Teeth Says:

    There appears to be a floating piece of poo just in front of her. And of course there is the slightly inconvenienced chap in back at right. I think gravity isn’t doing well with this particular planet.

  5. A.R.Yngve Says:

    The actual novel, I’ve heard, is an Alternate History book where the Spanish Armada crushed the Brits and ended the Reformation.

    The COVER is apparently made for a story about a parallel universe where decapitated heads float around looking for new bodies.

  6. Bibliomancer Says:

    PAVANF
    I thought we had a candidate for the gibberish title tag.
    Instead we have a gibberish cover.

  7. Tat Wood Says:

    AR Yngve is almost right. The title alludes to the peacock-like dance popular in Elizabethan times as this is a slow, stately series of interlinked short stories about a world where the Industrial Revolution has been forestalled by Catholicism regaining its hold over England (not the Armada, which was doomed anyway, but a sniper taking out Elizabeth) but the older powers of pre-Christian Albion are stronger even than this and allow quiet resistance to the police-state of steam tractors and semaphore-towers.

    As you can clearly tell from that cover and this one https://www.flickr.com/photos/36329240@N06/7931377162

  8. Ikari Gendo Says:

    That is an excessively large head in the foreground. I think the folks waiting in line to be decapitated would much prefer a little… Oh, never mind.

  9. Francis Boyle Says:

    Look folks, it could be worse. This one manages to be both reasonably accurate and supremely terrible. Be sure to don your ting protection: http://www.amazon.fr/Pavane-Keith-Roberts/dp/2253121916

  10. Dead Stuff With Big Teeth Says:

    @AR: Looking at the assembled covers…I didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition.

  11. Anna T. Says:

    About the background scene . . . is the guy on the left attempting to sacrifice the guy on the right to Giant Floating Head Woman? And, for that matter, why? Does she eat people?

  12. Dead Stuff With Big Teeth Says:

    Maybe Pavane was the inspiration for Pac Man?

  13. fred Says:

    The artist can paint a quality rock outcrop but sucks at clouds. I assume thy are clouds. Could be mountains. The Yorkshire Alps. In which case he sucks at mountains.

  14. B. Chiclitz Says:

    @fred—speaking of artists, it appears the sky on this planet was commissioned for Mark Rothko.

  15. B. Chiclitz Says:

    And speaking of Pavanes, I think this is the most beautiful one I’ve ever heard.

  16. A.R.Yngve Says:

    NO ONE expects The Spanish Inquisition!!! [SHOCK CUE]

    Our three chief weapons are bad covers, sloppy copy editors, lousy pay rates and a fanatical devotion to the Pope… Four! Four weapons…

  17. Tat Wood Says:

    She looks oddly like this advert: I love the bit where the disembodied heads eat the word ‘Saturday’ from the sides, so you can freeze-frame on a breakfast serial with the colourful message ‘TURD’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=829bQGGBMuY

  18. Jon K. (to differentiate from the Jon who posted back in the early days of GSS) Says:

    @B. Chiclitz (#15): That’s such a sad-sounding piece.

    I wonder if it’s in D minor. Nigel Tufnel said that D minor is the saddest of all keys…. 😉

  19. A.R.Yngve Says:

    Q: What is “PAVANF”?
    A: A sound effect invented by the late, great Don Martin to convey the sound of an obese man jumping into a pool while holding an inflatable mattress underneath him.

  20. anon Says:

    @Tat Wood: Wait, that’s an advert? It’s purpose is make people buy stuff? After seeing it, I would actively seek to not buy the product in question because of that advert and the message of eating turd has absolutely nothing to do with it.

  21. Dead Stuff With Big Teeth Says:

    GALLOP METRO PAVANE! MY HYMEN, A VAPOR: TEMPO LAG.

  22. Bibliomancer Says:

    Mrs. Zardoz

  23. fred Says:

    What can make a wooden post cry? This cover.

  24. Tat Wood Says:

    You can tell those women are British: even though there are no guards, and they could easily overpower the headsman, they’e formed an orderly queue and would probably tut at anyone trying to push in ahead of them.

    And you can tell it’s an alternate universe: there’s a naked man spatchcocked in public and nobody’s offered him a cuppa or written a stiffly-worded letter of complaint to the local paper.

  25. Bruce A Munro Says:

    What is it with SF covers and their fondness for floating/flying/ghostly heads?

    Really, it seems just a trifle anti-Catholic to make the background of your cover a bunch of robed people (Christ figures?) lining up to be decapitated by a 1930s castles, swords, and bodices movie hooded executioner and also a man onna stick, [1] while in front we have a de-bodied head (a woman who’s already had her body chopped off by the executioner?[2]) It’s not like Dorset (where the stories are mostly set) is 24/7 standing room only autos-da-fe.

    I sort of like this cover https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/imager/s3images/46679/Pavane_8d27bb79e430478faac435b78759f809.jpeg which works fairly well on the level of symbolism. Although I do wonder why those people coming out from under the cloak of the Church look so mad: did someone fart in there?

    [1] That’s not how you do impalements. For one thing, he’s not a kebab meatball: he’s going slide right down to the bottom under his own weight.

    [2] The fact she’s wearing a crown of thorns kinda pushes the “she’s like Christ” narrative, an innocent executed by an eeevil church-state alliance.

  26. GSS ex-noob Says:

    So after the executioner wields the axe, the decapitated head gains the power of flight and swooshes away at high speed?

    At least this cover has some feeble justification for a loose head, but even the orderly queue of Brits would have a raised eyebrow or two.

    in Pepperpot voices:
    “Ooh, look at Lucy there, showing off with her high-speed flying head, tsk.”
    “And Dave, not sliding down his pole.”
    “What’s this country coming to, I ask you?”

  27. Tat Wood Says:

    @GSS ex-noob: so long as nobody says ‘Jehovah’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cnn2aGVcCEc

  28. The Blue Are Coming Says:

    The axeman has one hell of a swing. He knocked thornyhead a good fifty feet from the chopping block.

  29. Tor Mented Says:

    Sure, he’s getting good distance, but I don’t think he’s ever going to make it to the green.

  30. Bruce A Munro Says:

    @Tor Mented: what green? This is the brownest Green & Pleasant Land I’ve seen. Do Catholics cause extended drought?

  31. The Blue Are Coming Says:

    @Tor
    Well me might have if it wasn’t for that slice.

    BTW…good show, sir.

  32. The Blue Are Coming Says:

    @BAM
    Course maintenance has suffered since they axed the greenskeeper.

  33. GSS ex-noob Says:

    @TheBlue: GSS!

  34. The Blue Are Coming Says:

    @ex-noob
    I’m new here, so thanks for my first GSS 🙂

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