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Mar 28

Cat people boobs... really Baen... Really??Click for full UNSHEEPED image

Tom Noir Comments: Naked cybernetic armed cat woman in an improbable pose bursting through a cover of shiny 3D fonts? This is what happens when cover designers play Bingo. This cover is SO shiny that the camera couldn’t quite deal with it. Pretty much everything that looks black is actually highly-reflective chrome.
Published 1998

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: 8.39 out of 10)
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39 Responses to “The Best of All Possible Wars: The Best of the Man-Kzin Wars”

  1. THX 1138 Says:

    Cat Lady: XTREME!!! Though I can’t imagine licking her would be pleasant. You’d probably get a static shock from either the fur or the metal.

  2. Phil Says:

    Good show, Sir. Jolly good show indeed!

  3. Alessandra Kelley Says:

    Boy, I’ll bet Larry Niven’s heart just swelled when he saw this one.

    Are female Kzin even supposed to have noticeable breasts? Or am I confusing them with Chanur:
    http://www.goodshowsir.co.uk/2011/10/chanur/

  4. Joachim Says:

    I’m not sure how much Niven would care — he wrote the original stories but aren’t these adaptations/sequels/prequels written by other authors? — i.e. they’re purely a money making scheme for Niven.

  5. Alessandra Kelley Says:

    @Joachim: Oops. On my wee phone screen this morning I failed to see the “created by” above Niven’s name.

    I also couldn’t quite make out her pose and didn’t realize how … um … displayed she is.

  6. Michael Toland Says:

    My retinas need surgery after viewing this cover.

  7. Muttley Says:

    Kzinti females aren’t sapient, for goodness sake, unless the Man-Kzin wars franchise has retconned that bit of original Niven out of existence.

    The ears are wrong, too. 🙂

  8. SI Says:

    I thought cats had more than two nipples?

    Looks like I have been proven wrong.

  9. Scott B Says:

    @Alessandra: Yeah, it takes either some serious guts, or total lack-of-caring, by the art director to go with that pose — and then throw in the “don’t know when they’re licked” tagline.

    I mean, wow, nude cyborg catwoman, bright orange and shiny, font exploding toward our face… this one’s got the whole package. Maybe the first serious challenger to Body Electric in quite some time.

  10. Tom Noir Says:

    Everything else on this cover I can accept, but how could she fire that tiny gun with those long claws?

    A BRIDGE TOO FAR, SIR.

  11. Tom Noir Says:

    And before anyone goes there, know that I’ve already trademarked the phrase ‘kitty titties’ and you will owe me 27 cents every time you use it.

  12. A.R.Yngve Says:

    Holding this book in public is like the equivalent of walking around in a dirty cat costume, while holding up a hand-painted sign that reads I WILL LICK YOUR FUR FOR FOOD.

  13. Donald Simmons Says:

    #7 Muttley: I recall that on the Ringworld there were Kzinti females who could at least talk (Louis mentions this), and at least one of the early Man-Kzinti War stories had a sentient female (I think she’d been in a stasis pod for umpteen thousand years).

  14. Dead Stuff With Big Teeth Says:

    @A.R. – Are you making fun of my non-union job?

  15. drlemaster Says:

    I wonder if she’s single. Maybe we should set her up on a date with the Body Electric centaur?

  16. Yoss Says:

    Wow, this one has everything! Is the world a better place because this cover exists? I don’t know, but it made my day, so I’m going with the glass half-full approach.

    Good show, sir!

  17. fred Says:

    Would that cover be legal as blaze orange hunting gear?

  18. Jaouad Says:

    Kudos to the photographer. It is probably quite impossible to catch this one in all its reflective glory.
    Here are some more attempts that hint at the chromific awesomeness of it all.

    http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/9/95/Boapw.jpg
    http://redditorschoice.com/img/best-possible-wars_3723_500.jpg

  19. A.R.Yngve Says:

    But come to think of it, for Baen Books EVERY war is the best of all possible wars.

  20. Yoss Says:

    But a war that includes kitty titties might be just an eensy weensy bit better.

    I hope Tom has change for a dollar.

  21. Jerk of all Trades Says:

    Oh hell, the cat person is butt-naked. Or whatever you call it when it’s some kind of anthropoid creature with fake tits and a pelt and absolutely no clothes.

    I DO want to know why it is with non-human aliens that they always seem to be using the humans’ cast-off weaponry. That gun doesn’t look much like something a species with long freaking talons (and anchored like fingernails, rather than claws, meaning they are most likely not structurally sound as slashing implements) would have designed, unless their engineers are just stinking out loud at it.

  22. Alessandra Kelley Says:

    @Jerk of All Trades: I was wondering that myself. On my phone’s wee screen it looked like she had a mountain lion’s paw, black nails and all, curled awkwardly arountd the gun’s butt. I wondered how she managed it.

    But when I saw the image larger her hand made even less sense. With nails like that and no skin protection, why is she not a mass of random cuts just from casual movement? How does she hold anything, let alone a standard human-styled gun?

    And even supposing she were at bay, rather than snatching up an awkward, small, fiddly, alien weapon thing wouldn’t she make use of those teeth and talons? Even a little house cat facing a much larger opponent would do that.

  23. Muttley Says:

    Furry porn. Niven’s already pene – sorry got into all the other markets. He’s going for a full house – but one with no soft furnishings, obviously.

  24. A.R.Yngve Says:

    10 years from now, Baen will publish ONLY books about furry naked aliens at war, and switch name to “Furryspace Publishing” — mark my words!

  25. Tom Noir Says:

    @Jaouad Yeah thanks. I can’t take credit for this shot, actually. I tried several times with my own phone camera and the results were less than satisfactory. Fortunately my friend was also there with her iPhone, and its camera was able to produce the image at the top.

    I really don’t think conventional cameras will ever cut it with this cover. It’s something beyond the ordinary. Like the Great Wall, it is perhaps one of the few man-made objects visible from space!

  26. Smith Says:

    I used to have a secretary who had nails like that. She could type and do filing quite happily, so I expect firing a “space age” pistol would’ve been no problem.

    Mind, after a few vodka ‘n’ cokes she’d probably have been quite happy to rely on talons and teeth.

  27. A.R.Yngve Says:

    Sequels were:

    – OH WHAT A LOVELY WAR

    – WAR! WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? SALES FIGURES!

    – WHEN I THINK OF WAR I TOUCH MYSELF

  28. David Cowie Says:

    I looked up BLOOÐRING (in top background) on amazon.co.uk, and was pleased to find that the cover featured a young woman in tight black leather with a gun in her hand and a sword on her back.
    And another thing: D-with-a-crossbar is the letter eth, so BLOOÐRING is pronounced BLOOTHRING. Which sounds like something that a Northern person would tell you to stop doing.

  29. Tom Noir Says:

    I’d be lion if I said this wasn’t still one of my favorite covers.

  30. A.R.Yngve Says:

    Alternate titles:

    – The Furriest of All Possible Wars

    – Pardon Me, But Your Fur Is In My Mouth

    – Fur Wars: The Empire Strokes Back

    – Your Mother’s Basement Forever

  31. FearofMusic Says:

    Did the artist finish this and think “Spectacular!”? Did Larry Niven see this and say “Yes! That is exactly what a Kzin should look like!” Those answers I don’t have. Did I look at it and think “What???” Yes I did. Yes I did.

  32. Gepard Says:

    I must confess that, to this day, I am remarkably fond of this cover. I first saw it in my local library when I was a teenaged nerd, obsessed both with big cats and my own burgeoning interest in girls. I found it captivating – a sexy naked cat woman? A cyborg sexy naked cat woman? With tits, no less? Then, some months later, I discovered the Internet, discovered there was an entire fandom built around this sort of thing, and the rest was history.

    It’s tacky as hell viewed in the light of adulthood and good taste, but i cant help but love it. There’s some memories there, for sure.

  33. RachelJ Says:

    …You know, Gepard, sometimes it really isn’t necessary to share everything with everybody…

  34. Tom Noir Says:

    So apparently this book features references to “the boob cube”, i.e. a 3D or holographic version of a TV (http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=261). I’d say the cover artist took this reference and ran with it.

  35. Rev Says:

    Pussy jokes! I’ll go first.
    Ahem. Sorry, just coughing up a hairball, what was I saying?

  36. Anna T. Says:

    It wouldn’t surprise me if the cover artist has a catgirl fetish.

  37. GSS ex-noob Says:

    I would like to complain that this (along with several others) does not have the fabulous “It’s Howling Time!” tag.

    How clever did the cover designer think he was when he got the word “licked” on there? Must have made him happy all the way home (his mother’s basement).

    BAEN! (explosion noise)

  38. JuanPaul Says:

    Three people I hope I never meet:

    The guy who painted this
    The guy published it
    The guy who bought it

  39. GSS ex-noob Says:

    I’d forgotten all about this till DSWBT linked it from another cover.

    I guess I should say I’d repressed it?

    This is pretty close to peak BAEN!meowpewpew

    Weapon, cat person, bewbs, horrid text placement, cluttered layout, font problems, orange, and too shiny.

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