May 20
Stevie T Art Direction: Let’s make the astronaut so dark you can barely see him! And then let’s put the title in an awkward place where it’s hard to read, and make it purple on top of black! Yeah! That’ll convey “space!” To everyone!
Published 1988
May 20th, 2020 at 10:05 am
Personal space invader?
May 20th, 2020 at 1:24 pm
Ground control to Murky Tom
May 20th, 2020 at 1:32 pm
Another GSS salute to Font Problems
May 20th, 2020 at 3:32 pm
Could be worse.
P
E
A
C
E
K
E
E
P
BEN
OR
VS
A
May 20th, 2020 at 3:52 pm
“Houston, we have font problems.”
May 20th, 2020 at 3:52 pm
DO NOT expose this cover to bright sunlight – people could get serious eye injuries!
May 20th, 2020 at 4:47 pm
Because minimalism and shiny, shiny embossed text go together like. . .sardines and ice-cream ?. . .strawberries and mustard? No, I can’t think of anything either.
#style crimes of the Eighties
May 20th, 2020 at 6:04 pm
Space, the badly-lit frontier.
May 20th, 2020 at 6:07 pm
This might help explain things. From The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction:
Russo, Carol
American book designer, sometimes credited as a cover artist. . . . [S]he met Tom Doherty and Jim Baen . . . . As one might expect from her background, many of her covers are dominated by the book’s title and author’s name, with few pictorial elements.
May 20th, 2020 at 6:53 pm
Back-cover synopsis:
“A high stakes mission to Earth’s nearest neighbor pinned the hopes of all humankind on the crew of the spaceship Pax. But seasoned space-pilot Colonel Ben Duty had had his doubts about the ship, its quarrelsome crew and the infamous billionaire who was funding the flight. But matters grew worse in the hours after launch when Colonel Duty realized the ship had been built by the lowest bidder!
Missing light-bulbs, broken door-handles, a cracked view-screen, a curious knocking from the rocket engine, a fitful air conditioner, a food dispenser that served only warm drinks, and the fact that the Pax’s high-tech space toilet had never been installed all combined to threaten their journey to the Moon. And then, from behind him in the control cabin, Colonel Duty heard a tiny, echoing voice ask:
“Are we there yet?”
That was the most deadly question any astronaut might ever hear…and they still had 249,000 miles to go!
Join readers from around the world for this taut, exciting page-turner where survival requires a misfit crew to adjust their ship’s attitude to make it safely to the strangest of shores. And the only way to survive is to quiet down, stop the bickering, don’t touch one another, give Tommy back his toy, and ultimately become…the PEACEKEEPERS!”
May 20th, 2020 at 7:51 pm
There is a way to get a vertical title to work. It doesn’t involve embossing, shiny outlines, or horizontally stretched fonts.
May 21st, 2020 at 1:24 am
@Adzel: I want to read the books your synopses are about ever so much more than the real books GSS!
And a collective GSS to everyone else. I got nothing better to add other than agreeing how dull and unbelievably ugly this cover is.
I’m guessing only true Bova fans bought this — everyone else was probably turned off. I was deeply into fandom/SF at this time and have no memory of this at all. Probably passed it right by in some dealer’s room because of the ugly.
May 21st, 2020 at 4:48 am
Coming soon: David Carradine stars in ‘Kung Fu – In Space’.
Let’s hope his oxygen supply’s reliable.
May 21st, 2020 at 8:28 am
To be fair, it’s probably a bit hard to see in space at times, with the sun being all unfiltered by an atmosphere and such. It’s why they have those special helmets with the gold dust or whatever that is (I was home sick the day they covered space helmets in Science class). But that’s no excuse to avoid an interesting cover, the same way having much of your novel take place in a cave doesn’t excuse an all-black cover illustration.