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Mar 12

Those frizzies! Use some conditioner, woman.Click for larger image

Tat Wood Comments: The Northern Line didn’t look this 1980s even in the 1980s.

Sorry for the delay, Tat. Your submissions got caught in my spam folder. Fancy that.
I hereby declare it Tat Wood Week!
GSS Admin

Published 1989

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: 5.84 out of 10)
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26 Responses to “Angel Station”

  1. THX 1138 Says:

    Some like to rub a balloon on their hair and stick it to the wall. She prefers a beach ball.

  2. Bibliomancer Says:

    Her hair is vibrating to the tuning fork necklace.

  3. Francis Boyle Says:

    Hair ting shouldn’t be a thing.

  4. fred Says:

    This cover deserves Brother Theodore reciting the lyrics to Sheena Eaton’s ‘9 to 5’ playing in the background.
    The hyphen in far-future has me puzzled.

  5. MisterBob Says:

    I’m pretty sure this was a station design by a 12 year old Antony Gormley ,except the publisher has put a smoking jacket on her .

  6. THX 1138 Says:

    @fred: The cover text is censored, it should say fartfuture.

  7. Anna T. Says:

    Is she standing in a . . . parking lot? road? or something? Leaning against a support pillar getting shocked with her bizarre hair?

    I have to wonder if this cover has anything at all to do with the book.

  8. B. Chiclitz Says:

    At least we now know what took the Hindenburg down.

  9. B. Chiclitz Says:

    I like that there seems to be a Real Estate Developer store along the arcade behind her, judging by the sign advertising “Lots.” Actually, I think it used to have a “P” at the top but Tor books didn’t’ want to give away its source of inspiration.

  10. GSS ex-noob Says:

    In the far-future, they’re just leaving giant Van de Graaf generators around where bimbos in polyester jumpsuits wearing tuning forks can pole dance with them? The combo of all that ought to generate more electricity than is showing. It should be more than a few sparks and a Ting.

    There seem to be some shops? a theater? off to the right, but on her other side and above, I’ve no clue. The roof is sort of convex and concave?

    And that title font… it’s like a straight to VHS movie.

    googles around
    Good heavens. The young lady is 11 years old. And haunted by the holographic ghost of her father.

    “Weird, and not necessarily in a good way”, sez one reviewer. “80’s SF smell,” sez another. “The last third of the book was absolute agony,” sez the author.

  11. GSS ex-noob Says:

    @BC (9): Nope, the sign’s pointing to where you can get some fast food. Follow the arrow down from LOTS and you see the Whataburger logo. Lots of burgers, right there.

  12. Raoul Says:

    I have a guess at why she looks so odd. Behind her is the Chunnel. She must be French.

  13. Tag Wizard Says:

    @Francis #3 – Not sure if that is Ting! I’m calling it the underused “lens flare”.

  14. GSS ex-noob Says:

    Not SF, but possibly fantasy.

    https://twitter.com/deaexlena/status/973001995622608898?s=12

    Later in the thread: ISTBE centaur.

  15. Mellie M. Says:

    I love me a lavender rayon bathrobe. When I wear mine, my hair does that exact same thing. The Aztec necklace is supposed to act as a ground. Doesn’t work for beans, though – I threw mine away.

  16. GSS ex-noob Says:

    @Mellie — Especially in winter. Looks like the…space station? where she’s at has extremely low humidity. The dryness and rayon have just made her hair all fly away. She needs to touch something smaller to discharge that zap, and stop shuffling her feet. The floor beneath her must be heavily carpeted too. Guess there aren’t any natural fibers in the far-future.

  17. Hammy Says:

    Me, I’m just trying to figure out what that is to her right and just behind her. Looks to me like a jolly robot with a sports car for a right eye, eating all metallic items in its path….

  18. JuanPaul Says:

    She’s wired for speed and living high in tomorrow’s world beneath the streets!

  19. Tracy Says:

    Did this lady just get out of the sauna?

  20. A.R.Yngve Says:

    Show it to Netflix, they will buy the rights immediately.

  21. JJYoyo Says:

    Just think – if only Neil Gaiman and Lenny Henry had gotten around to writing Neverwhere just a few years earlier, it could have looked like *this!*. Of course, Peter Capaldi would have spent a lot more time in make-up.

  22. Bruce A Munro Says:

    Ting! hair really works better on magic ponies than teenage girls.

    I’m a bit unclear on where she’s supposed to be standing. Another bridge over the floaty car highway? If so, the perspective is seriously borked. And as @Hammy says, it’s difficult to say what’s going on to her right – the inclined metal beam seems to be right next to her, since she’s casting a shadow, but there also appears to be a standpipe sticking up out of it, what looks like some loose planks in the lower right corner, and the whole thing seems to vaguely merge with the buildings to the right in a way that again, makes mock of the very idea of perspective.

  23. Lars Of Mars Says:

    Is Angel Station a toroidal space colony?
    That would explain the strangely curved perspective.

  24. GSS ex-noob Says:

    If this is a toroid, that does explain the ceiling. But not that mess over on the right, which remains completely out of perspective.

    Unless it’s a Lovecraft toroid, which would have eldritch non-Euclidean geometry.

    Or maybe it’s just bad art.

  25. Bruce A Munro Says:

    @GSS ex-noob: “whoops! I made the curve waay too small for anything to actually fit to the right of the highway. Well, it’s not like people are going care enough to complain, right?”

  26. GSS ex-noob Says:

    “I mean, surely people worldwide won’t be making fun of it 30 years from now, right?”

    Those might be very small cars; maybe the curve is such that she’s actually almost able to touch the top. Perhaps she’s in “Angel Station at Space Disneyland(TM)”, some sort of shopping experience where she’s just bought the jumpsuit and tuning fork necklace.

    Link to the story behind the book, in which the author freely admits he was extremely stoned when he came up with the plot.

    http://www.walterjonwilliams.net/2011/12/angel-station/

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