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Nov 21

Embarrassing Body's 2673!Click for full image

Giallo Comments: I really do like you, but before things progress, I think you should know I picked up a case of Rocket Crotch on Ceta V.
Published 2011

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: 4.28 out of 10)
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27 Responses to “Hunt the Space-Witch!”

  1. GSS Cover Wizard Says:

    Think it breaks our well set out unbreakable rules, not being a picture.

    It’s not awful really either.

    Slow week.

  2. Phil Says:

    Is that HUNT THE SPACE WITCH as in SINK THE BISMARCK?

    Or HUNT THE SPACE WITCH as in BOB THE BUILDER?

    Agreed that this one is a cheat by the rules of GSS. It’s slightly awful, what with those rocketships and where they appear to be diverging from, but not a classic of the genre.

  3. Conzz Says:

    This ones actually pretty badass! ;D

  4. Adam Roberts Says:

    Personally I find starry armpits very attractive on a woman.

  5. Tat Wood Says:

    Why the apostrophe in ‘Body’s’?
    I’m inclined to think that the main thing wrong with the picture is that the lady on the cover – presumably the eponymous Space-Witch – seems to be the one doing the hunting.

  6. Dead Stuff With Big Teeth Says:

    The contrarian in me wishes to make the case that, in fact, this is an awful cover.

    1. Are those horns atop her head, or a shattered tiara?
    2. Her head, hair and right upper arm are all in a mishmash.
    3. The large star just on the side of her mouth looks like a moulding misplaced beauty mark.
    4. Her ends are flying here and there, with neither grace nor style. One of them seems to be transmogrifying into the exhaust fumes of the Rocket Crotch Rocket ™, but it also seems to be spreading through her middle.
    5. Why the undue emphasis on ‘hunt’? Is that to make sure nobody misreads that first letter as a ‘c’?
    6. Tremendous wasted space at the bottom of the picture that could be filled by, say, the rest of the space witch.

    No, I wouldn’t be seen reading this in public.

  7. Phil Says:

    To add a number 7 to Dead Stuff’s list, I would like to mention that on my tiny netbook, the image first appears as the top half of the cover. Quite respectable, ‘sexy’ fun. It’s only when I scroll down that I see the, er, strap-on rockets. So yes, this cover does have some GSS attributes.

    But it’s still a cheating of the rules of this fine establishment.

  8. Phil Says:

    One other thing (and then I’ll go away, honest):

    How many books, magazines, TV and radio series have used the phrase “adventures in time and space”? Why not economise, and use the simple “spacetime”. If it’s good enough for Minkowski, it’s good enough for me!

    Come to think of it, where/when else could adventures be had, other than in time and space?

  9. Jaouad Says:

    Actually I think it’s pretty awful, what with the completely gratuitous (albeit appropriately Photoshopped) use of female nudity, and ridiculously positioned Crotch Rockets.

  10. Tat Wood Says:

    @Phil: the term ‘Adventures in Space and Time’ was the Radio Times’ description of ‘Doctor Who’ in 1963-4. They can be let off for not using the then-obscure physics term ‘spacetime’.
    Anyone not consciously echoing a fifty-year-old TV guide has to have a better excuse, though.

  11. fred Says:

    Looks like 20% of a 60’s James Bond movie poster. Is there a Time-Witch as well?

  12. Dead Stuff With Big Teeth Says:

    I’d also like to point out that the title is an anagram for:

    CHITCHAT WHEN UPSET
    CATCH THINE THEWS UP
    CHEETAH WINCH PUTTS
    NUTHATCHES CHEW PIT
    PATHETIC WENCH TUSH
    HEPATIC HUTCH NEWTS
    THE PAUNCHES TWITCH
    WHET UNCHASTE PITCH
    UNHITCH WET PATCHES
    PUCE WHITENS THATCH
    TWENTIETH SUCH CHAP
    INSPECT HUTCH WHEAT
    WHAT ESTHETIC PUNCH?

  13. Pat Says:

    Dead Stuff, are you criticising the fact that she is a bit nebulous?

    Is she nude? She seems clothed to me.

    I love it.

  14. THX 1138 Says:

    The Astounding She-Monster! She’s back, she’s armed, she’s angry!

  15. Don Hilliard Says:

    Phil @8: I do recall that someone put out a Doctor Who cookbook called Adventures in Thyme and Spice.

    (I’m not getting me coat, that one’s real.)

    And GSS Cover Wizard: Slow week? Hmm…

  16. Don Hilliard Says:

    And Phil@2:

    HUNT the Space Witch!
    (CAN WE HEX IT?)
    HUNT the Space Witch!
    YES WE CAN!

  17. Jerk of all Trades Says:

    Behold, a potential future in which crabs develop their own space program!

    (I almost called it “a horrifying potential future”, but you know what? THEY’RE ALL HORRIFYING)

  18. FearofMusic Says:

    The artwork is well executed but that doesn’t negate the atrocious art direction. I mean, really now. Could the giant central rocket with it’s red tip thrusting into the viewer’s eye be MORE phallic? An actual penis would be more subtle. The large amount of white dead space forces all attention to IT. And this book is from 2011 so whats with the Buck Rogers rocketry? And I said Buck, not the word they want you to think of. Whar the hell is a space witch anyways? Robert Silverberg you are now demoted SF icon. Please report to The Ozark Trilogy. Yoir flyinhg is waiting.

  19. FearofMusic Says:

    My apolgies. Mr Silverburg, y4our flying mule awaits.BYOC.(Bring your own cape.)

  20. A.R.Yngve Says:

    I’m torn… it’s ludicrous AND so slick, bold AND so silly.

    I’ll pass on this one.

  21. ES Tilton Says:

    A lot of the covers are simply awful but I like this one. Artistically it flows and intrigues me. Who is the woman and why does she look so sexy and what does she have to do with three rockets. Besides the spaceships are so retro they could be steampunk guns.

  22. Alessandra Says:

    That it’s obviously done on a computer makes the asymmetry of the rockets all the more distracting.

    Heaven knows I’ve been guilty of this myself, but each of those rockets is wibbly-wobbly in a different way, be it a bent tip, an odd bulge, or a perspective that doesn’t hold from the front end to the back.

  23. Tat Wood Says:

    Actually, I was only half-right: the original ‘Adventures in Space and Time’ was the first ever Science Fiction anthology, published some time in the late 40s. They can be let off for not using ‘spacetime’ as well.

  24. Tom Noir Says:

    @Alessandra – in fairness, many people’s space rockets are a bit wibbly-wobbly.

  25. Sophaloaf Says:

    “She” is well armed below with three rockets, the middle one of which appears to be larger than the others. Is it a coincidence they are all proceeding from her crotch area? I’m just saying.

  26. Robert Carnegie Says:

    That’s what I call retro rockets! Lines like that went out with Flash Gordon.

    When you say it’s not a picture… do you mean because it’s two pictures, one of the extraordinarily life-like Whore’s Head Nebula, and one, superimposed, of three rockets flying through… nowhere? One of them with what appears to be an unreasonably wriggly flare-trail.

    Or, because it isn’t a photograph of the book cover on a shelf.

    Is it a thing they do more in manga artwork, drawing a thrilling action scene with vehicles or giant robots or something, and then one or more huge figures of principal characters, often in plain clothes if their usual costume is giant robot…

    When e-books have bad covers, what are you gonna do? Will you accept a digital photo of a phone or a tablet displaying the book? Some of us have embarrassing phones, although I have no self-awareness, or do I mean self-consciousness, and my Samsung Galaxy Tab, the first one, I am happy to wear. Like a slate and chalk on a cord around my neck if I couldn’t speak. But is that what you want to see.

    I think someone once set about collecting photographs of merchandise for sale on eBay or something like it with a reflective surface such as a TV screen, in which you could see from a reflection that the picture was taken by someone who has nude, but stopped it when it occurred to them that people now were doing this on purpose just to get in the collection. Or just for their own amusement.

    Maybe that’s what the Space Witch is doing in the picture.

    I think she’s only wearing the top of a bikini, although she may not have been when the artist showed the first draft to the editor. But you go to war with the cover you have, and it says there are seven stories in time and space, and I suspect padding, of her relative dimensions, if you see what I mean.

  27. Ray P Says:

    Jane Fonda returns as Barbarella and enters a darts tournament. One hundred and eighty!

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