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May 01

HEY! Who swapped my guitar for this Terra-45B Fusion Laser rifle?!Click for full image

HOLY mother of HADES I have it! Ready? How about a big muscled LEOPARD MAN! Holding his rifle and roaaaaaaring off to one side….. YAWHAAT!?!? No I don’t want to see his leopard genitals! Put in him some futuristic combat armor, but no leggings.. his crotch is right there!!! God can only dream of how good this will be……
also known as Prescription For Chaos

(This is special! Have a great Bank Holiday weekend! Well, for those in the UK! 🙂 )

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: 8.55 out of 10)
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43 Responses to “RX is Chaos!”

  1. SI Says:

    Man… I actually can not stop laughing at this one.

    But I actually researched the artist…. Looks like he has done a few of the ones I have seen in shops but the pictures have never come out just right…. He certainly likes his busty women… Good show sir!

    http://www.clydecaldwell.com/pages/gallery.html

  2. CSA Says:

    Edited by one of the “Two great” authors of Sci-fi/fantasy with bad covers, Eric Flint has sunk his teeth into another young naive author. You think Anvil is his real name? thats pretty awesome

    Similar situation to the last Cat book we had… Flint as editor replaced the words “Stormship Trooper” with “Big Honking Leopard In Armour”, god i hope they are at war with the Nazis…. and by Nazis… i mean Lizardmen Nazis…

  3. CSA Says:

    … just looked at those pictures… I feel ill now, thanks…

    all i can say is, if I was publishing a scifi book, my hard earned money would not be paid to that guy to commision a picture for the cover, UNLESS, i did happen to have 20-30 large breasted female barbarians in my story, which come to think of it, is actually quite likely… hmm… good show sir…good show

  4. SI Says:

    Actually I did read a bit of the synopsis:

    “A new wonder drug has the unexpected side effect of making people happy. Not a problem-everybody should want to be happy, right? But should people be happy all of the time? Suppose being happy required you never to disappoint anyone, no matter what they’re requesting…Then there was the energy source for every home that would free the country from its dependence on foreign oil – except that the prototype was rushed into production a bit too fast.”

    Where the hell does a 6ft leopard man in combat armour come into that? I’m kinda interested to find out…

    And unfortantly… after some reading, which I really shouldn’t do it spoils the fun. Anvil is a pseudo name for some guy who was born in 1922… we should have realised he was no n00b as his cover PWNS! 😉

  5. SI Says:

    Maybe we should write a joint book? They always seem to have the best covers!

    And we’ll try and get as many topless female barbarians in it as possible… the twist would be, they genetically evolved from hamsters. Which would completely explain their large breasts… and ability to store items in their cheeks.

  6. RML Says:

    Not sure about the hamster-race. I’m not against the cat people race though. However I though it was a shame they portrayed a man-cat on the cover of this one, after all the she-cats will have 6 breasts, won’t they ?

  7. CSA Says:

    it’s probably just too difficult to draw armour that has room for 6 breasts

  8. SI Says:

    hehe… though I am sure there might be an artist up for the challenge….

  9. JustinLeego Says:

    Un-focus your eyes and that gun looks like some form of futuristic plastic mandolin. Rock out, you folkish tiger-man, feel the power! Rawr!

    …erm, those straps leading off the “abdominal guard”. Dare I ask where they go?

  10. SI Says:

    That’s a very good point… I never noticed those straps before…… ewwwww….

    But this art has so many levels to it… I think we can only start to really appreciate it after months of study.

  11. Bryce Says:

    It looks like the catman is about to wail on his righteous space guitar. Rock on!

  12. Susano Says:

    Is he firing a gun or playing guitar?

  13. SI Says:

    If it is a guitar point me at where I can buy one! It’s awesome 😀

  14. JustinLeego Says:

    Argos, 1985.

  15. James Lovegrove Says:

    I like the fact that the editor gets his name on the cover at all. Because that’s what I always look for when I’m browsing in the bookshop. “Who edited this book?” I ask myself. “Oh crikey, Eric Flint. I loved the last few books he edited. You can really feel his hand at work. He pares prose like no one else, and his grasp of grammar is second to none. I must have this one.” It’s like buying an album for the producer, not the band. Actually, I did that once, not so long ago. This Is Hazelville, by Captain. Because they had Trevor Horn at the mixing desk. Big mistake.

  16. SI Says:

    Trevor Horn. Nice. How 80’s did it sound? But what if a book was edited by Trevor?

    Book editing. Does that mean he read over it, corrected a spelling error and changed the ending so the Nazi’s did kill the man tiger? (I can’t confirm RX for Chaos contains any Nazi’s, but in the crazy world of Flint… anything goes.)

  17. Charlsie Marsili Says:

    Now I know why so many people love this site

  18. admin Says:

    Thank you spam machine! For a scripted bot you do have some intelligence. Covers such as this gets me up every morning.

  19. Karl Says:

    What hasn’t Eric Flint edited? And what could that task honestly involve?

    “More tigers! More roaring! More armor!”

  20. IZ Says:

    Sometimes, the deadly cat-mutant assassin known only as RX would lock himself in his bedroom, strip off the bottom half of his powered armour, put ‘The Final Countdown’ on repeat at full volume and stand in front of the mirror, rocking out on his air guitar. But one terrible day, he forgot to lock the door and the maid walked in on him. It was the day the screaming began…

  21. Nix Says:

    Karl, I wish Eric’s editing was like that. He has the, uh, *controversial* habit of largely rewriting the works of old greats, chopping major elements out and introducing new ones (IIRC, the Bolo stuff was one example) while claiming merely to have edited them. If he claims to have edited something, pretend it reads ‘coauthor’.

  22. SI Says:

    As someone who now… strangely owns this book. I agree with Nix. I wish that was the story. I wish. And actually to my horror this scene doesn’t actually take place in any of the stories.

    I have to admit.. and I am sorry to any of the writers/editors. Reading this book kinda made me feel ill.

  23. Gregory C. Mayer Says:

    It’s clearly a big muscled LYNX MAN! But, otherwise, good show sir!

  24. SI Says:

    Lynx… tiger… lion.. they’re all the same thing… Right?

  25. CSA Says:

    Well they’re all forms of um, imnotgoodatthisgame…. donkeys?

  26. Bookworm Bas Says:

    RE : Last SI
    I have a theory that they choose not to illustrate a scene from any of the stories in order not to show favoritism amongst the authors. Otherwise they end up having to try to depict scenes or characters from all the writers with enough clout with the publisher to get representation on the cover.
    I recently submitted the cover of “Fast Forward 2”, edited by Lou Anders and with an impressive list of contemporary authors, because the front cover has no relation to any of the stories. The cover text is eye catching as well.
    This cover is more ridiculous than that though..

  27. David Cowie Says:

    On Saturday evening I was strolling through Oadby (a suburb of Leicester), minding my own business, when I saw this very book in the front window of the Library!
    I was so excited.

  28. e.lee Says:

    Rx is Chaos!
    Over-the-counter is Anarchy!
    Off-the-shelf is kicking dustbins over in the alleyways!

  29. Kathleen Says:

    Tor.com blogs about cat-people in SF: http://www.tor.com/blogs/2010/08/i-can-has-ray-gunz-cat-people-in-science-fiction#

  30. A.R.Yngve Says:

    It’s OK with me that Baen tries to go after the furry demographic. I don’t judge furries for reading Baen books, honestly.

  31. Alessandra Kelley Says:

    When doing cover art for a collection of short stories, there are two basic approaches:

    1. If there are multiple authors, the cover usually has a scene having nothing to do with any of the stories, general enough to give a sense of the genre. I like to think this is because of the admirable motive of not playing favorites, but I’m only analyzing here; I’m not an insider and I don’t know it for a fact. I think in general the publishers want to let people know what’s inside without promising any one thing too strongly, so the covers tend towards the general, even abstract sometimes. Depending on the particular genre, you can see combinations of women, rocket ships, robots, unicorns, knights, barbarian swordspersons, and so on.

    2. If the collection has a single author, the publisher can either do the same as case 1, giving a flavor of the prevailing type of story (wicked, humorous, disturbing, etc.), or they can illustrate one story with a powerful image. (A very poor third choice is a portrait of the author with some fantastical elements.)

    This cover violates a number of principles. It is a vivid image, a snarling lynx-man cradling either a techno-tommy-gun or, as some have pointed out, what looks like a steel banjo (It does look remarkably like it’s belting out a love ballad from the 1920s). It is not an image from any of the stories, but it doesn’t convey the spirit of Anvil’s work either, which spans three decades and probably would have been better served by a rocket. Or a woman.

  32. Stevie T Says:

    Some friends and I were recently talking about how some people when “playing an air guitar” actually look like they’re “shooting an air rifle”. I said “Wait a minute…I know this book cover…”

    And this became exhibit A.

  33. SI Says:

    There is no greater cover! It was the single best day I purchased this book… via mail order so no one could see me…

    I took it home on the bus wrapped in Bra’s… Imagine the embarrassment if someone had seen me with it! 😉

    Long live the laser air guitar!

  34. Tom Noir Says:

    Maybe the usual rules don’t apply to cat-warriors wearing space-thongs, but grabbing a gun you’re firing by its barrel seems highly inadvisable.

  35. FearofMusic Says:

    This is an utterly silly cover, but not really atrocious. Unlike, say, almost any random Baen cover. Hey, it makes sense- cat with guitar. Bet he can seriously shred.

    Now THAT was atrocious.

  36. rev Says:

    Oh wow. I have tears. There are some seriously funny people here.

  37. Stevie T Says:

    @ GSS Admin:
    Maybe we should name this guy Rex…And make him the official mascot of GSS!

  38. Donzo Says:

    Its the “HOLY mother of HADES” that cracks me up everytime I look at the caption. Not a good website to browse surreptiously during a boring business meeting!

  39. A.R.Yngve Says:

    RX FOR FUR BALLS

  40. GSS ex-noob Says:

    This is one of the most GSS covers ever.

    It’s from BAEN! metal guitar lick, catperson growl

  41. RachelJ Says:

    @GSS ex-noob.

    Tell us about it. RX the catman-guitarist is our mascot (along with Space Sheep).

    Did you know he’s a movie star?

  42. GSS ex-noob Says:

    @RachelJ: Oh, I know. I’m the one who binged on the whole site in about six weeks.

    It’s just that this came up on Random Terrible Cover and I clicked. I had to click. I was compelled to click.

    I wouldn’t put Rex in the same place as Space Sheep though — I’d worry our ovine pal would get eated.

  43. fred Says:

    I think an FDA Shuriken of Approval is required by law.

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