Tag Wizard here wishing you all a Happy New Year! 2016 was an awful year in general but very disruptive here at Good Show Sir. Because of financial losses caused by continued unfair competition by Chinese Good Show Sir, GSS Admin left for St. Petersburg in midsummer to be administrator for a Russian troll farm and fake news site. No cause for alarm, he hopes to get an exit visa and return any day now. After Brexit our entire staff of embittered and poorly paid Polish tag minions quit en masse, but not before pilfering all of our office supplies. And this was the year our iconic I Sing the Body Electric cover was continually knocked out of the Top Ten by flashy, trendy, more-recent covers. Fortunately it is back in the favourites, no doubt thanks to GSS Admin’s troll army. Hopefully 2017 will be a much better year. It can’t be any worse than 2016!
On to the honours. First, the top rated cover of last year:
Before he left, GSS Admin said this was his chosen favourite:
And my chosen favourite from the year:
January 9th, 2017 at 2:29 pm
When the GSS covers of the year make more sense than the news, it’s time to buy more old science fiction books, some supplies and candles and hide for a few years.
January 9th, 2017 at 3:17 pm
I’ve spent much of the past year trying to figure out how to read a future concept I’ve never read before. But every time I read it, it’s not in the future! And if I leave it in the future, I won’t have read it!
These are the moments when GSS pierces the flimsy veil of illusion we call “reality.” By now, we should all know better.
January 9th, 2017 at 3:27 pm
We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I shall spend the rest of our lives. And remember my friends, future events such as these will affect you in the future!
January 9th, 2017 at 3:31 pm
Tomorrow’s warrior of the highway is David Naughton from ‘American Werewolf in London’? I’m guessing transforming into a hot rod is at least as painful as transforming into a werewolf.
NSFW, I suppose: http://thepinksmoke.com/images/americanwerewolfkid.jpg
January 9th, 2017 at 3:41 pm
The future is fun! … The future is fair! … You may already have won! … You may already be there!
Here’s to a Happy 2017 and my daily dose of terrible covers at GSS. I look forward to this distraction every morning.
Greetings to my fellow GSS regulars. And In Memoriam to the commenters who have moved on. To a better place.
January 9th, 2017 at 3:46 pm
I’m heartbroken that no Dick Blade made the, er, cut and it’s my new year’s resolution to do something or other about that.
January 9th, 2017 at 3:56 pm
Bibliomancer writes:
“Greetings to my fellow GSS regulars. And In Memoriam to the commenters who have moved on. To a better place.”
By “better place,” of course, he means CHINESE GSS!
January 9th, 2017 at 3:56 pm
Is this the right place to ask what the GSS logo at top right is supposed to be? Always wondered, but was embarrassed to enquire…
January 9th, 2017 at 4:28 pm
@THX 1138 – By the looks of the Facebook page it appears to be a swordsman fighting a dragon on a field of coffee-stained napkin. We will have to wait for GSS Admin to return for the backstory.
January 9th, 2017 at 4:37 pm
Now I think about it, “On Wheels” is an excellent representative of how much I’m not looking forward to this year, either.
January 9th, 2017 at 7:05 pm
Make sure you check out our “Chinese New Year Sum-up 4714” later this month on
Chinese Good Show Sir
January 9th, 2017 at 7:57 pm
@Chinese GSS—I did check it out and, frankly, I found your sum up dim. It was a dim sum-up, a dim sum.
Dim Sum, get it?
Maybe it’s an English language thing . . .
January 9th, 2017 at 10:35 pm
I say it’s about time Chinese GSS had some new content. I’ve had all the bear ass-punching I can take.
At any rate, I am glad to have met you all and look forward to this site providing me with distraction in the dystopia to come. When the internet goes away, we can send heliograph messages via the shiny Baen covers.
I’m working my way backwards through the archives and am in July 2011, so I’ve got past gems ahead of me (TIME TRAVEL, GET IT?) and a whole bunch of Behind You also ahead. Probably a whole lot of behinds as well.
While ISTBE is iconic, you’ve got to admit that some of these up and comers deserve to be there. Just as WTF, but with gaudier colors, worse perspective, terrible copy, and some real unpleasantness (Soma — shudder).
The future. All the way to the year 2000.
January 10th, 2017 at 1:53 am
I’ve never been to CGSS. Give me a reason to go there, guys! Otherwise, I’ll keep booing the Baens and boobs and cheering the commenters here.
Hope everyone had a good Xmas and new year. 2016 wasn’t the best – let’s pray to the disembodied head of C.S. Lewis and chant the Ceefax that 2017 will be better.