Mar 01
Click for full imageMatt Comments: All randomness aside, it’s the quality of the drawing that really stands out here.
Published 1997
Many thanks to Matt!
(Average: 8.60 out of 10)
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Matt Comments: All randomness aside, it’s the quality of the drawing that really stands out here.
Published 1997
Many thanks to Matt!
(Average: 8.60 out of 10)Loading...
(9.25 out of 10) (9.18 out of 10) (9.02 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) (8.89 out of 10) (8.88 out of 10)
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March 1st, 2011 at 9:21 am
That bloke looks suspiciously like The Reduced Shakespeare Company’s Reed Martin.
Aside from that, I don’t think it’s that bad a cover. The title is much worse :p
March 1st, 2011 at 9:23 am
Just when you thought Lifehouse was just a one-hit crossover Christian Rock band…
March 1st, 2011 at 10:35 am
That guy has one huge torso!
March 1st, 2011 at 11:12 am
“YEAH! The new Pete Townshend concept album has arrived!”
March 1st, 2011 at 12:49 pm
Safety first!
March 1st, 2011 at 12:51 pm
“Not now, honey, my skin is almost done downloading…”
March 1st, 2011 at 12:54 pm
I laughed SO HARD at the desperate ad copy “First Publication Anywhere!”
Though… you should’ve seen the copy suggestions they didn’t use:
“First printing on any sort of paper!”
“First publication with this title by this author!”
“First book EVER with this tagline!”
“First Baen publication with a foreword by Hamid Karzai!”
“First publication using actual human blood for ink!”
“FREE PRIZE inside!*
(*Prize consists of the novel Lifehouse by Spider Robinson.)”
March 1st, 2011 at 12:59 pm
Sing along:
Our house!
in a middling Baen book
Our house!
in a middling Baen book
Mother runs her big machine
Daddy has just shaved his head
and runs around making noise
The garage suddenly explodes
There’s always something happening
and it’s usually quite dumb
Our house!
in a middling Baen book
Our house!
in a middling Baen book…
March 1st, 2011 at 1:16 pm
Ignoring the exploding garage and the sprinting deformed Lex Luthor, she continued her work.
March 1st, 2011 at 2:16 pm
I like this cover: it’s very life-affirming. It shows that even a person with hideous physical deformities such as a hunchback or a freakishly high waistline can still get down and PAR-TAY!
March 1st, 2011 at 5:08 pm
This just screams, “We don’t have time for you to work anything up, just combine a bunch of doodles you have laying around and get it to print!”
Isn’t any first printing the first publication anywhere?
March 1st, 2011 at 8:36 pm
“Isn’t any first printing the first publication anywhere?”
Yep. Kinda kills the excitement, doesn’t it?
March 1st, 2011 at 10:14 pm
Tom Noir: “a freakishly high waistline”
Of course, that’s where I’ve seen this body before: it’s Simon Cowell! I don’t know where the head came from, though.
March 2nd, 2011 at 9:05 pm
Honey, I Blew Up The Garage
March 2nd, 2011 at 11:53 pm
“Nobody’s perfect. But Spider comes pretty damn close.” That alone sold me. Plus when you add the fact that the novel is the first time its been published anywhere means it is required reading.
March 3rd, 2011 at 1:40 am
Another good author suffers from ‘Recurring Bad Cover Syndrome’.
March 4th, 2011 at 5:50 am
It looks more like Lord Voldemort and Selma Blair are in a Death Garage, rather than any kind of Life House.
March 5th, 2011 at 8:10 pm
Too much Botox and she won’t even raise an eyebrow when the garage explodes.
March 14th, 2011 at 9:04 pm
Infoqueen, I’d totally buy Death Garage instead of Life House.
In fact, you could have a whole series:
– Doomsday Garden Shed
– Terror Patio
– Fright Greenhouse
– Outhouse of Horrors
August 5th, 2011 at 11:23 pm
Why is that garage trying to kill Kryten? Did Lister get mad at him?
August 6th, 2011 at 12:18 pm
Does anyone else think ‘Spider’ isn’t his real name?
August 8th, 2011 at 9:24 pm
It’s a family name! He’s named after his revered ancestor Rear Admiral Archibald William Spider Robinson-Gaylord. “Archie” for short.
August 8th, 2011 at 9:24 pm
I’ve decided that if you imagine that the bald guy is actually a man-shaped helium-filled balloon that this cover makes way more sense.
January 15th, 2012 at 3:52 pm
Just thought I’d mention that I was driving home from the bank the other day and out of nowhere realize I’m singing A. R Yngve’s Talking Heads parody from comment #8. Made my day, I tell you. 😀
January 18th, 2012 at 10:47 am
I think you mean Madness parody?
January 18th, 2012 at 11:48 am
There is a sort of jumping-jack ethos to these figures. You can almost see the little swivels at their shoulders and elbows. As I look at them the thought arises, Well, yes, technically our arm bones are rigid and unbending except at the hinges, as it were, but somehow these don’t have any life in them.
January 18th, 2012 at 7:50 pm
Alternate blurb:
Nobody’s perfect. Like the artist who made this cover, for example. Or Spider Robinson. But we’re only human! So PLEASE buy
LIFEHOUSE
October 29th, 2013 at 4:29 pm
I’d like to see a Baen book with a Shuriken of Approval on it that just says “We have to put one of these on the cover!”
September 15th, 2017 at 1:29 pm
Thank goodness they used zombies instead of garage doors for Resident Evil.
September 15th, 2017 at 1:31 pm
The Sims: Spider Robinson Edition
September 15th, 2017 at 1:56 pm
My first thought was: what does Peter Garrett heading a soccer ball have to do with fantasy or science fiction?
It was kind of my last thought, too, even after I realized he was just doing his inimitable interpretive dance thing in front of a bursting garage door.
September 15th, 2017 at 2:23 pm
Nobody’s perfect. But Spider comes pretty damned close. But not as damned close as me.
—Harlan Ellison
September 15th, 2017 at 2:24 pm
The Mr. Clean Saga, Chapter 2: The Road Not Taken.
September 15th, 2017 at 3:02 pm
“Nobody comes.”
–Orson Scott Card
September 15th, 2017 at 3:10 pm
HOGAR!
September 15th, 2017 at 3:27 pm
All the action in this cover appears to be taking place in the garage. So…….put the cover inside the garage……….maybe? So……
the artist can show his mastery of inside perspective………maybe?
September 15th, 2017 at 3:37 pm
The artist may have failed junior high art class, but at BAEN! such things as “correct anatomical proportions” are unnecessary to the creation of the greatest book covers the world has ever seen.
Why else would this exist?
September 15th, 2017 at 4:33 pm
A.R.Yngve: I am totally singing along. “…on a middling Baen book.” Also, it’s weird that the bald alien guy is wearing dad jeans.
September 15th, 2017 at 4:53 pm
I think ‘Death Garage’ would have been a better episode of the 80s ‘Outer Limits’ than what we got.
(When I was teaching GCSE English and Ted Hughes was on the syllabus I always had trouble with ‘Hawk Roosting’ because of the line ‘The Allotment of Death’. It reminded me of that crap 70s Nigel Kneale series).
September 15th, 2017 at 11:21 pm
@Iq, AR, Tat: “Death Garage” was the name of the garage band I fronted back in school. It being the early 90s, we were signed to a major label and opened for Helmet for a few shows. 😀
September 16th, 2017 at 6:40 am
Now THAT is how you rock a sweater.
September 16th, 2017 at 11:25 pm
Can we all stop picking on the bald guy on the cover?
He’s livin’ for the only thing he knows. He’s running and he’s not quite sure where to go. And now he knows he’d like to be in tune. He’s hanging by a moment here with you.
September 18th, 2017 at 2:15 am
@TW: Does this count as “shuriken of approval”?
This just fails in everything: quality of drawing, composition, proportion, anatomy, are we on the inside or the outside of the garage (although the house is clearly seen from the outside — this problem is mirrored by the title fonts), what gadget is she looking at, and why was this artist chosen to illustrate something with two (presumably) human beings when the most photo-realistic representation is given to the log cabin wood and the dad jeans?
The book’s not bad, certainly well above the usual BAEN! whaaat? dreck, but the cover…
She’s Life!
He’s House!
Together, they fight the laws of perspective!
September 18th, 2017 at 5:04 am
“Nobody’s perfect. But Spider comes pretty damned close. To not being perfect, I mean.”
September 20th, 2017 at 1:43 am
If ever a cover cried out to be tagged “perspective problems”, this is it.
September 20th, 2017 at 2:53 am
@GSSxN – Hey this was six years ago! I think I only had about ten tags to work with back then. We’ve come a long way, I have over a thousand now (mostly author and artist names).
September 20th, 2017 at 2:16 pm
@TW: You’re doing God’s Work. Some future academic will use these tags to assemble a scholarly work on anthropomorphism in Baen books from the 1990s, and they will thank you.
September 20th, 2017 at 2:58 pm
/me rushes to publish before Tom can scoop me
September 21st, 2017 at 1:39 am
@TW: shows that Flashback Friday is useful, getting all this stuff further labeled for future scholars and current fans of bad art.