Jan 25
Click for Enhanced Ting!Tag Wizard Comments: That is some weapons-grade Ting!
Published 1991
(Average: 6.87 out of 10)
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Tag Wizard Comments: That is some weapons-grade Ting!
Published 1991
(Average: 6.87 out of 10)Loading...
(9.25 out of 10) (9.18 out of 10) (9.01 out of 10) (8.97 out of 10) (8.93 out of 10) (8.93 out of 10) (8.93 out of 10) (8.92 out of 10) (8.88 out of 10) (8.88 out of 10)
Lastest Tweet
January 25th, 2017 at 1:13 pm
It’s the Super-Ting! The Falcons of Narabedla vs. the Patriots of Foxborough
January 25th, 2017 at 1:38 pm
This is a gridiron football joke, isn’t it? But goodness, he’s the right colours, all black and white and red all over.
January 25th, 2017 at 1:39 pm
Marion Zimmer Bradley’s F*****s of NAMBLA.
Or is it still too, too early?
January 25th, 2017 at 1:58 pm
Neither figure bears much resemblance to Marlon Brando, perhaps for legal reasons.
January 25th, 2017 at 2:19 pm
That awkward moment when you’re tinging triumphantly add you get bum rushed by an enormous bird of prey.
January 25th, 2017 at 2:47 pm
How The Lord of the Rings should have ended.
January 25th, 2017 at 3:32 pm
Cover guy definitely needs more leather. I mean give him a leather cap at least.
January 25th, 2017 at 4:02 pm
Why is there an ellipsis after ‘Author of the
world-famous DARKOVER novels’? As though the sentence was meant to continue, but never did…
January 25th, 2017 at 4:20 pm
Siegfried and Roy decided that they’d not had much luck with lions so they’d try eagles instead. What could possibly go wrong?
January 25th, 2017 at 4:35 pm
@Tom Noir: Seconded. He’s clearly far too distracted by his fancy glowing rock.
January 25th, 2017 at 4:37 pm
Dude likes diamonds apparently.
January 25th, 2017 at 4:47 pm
He’s a pig. He stole the egg. And that’s an Angry Bird.
It all makes sense now.
January 25th, 2017 at 5:54 pm
He’s blinding us with one of those “embossed” book covers.
January 25th, 2017 at 6:56 pm
“C’mon, squeeze my feet like you used to. You never squeeze my feet anymore. You know how I love to have my feet squeezed.”
January 25th, 2017 at 6:57 pm
Ok, ok, I know I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but am I the only person who only just now realized that “Narabedla” is just “Aldebaran” backwards? Did you all see that immediately? Do I need to resign from GSS for requiring five whole minutes of cover study before seeing that?
January 25th, 2017 at 7:02 pm
@ztilcihC.B – Good Show Sir! If someone else had noticed it they would certainly have mentioned before you.
January 25th, 2017 at 7:38 pm
@Bibliomancer, B.Chiclitz: I think most people thought it was too obvious to need saying. It was an old 40s gag, like ‘Ghod’. There was a Pohl book used it (‘Narabedla Inc’) Quite why ‘Astra’ (MZB’s old fangirl name, I’m told) bothered to revive it would entail me having read this book, and I gave up on ‘Darkover’ around the time Then Jericho were in the charts.
January 25th, 2017 at 8:06 pm
@Tat Wood—I usually get whole bushels full of enlightenment from your posts, but I must confess this last one (17) has me just saying “Wha?” I think I am missing an entire continent of cultural references somewhere. No need to supply them, just accept my apologies for being dumbfounded.
January 25th, 2017 at 8:36 pm
Meanwhile, hordes of marauding lizard beings from the Legir system have invaded and are locked in mortal combat with the faceless worm people of Esuegleteb. Only reinforcements from the Surutcra Empire can save them! But will they arrive in time?
January 25th, 2017 at 8:58 pm
@ B.Chiclitz (18): Sorry.
The 40s fan-culture thing is something that kept surfacing as in-jokes in later books once the fans got famous and I’m slowly piecing it all together myself. In particular, there’s a whole lot of stuff about lizard-men at the centre of the Earth,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Sharpe_Shaver#The_Shaver_Mystery
the ‘missing’ planet Vulcan (a Victorian idea that Mercury’s wobble was caused by an unseen inner planet right up next to the sun, disproved when Einstein had a better explanation) and a made-up religion involving ‘Ghod’ and drinking ‘bheer’.
Raymond A Palmer is a name that keeps coming up in this context http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/palmer_raymond_a especially as he pretty much invented the fanzine http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/universe_science_fiction http://www.tor.com/2013/06/06/the-man-from-mars-excerpt/ And, yes, the ‘Golden Age’ Flash was named after him.
Then Jericho were a duff mid-80s band.
January 25th, 2017 at 11:34 pm
I have this as half of a second edition Ace Double. And despite our many yuks at Ace Double covers, it wasn’t as mock-worthy as this. It’s just generic 60’s skiffy crap with a ridiculous font. And it looked more fantasy.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HCbdCwrSSOo/VpLKCOVhMMI/AAAAAAAAAvA/tBSblIit1Kk/s1600/falcons.JPG
But this! Mr. 70’s (in 1991?) and a giant regular (not alien) eagle. Does the dude remind anyone of Dick BLADE! if he was forced to wear clothes? Did the artist put cloth trousers on him so we wouldn’t think Village People?
@DSWBT: Mmmm, no, just about the right timing. I was amused.
@B. Chiclitz: cough No, no, it’s fine! snicker
@Tat Wood: The deity rather quickly became Ghu, and you still occasionally see references to Ghu in writing, though nobody says it aloud any more, even the old trufen. As in, “Great Ghu! $1.75 for a novella that you could still find the Ace Double versions of at the time, for less money and with another batch of words attached?”
This book predates Darkover, it’s kind of a bog-standard planetary sword and sorcery thingy; guy from our time has to free the oppressed people of the future from nasty aristos who have giant killer birds.
January 26th, 2017 at 12:16 am
While it’s usually humans or humanoids with anatomy problems, that bird, which is by no stretch a falcon, cannot have the binocular vision needed for hunting. Perhaps it’s a scavenger instead. Mayhap a buzzard from Esuegleteb.
January 26th, 2017 at 1:05 am
@Ikari Gendo, It’s not just the eyes, look at the placement of the wings as well. Poor bird clearly has a dislocated wing there.
As for our mighty hero Diamond McPornStash, He reminds me of an uncharacteristically buff Robin Williams from around the time of “Cadillac Man”.
January 26th, 2017 at 1:35 am
@DaveM: Except Robin Williams was born with more chest hair than Ting! McPornStash has.
Erm, the feathers on the bird are very nice and detailed?
—————————–
In other news, someone needs to find a copy of this in the wild. Please. The “art”. The author’s name. The “art”.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0103I9YHS/ref=rdr_kindle_ext_tmb
January 26th, 2017 at 5:15 am
@Tat Wood #17. I have thus book but haven’t got around to reading it. From skimming, Aldebaran has nothing to do with it in any way- I’d say MZB was just stuck for a name.
January 26th, 2017 at 5:57 am
@GSS Veteran, Good catch! The authors website (complete with other GSS worthy covers) can be found at http://www.melissasnark.com/
I suspect they haven’t been seen here because of being shelved in the “romance” section instead.
As a matter of polite manners I will say nothing of the work listed in her “Works in Progress” tab. I’m sure the author will create something better than the blurb (wouldn’t be hard).
January 26th, 2017 at 8:48 am
@GSS noob and DaveM. Are you sure these aren’t parodies?
January 26th, 2017 at 11:29 am
@GSS Bellperson, DaveM: I should have known that this Web site would be where we would conclude the hunting of the snark!
January 26th, 2017 at 2:54 pm
@Dead Stuff—thanks for linking to that poem. One of the best! Good excuse to reread it. It’s even better than Falcons of Seratna !
“The Beaver went simply galumphing about”
A morality tale for GSS inscribers.
January 26th, 2017 at 3:38 pm
@B. Chiclitz: So, if they’re from Narabedla, would the bears of Surutcra be able to stop them?
January 26th, 2017 at 3:44 pm
@Anna T—ah, you have hit exactly the right question. Perhaps only if they have come out of space hibernation in time to receive the distress signals.
January 26th, 2017 at 8:00 pm
The Smokey and the Bandit franchise got really weird after they had Burt Reynolds use Native American magic to summon life into the “screaming chicken” on the hood of his car.
January 26th, 2017 at 8:02 pm
@Yoss: Smokey and the Bandit 8: What is Bandit Smoking?
January 26th, 2017 at 8:31 pm
@Yoss: Brilliant! You win the thread. That’s exactly what it looks like.
@DaveM, I read one of her books once (it was free, in paperback) and it was… shrug a’ight. The spelling and punctuation were perfect, there was good if standard characterization, and I could follow the plot. Mostly. The background was a bit WTF.
HOWEVER, it had a nice abstract cover, with symbols. It wasn’t embarrassing like the current one is. So it was properly shelved in the Urban Fantasy, Werewolves/Hunters/Evil Ghostie, sub-sub-genre. There was no romance with happy ending.
These new covers are probably what (wrongly) gets it in Romance, indistinguishable from all the others. The people who buy it looking for Romance are going to be disappointed, what with the disembowlings and no lurve. It doesn’t seem a smart marketing move to me. Neither does not updating her website in 8 months.
January 26th, 2017 at 8:57 pm
Is that falcon sneaking up on him or is it his hype man?
January 26th, 2017 at 10:15 pm
So the falcon is yelling “YEAAA BOYYY!”, @Michael Toland? Introducing Rap Master Vanilla Ting?
January 27th, 2017 at 4:05 am
And in other self-published news, I came across a “novel” that has the strap line
“MERMAIDS ARE REAL. And they’re going to kill us all.”
Plus, most of it’s plagiarized from Wikipedia and other web sites, some of them conspiracy theory troll sites. Also, it’s only half the book. Sadly, the cover isn’t terrible, so it’s not eligible here.
January 27th, 2017 at 11:49 am
@GSS ichthyologist: That’s a fascinating story, and a tag line with which I would agree heartily, but with two minor caveats:
1. They’re going to kill us all, but very, very slowly.
2. By ‘mermaids’ I mean ‘snails’.
As you were.
January 27th, 2017 at 7:54 pm
See also the other titles in this riveting series:
EAGLES OF DROW
LIONS OF ELTITYZAL
BEASTS OF NITIGNINOHP
and
DRAGONS OF REGGUBHO
January 27th, 2017 at 8:12 pm
@A.R.Y.—and don’t forget the classic KILLER SLOTHS OF KCUFASEVIGOHW!
I think that was a NY Times Best seller!
January 27th, 2017 at 10:15 pm
You mean the bestseller that competed with the other top sellers — E.L. James’s KCEY and Dan Brown’s THE LOST SYMBOL OF TIHS…?
😉
January 28th, 2017 at 5:44 am
@GSS noob #37. I had never even suspected the existance of the Great Mermaid Conspiracy, but now that I check I find that quite a number of people have been conducting Google searches on such crucial topics as:
“Are mermaids real and do they exist?”
“Are mermaids evil?”
“How long have mermaids been around?”
“Are mermaids in the Bible?”
“Where do mermaids live?”
“Do mermaids eat humans?”
It’s heartening to see the public is becoming aware of the existential threat to humanity posed by cannibal fish-women!
January 28th, 2017 at 10:15 pm
@RachelJ: Who knew? I thought they only seduced sailors to watery graves and occasionally sang jaunty calypso tunes with sentient crustaceans.
(Or that they were manatees viewed by scurvy tars, but no.)
January 29th, 2017 at 4:01 am
Just when you think you’ve seen it all: Were-Chihuahua fights ebook pirates.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M2CCL07
January 29th, 2017 at 11:58 pm
@GSS noob. “Fourth in a series”?!!!!??
January 30th, 2017 at 1:57 am
@RachelJ: That was the scary part. (Nobody’s scared of a were-chihuahua.)
The romance also seemed implausible. I could maybe understand fancying a man who turned into something large and powerful, like a wolf or tiger, but how could you possibly respect a Chihuahua? Looking at your partner in his human form and knowing he’s a little yappy beast deep inside. Nope.
January 30th, 2017 at 4:46 am
The Killer Mermaid Conspiracy continues! Now they’re brainwashing our children!
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HA4QEE0/
Get the were-Chihuahua on it, stat!
January 30th, 2017 at 8:49 am
@GSS Veterinarian: was reading the reviews for the book protecting were-Chihuahua series and came across this gem:
“This hilarious and incisive story about werewolves who want to destroy books and dogs who want to protect them, is all too likely to be true.”
January 30th, 2017 at 8:52 am
@GSS noob. It’s okay- seems the book’s purpose is to tell the little ones that if they join the mermaids, Mummy and Daddy won’t love them anymore. It’s actually a powerful weapon in the ongoing fight against the Mermenace!
January 30th, 2017 at 8:11 pm
Rejected flag emblem?
January 30th, 2017 at 10:41 pm
@RachelJ: phew! Well, I guess the were-chihuahua must have been behind that one. Since we know he likely exists. (hashtagalternativefacts)
January 31st, 2017 at 12:33 am
Now anywhere else on the Internets, you tell them that you were discussing werechihuahas’ impact on the mermaid conspiracy in regards a picture of a roc rogering a Queen groupie, they look at you like you were mad. But GSS is not anywhere else!
January 31st, 2017 at 1:12 am
To be fair, the werewawa/mermaid bit wasn’t, strictly speaking, in regards of roc/groupie, just sort of… within the same time frame because we had no new posts to comment under.
January 31st, 2017 at 4:08 am
@DSWBT—Narwals upon the parapets?
January 31st, 2017 at 11:05 am
@BC: I’m up on the vestry looking about and I ain’t seen nothin’. 😉
February 5th, 2017 at 3:15 am
The Cannibal Mermaid Conspiracy is everywhere!
http://nerdist.com/the-lures-director-on-man-eating-mermaids-and-her-burlesque-background/
February 6th, 2017 at 11:47 am
@GSS mermenace expert..
And the director’s aim is to “build empathy”! It’s Mermaidist propaganda!
😨🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟
February 6th, 2017 at 11:38 pm
There really may be a conspiracy after all!!!
Now I suspect the mermaids have been framing the sharks to take the fall for people getting eaten in the ocean.
November 13th, 2017 at 3:21 pm
Needs the “wings” tag here, good TW.
November 13th, 2017 at 11:27 pm
I generally have the brightness on my screen turned way down to prevent headaches (then I crank it up for GSS, and QED). If you view this cover thusly, the bird claws make it appear that Ting! McPornstache has either three giant breadsticks, or those juggling clubs on each side. He does look like the kind of guy who’d regard Olive Garden as the height of fine dining.
Or he’s French and they’re baguettes! “Je vais au combat avec mes baguettes et mon TING!” honh honh honh
(I may be underslept and undercaffeinated.)
July 26th, 2023 at 12:33 pm
I just looked up Marion Zimmer Bradley after reading DSWBT’s comments at number three and … yikes.