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Nov 04

No regifting!Click for larger image

Wanda June Comments: Save the receipt!

Published 1971

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: 7.75 out of 10)
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21 Responses to “A Gift From Earth”

  1. THX 1139 Says:

    Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image of Dave Bautista.

  2. Ray P Says:

    Where’s Gromit when Wallace is falling apart?

  3. Verylatetotheparty Says:

    @THX1139: …or John Merrick.

  4. fred Says:

    An artistic critique of the ‘Alien’ film franchise based on Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’. This is what happens when you gift shop at the last possible moment.

  5. Ray P Says:

    Richard Hoagland has identified another face in space rocks.

    But this NASA photograph is clearly a fake.

  6. A.R.Yngve Says:

    There’s a tiny “Saturn”, with a very narrow ring, halfway hidden in the “H” in “Earth.”

    Such subtle craftmanship… such refinement!

  7. Bruce A Munro Says:

    Earth sent a statue for the colony’s birthday, but it it was made of really crappy clay and a bunch of nudists were injured when it inevitably fell apart.

    @A.R. Yngve: and is that the Moon hiding in the “O?” A craftsman, perhaps, but one apparently subscribing to a rather dubious model of the solar system.

  8. JuanPaul Says:

    This week on Cake Wars, can the Naked Chefs salvage thier crumpling marzipan Ben Kingsley cake or are they doomed to an almond paste grave?

  9. Bibliomancer Says:

    That reminds me. I have to pick up some more Head & Shoulders® shampoo.

  10. B. Chiclitz Says:

    “If you ask me, this whole Sisyphus thing is a bunch of hokum.”

  11. Tor Mented Says:

    Lamest Guy Fawkes effigy ever.

  12. GSS ex-noob Says:

    Wow, this is another “cover has nowt to do with content” stunner.

    Although I suppose that might be Earth at top, though we’re not the size and locale of Saturn.

    Or “Eart” as it appears to read thanks to the lettering and planet being almost the same color. Maybe Saturn is doing the interplanetary high jump? I don’t know what celestial body is hiding in the O, making it appear to be an eyeball. It might BE the clay statue’s eyeball rolling around loose.

    GSS to the submitter and all today’s commenters.

  13. Bruce A Munro Says:

    Maybe the artist was getting his psychics confused and thought he was doing a cover for the Demolished Man?

    (Also, I wish to object to the logo of Sphere Science Fiction. That is clearly a globe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globe , not a sphere).

  14. Tat Wood Says:

    We’re all assuming that the picture shows a statue crumbling. What if it’s self-assembling from rubble and forming, through sheer will-power, a votive bust of Brian Cant?

  15. GSS ex-noob Says:

    @Bruce: Clicking on their tag, I wish to object to Sphere Books art and graphics department as a whole.

  16. fred Says:

    It’s that great Randy Newman song, ‘Bald People”.

  17. GSS ex-noob Says:

    @Bruce: Illustrating perfectly “they got no reason to live”.

    In my youth, I knew a very short figure skater, who ended up at the Olympics. He did an exhibition routine to “Short People”. Leaning into the joke fully, he started it crouching with a cloak over him.

  18. Bruce A Munro Says:

    @GSS ex-noob: that was @fred, not me.

    Nowadays it could be a metaphor for Larry Niven’s writing career, with the little men at the bottom standing in for fans that just read “Fallen Angels.” Did he ever write anything better than “tolerable” after the early 80s?

  19. NomadUK Says:

    The heartbreak of psoriasis.

  20. GSS ex-noob Says:

    @fred: Apologies! I award you a belated GSS.

    @Bruce: None by himself. I was thinking there were some I enjoyed into the 90s, but Wiki tells me those were reprints of earlier stuff.

    And let us not forget (even if we’d like to) the as-seen-on-GSS Man-Kzin Wars, which other people write.

    It is SO GOOD to be back here.

  21. MaxBathroom Says:

    If you’re pulling somebody apart as their epidermis flakes, that’s theft not a gift.

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