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Feb 14

The jazz hands of deathClick for larger image

Good Show Sir Comments: “Nyah-Nyah-Nyah, I can’t hear you!”

Thanks Suzie-Q for sending this in!

Published 1971

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: 7.53 out of 10)
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17 Responses to “A Sword Above the Night”

  1. THX 1139 Says:

    “I’ve had it up to here with your heavy metal concept albums!”

  2. Francis Boyle Says:

    I empathise with her pain. Still, at least she’s not being menaced with some poorly disguised phallic symbol.

  3. fred Says:

    Harryhausen should have stop motioned a skeleton making a pizza from scratch in ‘Jason and the Argonauts’.

  4. JuanPaul Says:

    I don’t like where they’re going with Portal 3.

  5. Bibliomancer Says:

    Art Direction: “I want a lady with a migraine. And a dickless wonder doing a jazz-hands interpretive no-pants dance!”

  6. Tor Mented Says:

    If this cover were animated, how would it move? I picture the skeletal hands clapping, and each time they slam together on the poor man, his arms and legs go shooting out to the sides like a Warner Bros. cartoon.

  7. B. Chiclitz Says:

    Since there’s no point in his looking down, I guess he’s looking up to find that “sword” above.

  8. B. Chiclitz Says:

    @fredā€”GSS! Right after they sprout out of the ground, the skeletons could all don chef’s hats and start a big pizza production number!

  9. Bruce A Munro Says:

    Hiring the extra-dimensional skeletons to get rid of the little green men had seemed like a good idea at first, but the screaming was _so_ annoying.

  10. Bruce A Munro Says:

    “Put a naked guy on the cover. That’ll tell people this is hard-hitting, adult SF.”
    “And not gay porn?”
    “OK, point. Make him green.”

  11. GSS ex-noob Says:

    That poor woman. The bright lights and loud interpretive dance music have given her a migraine. Yet the skeleton portal/ghost pizza continues to swallow up the dickless mime, and there is no Excedrin to be found. Or even the titular sword, with which she could cut off the hands, the mime, or her own head. Anything to make it stop.

    @all: GSS. The usual excellence in comments.

    @Tor: I snickered. Also his eyes would bug out in a cartoon fashion, maybe also his ears.

  12. Bruce A Munro Says:

    Checked online for an actual description of the story, and it apparently involves some aliens putting up a lethal energy field around a small town. So that explains the glowing circle and the (metaphorical) claws of death, although color wise it strikes me as a bit too _jolly_ for a lethal energy field. Yellow and pink? Those are party colors.

    The woman is having a hard time, I guess, because women are always in distress in SF covers of a certain vintage, even when they aren’t being carried away by aliens.

    Still don’t know why the guy is green and naked.

  13. GSS ex-noob Says:

    @Bruce: it’s a 1970s lethal energy field. Thus the psychedelic colors.

    Being trapped with giant skeleton hands, naked green mimes missing important bits, and cheerful death-field colors would make anyone distressed.

  14. THX 1139 Says:

    Moral: Don’t eat your Arctic Roll too quickly or you’ll get an ice cream headache.

  15. Tat Wood Says:

    The soundtrack for this cover https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_sRiJ3Wi-g

  16. GSS ex-noob Says:

    Halfway through is this ad:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DT4Q5bLg6Qw

    or, given the era, maybe this one:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mxaeSvWZSg

    (they never got up to the number this poor woman’s suffering through — exponential notation wasn’t popular in commercials)

    @Tat: An advert that forces you to use the product. Evil genius. IIRC we got Carly Simon singing for the same stuff — much nicer.

  17. A.R.Yngve Says:

    Well, the cover depicts our feelings about it pretty much spot-on.

    (And suddenly things became very meta…)

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