Mar 20
Click for larger imageJuanPaul Comments: Aww, nice, they allow pets!
Published 1987
(Average: 7.91 out of 10)
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JuanPaul Comments: Aww, nice, they allow pets!
Published 1987
(Average: 7.91 out of 10)Loading...
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March 20th, 2019 at 11:15 am
When service pets run amok.
March 20th, 2019 at 11:30 am
Guy with the chain looks like he can’t decide if he’s Indiana Jones or Lieutenant Columbo. Guy on the bike looks like he can’t decide whether he’s wielding a gun or a chainsaw. I just can’t decide what I hate most about this cover.
March 20th, 2019 at 11:34 am
You just know this is airbrushed on the side of David Miscavige’s van.
March 20th, 2019 at 1:42 pm
Nothing to see here. Just a typical Wednesday at the Mucky Motel.
March 20th, 2019 at 1:50 pm
The pajama bottoms are taking the edge off his otherwise fearsome appearance.
March 20th, 2019 at 2:39 pm
I never thought I would ever really see someone with a dagger between their teeth – even here. It made me start making snorting noises at approximately two minute intervals and I haven’t stopped. Is there any term for a cliché so powerful that you suspect it came into the world as a fully formed cliché and never existed before then?
– Francis Boyle: It’s 2019, he can be Indiana Jones AND Lt. Columbo
March 20th, 2019 at 4:34 pm
@Verylatetotheparty: This is from Wikipedia’s article on the First Barbary War.:
“… the man who was the first to board a vessel had one slave over and above his share, and that when they sprang to the deck of an enemy’s ship, every sailor held a dagger in each hand and a third in his mouth; which usually struck such terror into the foe that they cried out for quarter at once.”
March 20th, 2019 at 5:02 pm
I wonder what their rating on Trip Advisor is like.
March 20th, 2019 at 9:08 pm
@Tat Wood: On a scale from 1 to 10 I’d rate it All The Nope…
March 20th, 2019 at 9:51 pm
@Tor Mented: The dangers of posting comments without doing thorough historical research. That must be his “striking terror into the foe” face he’s wearing.
Responsible gun users should never glare in one direction while firing in another.
March 20th, 2019 at 10:23 pm
@Francis B—guy on the bike can’t decide if he’s wielding a gun or a chainsaw—or a banjo!
March 21st, 2019 at 1:22 am
Wrangling the new generation of Republican candidates is a tough job.
@Tor Mented: jumping from the deck of one boat to another, both hands occupied, and with a knife in your mouth as well? The potential for frankly hilarious oopsies seems almost unlimited.
March 21st, 2019 at 2:55 am
I should have mentioned that my post was about the infamous Barbary pirates. That must be where we get the image of pirates with dagger clutched in their teeth.
@Bruce: And you can always spot the dumbest pirates. They’re the ones who put a double-edged dagger in their mouths and, amid concentrating on ship-to-ship swinging, they forget to keep their lips drawn back. Followed by a scream and the dagger dropping point-down onto their foot.
March 21st, 2019 at 3:27 am
@Tor Mented: I assumed you were talking about Barbary Pirates, but I still don’t see how you can swing from ship to ship when you have daggers in both hands. Is some sort of harness involved?
March 21st, 2019 at 6:16 am
I have nothing to say here but GSS to everyone.
Er, everyone here. Not at all to anyone involved in any way with this book.
March 21st, 2019 at 5:09 pm
Down those mean streets a detective must walk his tartan-clad dog. And make certain he never attacks cyclists.
March 21st, 2019 at 5:20 pm
@Bruce: Good point. The Wikipedia excerpt talks about boarding a ship and notes that some pirates sprang to the deck. Then I mistakenly added the bit about swinging ship to ship. So they sprang but didn’t swang.
March 21st, 2019 at 5:37 pm
Fear and loathing on the honeymoon trail ’87.
A bold use of teal and orange. The background cabin looks like it’s undergoing a Quantum Leap and will be inhabited by Scott Bakula imminently.
This cover is BAEN worthy. Perhaps if the motorcycle was aflame: more orange!
March 21st, 2019 at 8:35 pm
@B. Chiclitz
This banjo kills SPs.
March 22nd, 2019 at 4:10 am
@RayP: Well, I’m looking forward to how many times Al has to smack Ziggy when the explanation for this scenario comes up.
The front fender looks like the motorcycle died with its tongue hanging out, making the indistinct stuff below it possibly a puddle of bike puke. Give it some niacin, it’ll perk right up.
March 24th, 2019 at 8:59 pm
So, is it a best-selling series because it’s required reading in certain circles?
March 24th, 2019 at 10:28 pm
@anon: Spot on. They also had to use their own money to buy up copies of the books at the particular bookstores which were polled to create the various bestseller lists. Which they’d return later to get the money back, thus stiffing the bookstores, but ElRon and Co. already had the cash by then.
A random google will expand upon this, but that’s the gist of it.
March 26th, 2019 at 8:25 pm
Looks like Iron Maiden is still popular well into the future…
April 19th, 2020 at 9:22 pm
Perhaps these covers are intended to test the members’ devotion. “You shall tell others how the church made you a smarter, saner person… and then, as proof of your argument, show them your copy of ‘Death Quest’!”
A bit like “Chop down the mightiest tree in the forest with… a herring!”
April 19th, 2020 at 10:12 pm
@ARY: Entirely plausible.
The Scientologists used to come to scifi cons years ago. Had their table in the dealer’s room where they sold both the holy writ and the pulpy SF. They all wore suits and had eyes like… well, exactly like you’d imagine. Dead and creepy.
They threw parties with enough food and soda you could make a meal out of them, and we certainly did. And then left for parties that had booze and fun people.
Once a friend and I stocked up and decided it was too much trouble to go back to our rooms to fetch our bottles of prescription medicine — different ones which had fixed our brains very nicely, thank you. But we imagined it would have been fun to watch them splutter and switch over their programmed answers to that track.
They didn’t get any takers for anything except the free food. Because:
1) we all knew what the scam was, and more importantly
2) guys who knew Elron when he decided to start the religion were at the cons!
(Elron was already dead, but this was long enough ago that a few of the old guard were still kicking around.)
April 26th, 2020 at 1:07 am
@ex-noob So is there any truth to the famed alleged meeting in a lift between Bob Heinlein and L. Ron where the secret of power was revealed?
“They say the Hubbard created the Decalogy to test the faithful. He who endures to the end shall be saved.”
I’d like to see a retro low-budget eighties movie version of this book made so that Michael Dorn can do the voice-over on the trailer and say DEATH QUEST repeatedly. DEATH QUEST. DEATH QUEST. DEATH QUEST. (the pause matters)
April 26th, 2020 at 5:02 am
@Ray P: I do not know. By the time this series came along, nobody I ever met had talked to Elron in decades.
The Scientologists tried to get the first nominated for a Hugo, but they paid for their memberships with sequential checks, or something like that.
There’s a book called “Astounding” by Alec somebody that gives the scoop on Campbell, so of course it includes LRH, RAH, Asimov, and the lot.
April 30th, 2020 at 11:07 pm
@GSS ex-noob: One of L. Ron’s books was nominated for a Hugo (I forget which one). The final voting results had it come in under ‘No Award’.
May 1st, 2020 at 3:12 am
@A3K: The movie of “Battlefield Earth” won plenty of Razzies, though.
http://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-history/1987-hugo-awards/
They apparently learned from their failure in 1983 to buy their memberships a bit more untraceably. And yet the book finished 6th out of 5.
But the later Puppies fared just as well… parallels left as an exercise to the reader.
January 3rd, 2022 at 2:07 pm
Is Matt Drudge (fedora guy on right) trying to pull Cap’n Plaid Pants’s gun arm toward him *while he’s firing it???* Coz that is really stupid.