Mar 15
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Rachel R Comments: We apologize, ladies and gentlemen, but due to pilot fatigue we will be rerouting from our original destination Planet Professionalism to make a stop at the Space Station of Sleazy Symbolism.
Published 2005
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Tagged with: architectural framing • Baen Books • cleavage • damsel • David Mattingly • David Weber • devil's dumplings • dude • Eric Flint • font problems • frickin laser beams • glowing eyes • orson • planets • polymastia • shuriken of approval • space • space ships • WTF
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March 15th, 2013 at 9:55 am
It’s the Platonic Form of the Baen cover: eye-wearying, tacky, shouty, incomprehensible.
March 15th, 2013 at 10:19 am
But it does have some un-sheeped devil’s dumplings. C.S. Lewis will be turning in his grave.
March 15th, 2013 at 10:31 am
The space shepherd has been notified. We now have T-3 hours until Clive Staples completes a 360° graveyard rotation and initiates the corpse reanimation process.
March 15th, 2013 at 10:36 am
Bottom right corner: what can be on her shoulder that fascinates the man in the tinfoil cycle-jacket more than a giant, pimped-up baby-rattle approaching the window at high velocity does?
March 15th, 2013 at 11:37 am
@Tat Wood: Usually that would be a treecat in Weber’s books, but unless it’s an invisible treekitten, there’s no room for one there…
March 15th, 2013 at 12:11 pm
That’s no moon that’s… wait… does she have three breasts?
March 15th, 2013 at 12:35 pm
Apparently sinful: money, poison, STOP signs, and the Whore of Babylon. Or it’s just Eccentrica Gallumbits, the triple-breasted whore of Eroticon 6 on a layover. *ahem*
March 15th, 2013 at 12:41 pm
I like how they felt that Symbolic Space Vegas wasn’t a BUSY enough cover so they made sure to frame it with people watching it through a spaceship window.
Is this recycled from somewhere, a-la that Miles Vorkosigan cover?
March 15th, 2013 at 12:49 pm
Oh me, oh my! Baen, Eric Flint, slaves, explosions! Winner winner chicken dinner! Yesssss….
March 15th, 2013 at 1:51 pm
Wow, this one was like a stress test of the tagging system. I think it performed quite well. Good show, Good Show Sir.
March 15th, 2013 at 2:22 pm
It’s an amusement park space station. I forget if it was introduced in Crown of Slaves or didn’t show until the next book in the series, but it’s an actual thing in the story, not just symbolism.
You know, like just about every other Baen cover people assume is bizarre symbolism but depicts actual events.
March 15th, 2013 at 2:39 pm
I’m thinking a giant space station with only one marked exit reflects a serious lack of planning.
March 15th, 2013 at 5:30 pm
@Dave: So the station has an ACTUAL giant nude statue draped over half of it?!?
March 15th, 2013 at 5:34 pm
If that’s your new Orac, you can forget the whole Blake’s 7 reboot right now.
March 15th, 2013 at 5:45 pm
On the right side of the picture, you can see that a ship is berthing itself between a woman’s open lips.
Which means that on the upper left side of the picture…
March 15th, 2013 at 7:46 pm
I concur with PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY. This is one of a best books I’ve –
No, this is one of the “a best books” I’ve –
Let’s see… This is the best of a book I –
Oh, I just don’t care for this book any more.
March 15th, 2013 at 9:03 pm
If the Deathstar had looked like this, those cheesy rebels could never had blown it up. Good luck spotting a 2m exhaust port on that thing.
March 15th, 2013 at 11:02 pm
Whoa. That was like a baseball bat to the eyes. We should post no other covers until we have photographed all the Eric Flint Baen paperbacks.
March 16th, 2013 at 4:59 am
Dead Stuff . . .—but before that rocket exits, it must first pierce through the pulsing neon heart of the word “sin,” located pretty much dead center. This is known as nuance.
March 16th, 2013 at 12:40 pm
It’s the little things that really bring this cover together…like how the Booklist quote “Breathless pacing and larger-than-life characters!” is situated right next to the giant writhing woman.
March 17th, 2013 at 11:04 am
@Bibliomancer: on it!
March 17th, 2013 at 7:33 pm
In the age of online gambling — you know, casinos without a fixed physical location — a giant Las Vegas in orbit seems like a non-profit venture…
March 17th, 2013 at 10:45 pm
İ pĺéađ ğüıĺtý to ıñnà přöpřiaté föñtà ğe. Hà vé meřçy on me ğoođ şırş!:
March 18th, 2013 at 7:09 pm
So this is what happened to Unicron after his defeat at the hands of the Autobots…He really has fallen on hard times.
March 19th, 2013 at 12:01 am
“Wow, that virus we used on the Borg certainly had some unforseen side effects.”
March 23rd, 2013 at 3:54 pm
Anti-Septic: That made me Lol. Unicron had to get a gig in the industry apparently.
March 30th, 2013 at 8:25 am
I like the fact that there are little screens at the bottom, where people are watching what’s going on at the space… Clown of Shaves? Missed chance to use the good ol’ cover within the cover within the cover trick, though. It would be quite a challenge with this cover.
The chandeliers on the ceiling of the spaceship/station are a nice touch as well. I wonder if they use actual candles.
April 5th, 2013 at 7:23 am
Subtlety is to Baen Books like shaving is to Kim-Jong Un’s chin: hasn’t happened yet.
May 31st, 2013 at 1:33 pm
OMG I SPOTTED ORSON.
He’s even labeled.
January 4th, 2016 at 2:30 pm
We all knew that someday, a Baen cover would spontaneously explode…
February 18th, 2016 at 4:03 pm
Did you know? If you light a candle and say ‘Space Sheep’ three times into the mirror, a Baen cover pops up on the ‘Random Terrible Cover’ drop down!
February 18th, 2016 at 4:48 pm
Q: What is “breathless pacing”?
A: It’s when you’re walking very fast while out of breath.
Q: So what are “larger than life characters” then?
A: Overacting characters.
January 1st, 2017 at 2:40 am
@Tom Noir (29): I have a lo-res monitor: does it say “ORSON LAND”? Like, if you aren’t into debauchery but get dragged along by your spaceship mates, you can have a nice cuppa in a cat cafe? And then buy kitty merchandise? Because I’d certainly do that with my SpaceBux instead.
Looking at this on said small lo-res monitor, it occurs to me how entirely useless these covers are for ebooks, which is superbly ironic for Baen. At the size and resolution of the cover thumbnails for Kindle (etc.) books, they all blend into one blob of brightly-colored-on-black mush.
October 12th, 2018 at 6:16 am
I don’t remember 2003 being _that_ bad a year for books.
October 12th, 2018 at 7:48 am
Is it too soon for an Elon Musk joke here?
October 12th, 2018 at 4:08 pm
Trump’s space defense initiative as he presented it to the Joint Chiefs.
October 12th, 2018 at 9:07 pm
“Hello, I’d like to book a reservation at the space casino. Do you have any rooms available in the giant woman’s breasts? No? How about in her legs? Well, where do you have rooms? WHAT? I am NOT staying in that shithole.”
October 13th, 2018 at 2:20 am
This might be peak BAEN! as Adam (1) said all those years ago.
Military-looking dudes, nekkid pneumatic representations, guns, shurikens, excess spaceships, a frame, hopelessly muddled colors and design, dumb blurb with exclamation point, multiple authors, one of whom is eber. Only the title being in red instead of orange and the font matching with the authors’ names just misses it.
I mean, you can damn near HEAR this cover, even in a vacuum.
Do notice what’s on the screens at the bottom, in closeup, just in case you missed the extreme male gaziness of the overall cover. Double the sexism!
It makes Las Vegas look subdued and elegant.
I’ll be at ORSON LAND. No, I’ll be in some other publisher’s universe.
————————————–
In other news, here’s a thing I think space opera authors might be using in the near future. It involves absolutely NO human figures, bad Poser/Photoshop/tracing, lettering, shurikens, guns (laser or bullet). Just outer space stuff.
It takes quite a while for the layers to load up, but it’s fun to play with.
(And if all that wasn’t enough, it’s by a Hugo finalist who the Puppies hate, because he quotes them accurately!)
http://camfelapton.ihostfull.com/
October 13th, 2018 at 5:33 am
Ah, Baen! Ah, pneumaticy!
October 13th, 2018 at 6:16 am
I only just realised… the giant woman isn’t a statue, she’s a building, isn’t she?
October 13th, 2018 at 10:11 pm
@RachelJ: Yes, she seems to be part of the… structure… of this… thing.
She’s a very long, very large building — probably either the big main hotel or the big main brothel. Or both — mostly a hotel with brothels in her dumplings? the dumplings are night clubs/discos with decorative laser beams shooting out the tips, inside and out? 3D holoprojectors that display either advertising, or a giant image of The Masterful Lord Himself?
“Right, we’ll pilot our rocket into the lady-head’s mouth… (fnarr fnarr)… and then we’ve got rooms booked in the Bimbo Hotel’s right knee.”
October 14th, 2018 at 6:37 am
That shuriken needs resizing. The word “reject” is cut off.
October 15th, 2018 at 3:42 am
Alas that ebooks don’t count, for I have found an ultimate example of “weird pecs”. And biceps, triceps, and all muscles above the waist. I think the elbow and lower arm would look even odder were they not covered by the title.
https://www.amazon.com/Highlander-Found-Scottish-Travel-Romance-ebook/dp/B07CCZFGQY
October 15th, 2018 at 11:07 am
Ugh. Jamie Mccrimmon, what have you done.
October 15th, 2018 at 1:18 pm
Someone has probably pointed this out over the years, but how funny is it that the phrase “larger-than-life characters” is right next to the giant Bimbo Hotel?
“Oh, I see, she’s much larger than life, ain’t she?”
October 16th, 2018 at 2:39 am
BC: I think that’s what passes for clever wit at that publisher. A real knee-slapper.