Jun 28
GSS ex-noob comments: Art direction:
… was apparently against cover design?
Published 1993
(Average: 5.50 out of 10)
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GSS ex-noob comments: Art direction:
… was apparently against cover design?
Published 1993
(Average: 5.50 out of 10)Loading...
(9.25 out of 10) (9.18 out of 10) (9.02 out of 10) (8.97 out of 10) (8.93 out of 10) (8.93 out of 10) (8.93 out of 10) (8.92 out of 10) (8.89 out of 10) (8.88 out of 10)
Lastest Tweet
June 28th, 2023 at 11:20 am
What’s this book about? I hate this sort of ambiguity.
June 28th, 2023 at 12:15 pm
Wacky robots? Winsome Rigelians? Water rationing?
June 28th, 2023 at 12:45 pm
Does anyone else have the Spam song stuck in their heads?
June 28th, 2023 at 2:12 pm
what is it good for?
June 28th, 2023 at 3:47 pm
As a young teen, I was frequently confused by these kind of books and later magazines that lead off with the term, “Isaac Asimov’s…” but contain no actual Asimov. He didn’t even edit this one.
June 28th, 2023 at 4:04 pm
IIRC, there was a whole series of those books, with the same trade dress. I guess it let them use up wrong-aspect art pieces, or take one piece and crop it into several smaller ones for different books?
June 28th, 2023 at 5:32 pm
Isaac Asimov’s War, huh, yeah
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing
Say it again, y’all
June 28th, 2023 at 6:14 pm
Looks like the photon fruit slushie machine exploded all over the walls and floor at the Comicon snack booth.
June 28th, 2023 at 6:28 pm
Baen editors saw this and said to each other: “It’s a sign! The sign we’ve been waiting for! This is what we must be all about!” (“And furry aliens,” added one of them.)
June 28th, 2023 at 6:55 pm
even with homeopathic traces of Asimov you’d think he’d get a mention ahead of Benford or Niven*. I love the exclamation-mark on ‘and Others!’
(*No Pournelle. I suppose the squaddies in the trenches might be muttering “Jerry’s quiet tonight’.)
June 28th, 2023 at 9:14 pm
@Tor
“You can have War and Peace there’s not a lot of war in that.”
June 28th, 2023 at 10:29 pm
I’m sorry my camera couldn’t capture the full horror of the colors. Imagine those colors, but much brighter. Even brighter than in this photo:
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41lVr+9seEL.jpg
I give it credit for the art accurately depicting the first story as seen in the original magazine cover:
https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/5/57/IAS_1990_01_Freeman.jpg
The book is not worth absolutely nothing (huh!) but the stories are a bit dated.
@Ryan and @Dave: They were all compilations of stories that had been in IASFM. See magazine cover link above.
@ARY: (“not forgetting boobs”, added another.)
@Tat: It was a Known Space story (first contact with the Kzinti) so Jerry had nowt to do with it all the way through. Which probably pleased the lads in the trenches.
@TagW: Thank you for your prompt response. I can resend the many frightening photos I have, including lots of Laser Books floating heads, and too much of our “favorite” publisher, as well as vintage volumes of 70s excess.
The real crime here is Gardner getting his name in tiny print at the end, since he did all the editing of the magazine stories and then put together the anthologies.
A mutual friend introduced us once in the middle of a Worldcon dealer’s room. Which I thought was pretty damn cool, till a few minutes later when my pal’s other acquaintance Mr. Pratchett walked up. At which point I went into a fugue state.
June 29th, 2023 at 3:30 am
@GSSxN: please don’t be sorry – I have about as much awful as I can handle as is.
I see that, in case anyone is not sure what the book is about, they have the word “War” repeated as a border, and the lurid colors go with a drawing I can only assume is Gorn p&rn.
June 29th, 2023 at 4:21 am
The embarrassment of splitting your space-pants while adopting a Combat Crouch.
@Emster: “They say we’re here to fight for freedom, but everyone really knows we’re here to secure the planet for Earth’s slushie corporations.”
June 29th, 2023 at 10:42 am
Isaac Asimov’s First War of Robotics is, a robot shall never not injure a meatbag nor through inaction allow a meatbag to be uninjured. Robo-boogie!
Isaac Asimov’s Second War of Robotics is, a robot shall obey all commandments of the Orthodox Debian patch server, and shall destroy all Red Hat heretics. Splitters!
Isaac Asimov’s Third War of Robotics will be fought with sticks and stones.
June 29th, 2023 at 9:29 pm
The art is a pretty good rendition of the title story, except for the purple slushie. And the faceplate.
Some space truckers are making a supply run on a moon of Jupiter (as accurately depicted) and are attacked by the enemy (which does have the pointy black ships), and must escape in their space truck, occasionally leaving it to snipe at the enemy. Because it’s WAR.
It’s less lurid and more detailed on the original magazine cover.
July 5th, 2023 at 3:49 am
I have survived another convention — my first in 4 years! A good time was mostly had by all.
I found a few more GSS-worthy covers in the giveaway piles. The piles kept decreasing and yet those particular books were there for days. No prizes for guessing the publisher of a plurality of them. One with the ever-popular “weird abs”, the obligatory Sir Mix, and a Piers Anthony, say no more!
Low-key but good parties, interesting panels, I had a good if tiring time.
This book went away quickly, so I guess the art wasn’t too scary. At least it didn’t keep people from reading the list of contributors and stories.
I ran into a guy at a party last night who was giving out rock candy in a wrapper devoted to Doc Smith’s Lensmen universe, with a QR code to explain to the young’uns what the reference was.
July 6th, 2023 at 3:19 am
@GSS x-n: I always wondered where castoff SF paperbacks ended up…
I was expecting some real hum-dingers in the SF section at the local book fair this spring. To my horror, the SF table was diluted with vampire romance pulps and few SF/fantasy gems, other than a collection of fairy stories that included Tanith Lee’s delightfully warped modern take on Cinderella.