Jan 04
Click for full imageDalton Comments: Found this book in my high school library. It’s dragons, a creepy forest, bows and arrows, and an attractive blond all in one PERMA-BOUND cover. Also, I started cracking up at the, “One of the Best SF Novels of All Time” caption. Did I mention there’s dragon’s? Sorry your covers get hated on Robert A. Heinlein!
Published 1996
Fantastic start to the new year!
Many thanks to Dalton!
(Average: 7.64 out of 10)
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January 4th, 2011 at 10:44 am
Ah, 2011 is just like 2010. A Robin-Hood-a-like, a Xena-a-like and a Mr Atoz-a-like do battle with a dinosaur which has just had a fiery arrow shot into its maw.
What’s that? A dragon, you say? Could have fooled me.
January 4th, 2011 at 10:46 am
Just noticed: that’s a very hunky dragon. Look at his pecs!
January 4th, 2011 at 11:51 am
It’s like a t-rex crossed with a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle… that breathes fire.
What moves faster… fire.. or arrows… I guess those guys are about to see!
January 4th, 2011 at 12:38 pm
There’s a hole in the road!
January 4th, 2011 at 2:12 pm
Difficult to believe that Clyde Caldwell could commit that font abomination. The PhotoShop 101 effects must have been added by an intern later.
IIRC Glory Road was a very tongue-in-cheek pastiche of action fantasy with a lot of shout-outs to other works. A fun read. Published around 1963 originally.
January 4th, 2011 at 2:19 pm
Since one of my New Year’s resolutions is to try to be generally nicer and less sarcastic, I’ll go easy on this cover…
– Hey! Been working out, eh, dragon dude? Go easy on the steroids, man!
– In Fantasy Book Cover Land, there’s free breast implants for everybody.
– At the hair salon: “Can I please have my hair…[deep voice] perma-bound!“
January 4th, 2011 at 2:32 pm
Evad> Yea the font will have been added in by editors afterwards. And to be fair, for a Caldwell the womens chest is of average size!
Also tongue-in-cheek? So no one goes back in time to sleep with his mother in this novel?
January 4th, 2011 at 4:58 pm
Heinlein’s greatest short story ever, “All You Zombies”, is a time-travel loop where the protagonist is his/her own mother and father.
January 4th, 2011 at 7:02 pm
That “dragon” doesn’t look menacing. In fact, it looks as though he has bad stomach gas, and has just turned to look at why that bloke’s aiming an arrow. Poor Dino just walked into the line of fire!
January 4th, 2011 at 8:25 pm
Very impressive muzzle flash on the bow.
I guess the illustrator is not a very technical person.
Or is this some new medieval punk genre?
January 4th, 2011 at 9:07 pm
Oh Baen Books, how we love thee.
January 4th, 2011 at 9:11 pm
But is it perma-bound love?
January 5th, 2011 at 9:49 pm
Forgot to mention in original comments that that guy must think arrows don’t catch on fire when shot right into the path of a dragon’s fire.
January 7th, 2011 at 11:37 am
A.R.Y, thank you for quoting the title of “All You Zombies”! I read it years ago and couldn’t remember the name or author, and yaknow, there are some things you just don’t google.
I guess the dinosaur is an example of Our Dragons Are Different… as well as, obviously, Dinosaurs Are Dragons.
Extra marks for the B-movie font on the title. And if nobody’s said “don’t you mean Glory Hole, hur hur hur” yet, I won’t be the first. Wait. Damn.
January 12th, 2011 at 7:56 pm
I must dig out my copy (boring paperback, I’m afraid) and read it again, because I’m struggling to remember a dinosaur or a dragon. Oh, and don’t get too excited about the “attractive blonde”. Although she’s the Empress of the Universe or something, she’s about 300 years old.
January 13th, 2011 at 8:41 am
Yeah, and cosmic empresses tend to “hit the wall” around their 300th birthday…
January 19th, 2011 at 9:12 pm
Have any of you read the story?
This is actually pretty close to the plot – in which Heinlein dragged a Nam veteran into a mythical adventure, and then showed how and why it could logically happen that way (and the hero has both enough brains and guts to live down his own fantasy..)
And this a lot better than some of the other Utterly Unrelated cover art I’ve seen for this book. (I had been expecting one of those here…)
January 23rd, 2011 at 9:59 am
I’m not sure what the best, most accurate Heinlein book cover would look like. In fact, one should trust the cover artist with a great deal of freedom to choose and interpret, in a wide variety of styles. (Alternate covers for different audiences? Sure, why not? Abstract expressionism? Yes please, if it’s done well. Surrealism? Bring it on!)
That being said…. the first thing a prospective book buyer will see is the cover, and he/she will judge the book by its cover features — including things like layout, color scheme, fonts, blurbs, quotes, attractiveness etc.
In short: packaging.
April 3rd, 2014 at 2:02 am
Old guy with backpack: “BAEN??”
April 14th, 2022 at 10:41 pm
You want packaging, you get PACKAGING.
https://enlitenbloggomrymden.wordpress.com/2015/12/03/delta-science-fiction-1972-1988/robert-a-heinlein-arans-vag-glory-road-1974-delta-science-fiction-12-sweden-cover-by-bruce-pennington_17643033848_o/
April 14th, 2022 at 11:09 pm
@fred: You have a real knack for finding these covers and reviews.
I see that illustrates the same scene, minus the himbo.
I’m still gobsmacked by the awfulness of the font on this one, even considering the publisher. And the braggy blurb, which is almost impossible to read against the background.
(And is also wrong — it isn’t even Heinlein’s best novel, there have to be several better than this, although IIRC there’s less fascism in this one even with a Supreme Empress of the Universe.)
April 15th, 2022 at 12:26 am
@ GSS: That font is also on the back cover, but not on the spine, so no three on a match.
https://www.etsy.com/listing/1191914371/glory-road-by-robert-a-heinlein
April 15th, 2022 at 1:10 am
It’s had a variety of covers.
I first read it in this edition https://i.pinimg.com/564x/90/1d/80/901d801e0a8d6418785944e9dafe29b3.jpg , which makes it look like a Craig Shaw Gardner-esque comedic fantasy.
It apparently also was anthologized in the Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy, which gave us this Robin Hood and her Merry Men-looking cover:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/174442050137
April 15th, 2022 at 1:15 am
Berkley SF, on the other hand, decided to go with “blandly generic 1970s SF book cover” https://pictures.abebooks.com/isbn/9780425028346-us.jpg
April 15th, 2022 at 10:30 pm
Ours is this boring one, which looks less road and more hole:
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?420958
But at least the fonts aren’t painful to look at!
I’m pretty sure everyone who’s been at GSS for more than a week can guess which publisher has the worst covers overall.
@Bruce: The Cineverse Cycle is brilliant. I’ve read it several times. When I’m watching a movie with very large subtitles, I wonder if the characters will trip over them.