Jul 31
Wendy’s Art Direction: It’s supposed to be about some Asteroid Belt colony. Tear out the first five pages of your sketchbook and paste them on this cover mock-up.
Published 1970
Wendy’s Art Direction: It’s supposed to be about some Asteroid Belt colony. Tear out the first five pages of your sketchbook and paste them on this cover mock-up.
Published 1970
July 31st, 2017 at 11:20 am
Inspired by the Abbey Road cover?
Or Goodbye Cream?
July 31st, 2017 at 11:30 am
Why are they walking from the safe one to the one that’s exploding?
July 31st, 2017 at 12:26 pm
This is why we stopped talking Erno Rubik’s calls.
July 31st, 2017 at 12:55 pm
This started off with a nice little drawing of a woman’s breasts but now it’s got silly.
July 31st, 2017 at 1:43 pm
Tales of walking disasters, open doors to two different worlds and the man stuck between them.
July 31st, 2017 at 1:52 pm
@Bib Yoko Ono looms behind? Paul is missing/dead. Book by Poul (fake name).
July 31st, 2017 at 2:34 pm
I do believe I have spotted the intergalactic warning symbol for a sharknado.
July 31st, 2017 at 3:29 pm
@fred: nice catch, but the tail’s wrong…troutnado?
July 31st, 2017 at 3:31 pm
If you’re reading from this book
You may think the cover’s worth a look
But it’s not
We just drew it like that.
It doesn’t really matter what scenes we show,
How much we know
Of just what’s going on
‘Cos it’s only Poul Ander-son
(Apologies to George Harrison)
July 31st, 2017 at 5:12 pm
Whoa whoa whoa. There are definitely bare devil dumplings on this cover. Where is space sheep to protect our eyes from this filth?!?!?
July 31st, 2017 at 6:34 pm
What do a woman’s chest, a partial brain scan, an explosion in one of two symmetrical drawings and a trio of Beatles impersonators have to do with asteroid colonization?
Is any of this even in the book?
I doubt it.
July 31st, 2017 at 6:44 pm
@Tom Noir – alt text
July 31st, 2017 at 9:04 pm
The circle originally contained an image Poul Anderson but the publishers figured that wouldn’t sell many books.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/c5/6b/dd/c56bdd3ef6608a6b578df698fa053cb3–brain-waves.jpg
July 31st, 2017 at 9:43 pm
@JuanPaul – The publisher thought a picture of two boobs would sell better than a picture of one.
July 31st, 2017 at 9:59 pm
Why didn’t they uses Anderson’s boobs? It’s been done before.
August 1st, 2017 at 7:36 am
Are those brains down there, or a scan/continuation of the woman atop, showing she’s bicornuate?
Although I’m not sure but what @TW is correct, they might be man boobs. They could be the now-popular waxed chest, and they certainly have less fatty tissue than the link @DSWBT dragged from the archives to terrify us with.
As far as 3/4 of the Beatles impersonators and the planets/sharknado symbols, I got nothing. No wonder the blurb had to be so long, you can’t get any idea of the plot from that cover.
(Showed this to Mr. GSSXN. He was rendered speechless.)
August 1st, 2017 at 6:23 pm
I feel like the designer for this one was told the cover needed sex appeal, so they threw in a framed close-up of some boobs (or man boobs?)… box ticked!
@DSWBT oh wow… I can’t believe that’s a real cover.
August 1st, 2017 at 6:40 pm
@ToF: you are new here, aren’t you? 😉
August 2nd, 2017 at 8:13 am
@ToF: The few fake covers here on GSS are slightly less-ridiculous. That one you mocked up would be average hereabouts.
August 2nd, 2017 at 9:31 am
@DSWBT @GSSXN I obviously haven’t adjusted my expectations quite enough yet 😀 I guess deliberate attempts at ridiculousness can never quite live up to genuine, takes-itself-seriously, unintentional ridiculousness!
August 2nd, 2017 at 11:56 pm
@ToF: You will come to learn why we loved your work so much. And the significance of “would I read this on a bus?”
The covers from about 1967-1973 (like this) are often… special. As in, the artists had special cigarettes and special sugar cubes.
Stuff today is tacky, but often somewhat less WTF.
(Mr. GSSXN and I knew Poul slightly. This cover probably mortified him; he was very straight-arrow and conservative when they were still sane.)
August 3rd, 2017 at 8:18 am
If you gaze too long at the nipples, the nipples gaze back into you… 😳
August 3rd, 2017 at 11:18 am
@RachelJ: that explains so much about my infancy…
August 3rd, 2017 at 11:15 pm
@RachelJ: I don’t think so. Those nipples are so wonky and wall-eyed only one of them could gaze back at you at a time.
October 26th, 2019 at 11:50 pm
This is your artist’s brain on drugs. Any questions?