Nov 21
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
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
November 21st, 2012 at 9:01 am
Think it breaks our well set out unbreakable rules, not being a picture.
It’s not awful really either.
Slow week.
November 21st, 2012 at 9:41 am
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.
November 21st, 2012 at 10:13 am
This ones actually pretty badass! ;D
November 21st, 2012 at 10:37 am
Personally I find starry armpits very attractive on a woman.
November 21st, 2012 at 11:09 am
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.
November 21st, 2012 at 12:13 pm
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.
November 21st, 2012 at 12:58 pm
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.
November 21st, 2012 at 1:03 pm
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?
November 21st, 2012 at 1:59 pm
Actually I think it’s pretty awful, what with the completely gratuitous (albeit appropriately Photoshopped) use of female nudity, and ridiculously positioned Crotch Rockets.
November 21st, 2012 at 2:23 pm
@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.
November 21st, 2012 at 4:26 pm
Looks like 20% of a 60’s James Bond movie poster. Is there a Time-Witch as well?
November 21st, 2012 at 5:41 pm
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?
November 21st, 2012 at 7:04 pm
Dead Stuff, are you criticising the fact that she is a bit nebulous?
Is she nude? She seems clothed to me.
I love it.
November 22nd, 2012 at 12:06 am
The Astounding She-Monster! She’s back, she’s armed, she’s angry!
November 22nd, 2012 at 1:09 am
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…
November 22nd, 2012 at 1:13 am
And Phil@2:
HUNT the Space Witch!
(CAN WE HEX IT?)
HUNT the Space Witch!
YES WE CAN!
November 22nd, 2012 at 3:06 am
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)
November 22nd, 2012 at 3:31 pm
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.
November 22nd, 2012 at 3:35 pm
My apolgies. Mr Silverburg, y4our flying mule awaits.BYOC.(Bring your own cape.)
November 22nd, 2012 at 7:45 pm
I’m torn… it’s ludicrous AND so slick, bold AND so silly.
I’ll pass on this one.
November 24th, 2012 at 9:36 pm
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.
November 25th, 2012 at 12:17 pm
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.
November 25th, 2012 at 7:15 pm
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.
November 25th, 2012 at 9:08 pm
@Alessandra – in fairness, many people’s space rockets are a bit wibbly-wobbly.
November 26th, 2012 at 12:44 am
“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.
February 3rd, 2013 at 6:03 am
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.
January 13th, 2016 at 11:27 pm
Jane Fonda returns as Barbarella and enters a darts tournament. One hundred and eighty!