Mar 22
Kevin’s Art Direction: Don’t put a red flame ANYWHERE on the coverthat’s too obvious! Instead, put Grizzly Adams into a jumpsuit and have him talking earnestly to a lizard man who’s walking a giant stag beetle through an alien city. Insert sexual tension by hiding the human’s left hand behind the lizard man’s buttocks. Also, hide both bipeds’ right feet from view so people will focus on the fact that the beetle is practically floating.
Published 1986
Many thanks to Kevin!
March 22nd, 2011 at 10:43 am
That’s a normal sized beetle that they’re taking for a walk, but the forced perspective of the drawing makes it look giant.
March 22nd, 2011 at 12:09 pm
Curb your beetle.
After all, no one wants to step in dung beetle dung.
March 22nd, 2011 at 12:46 pm
It wasn’t until the late 19th century that scientists conclusively proved that giant dung beetles do in fact life all six feet off the ground when they run.
March 22nd, 2011 at 1:22 pm
My three-year-old son looked at the picture and said: “Daddy, beetle poops on bearded man’s feet!”
March 22nd, 2011 at 1:33 pm
It’s so annoying when you’re walking your beetle and you get hassled by charity workers.
March 22nd, 2011 at 3:25 pm
I assumed lizard man was the alien, but if you look at the background you see that this is a planet of lizards. That makes the human (Girzzly Adams? Kris Kristofferson maybe) the real alien.
If I were that beetle, I would be desperate to get at least one tongue’s length away from my lizard master.
March 22nd, 2011 at 11:10 pm
That’s not a lead; that’s a sword. Bug-head man is saying: ‘I dub thee Sir Dungbeetle …’
March 27th, 2011 at 4:10 am
The lizard man is like,” He’s a rescue bug.”
March 28th, 2011 at 9:17 am
After some digging around, I found the perfectly rational explanation (rational for the publishing business, that is) to this odd cover design:
There was a misunderstanding.
At first the artist was assigned to make a cover for a book which he was told — over the phone — had to do with “ailing proctology”, and so he assumed that “Red Flame Burning” referred to a painful bowel condition.
You can imagine the editor’s dismay when the artist proudly delivered a finished, very detailed painting to the office.
After a heated argument, selfsame artist was re-assigned to paint the proper cover, referring to a book about alien psychology — with very little time to spare — hence the rush job.
And the moral is: Editors should never eat cornflakes while talking over the phone.
December 9th, 2015 at 9:11 pm
No author given!
March 17th, 2017 at 5:18 am
Still no author listed!
Also, if it wasn’t burning, it wouldn’t be a flame now, would it?
And did we ever get to see the cover of the book on the left? Also from Del Ray, what we can glimpse makes it look like a possible GSS candidate.
March 17th, 2017 at 12:51 pm
@GSS Inimitable: Sword of Fire, there you go.
March 18th, 2017 at 1:46 am
The sequel! Now with more lizard-men and walking the beetles on the National Mall!
August 8th, 2017 at 2:49 am
“Ward, I’m worried about the Beetle.”
October 1st, 2021 at 6:45 pm
It says something about the 80s that it was a time when alien architecture was as mind-numbingly boring as anything on Earth.
October 1st, 2021 at 9:02 pm
The only thing to say about this cover is, “Well don’t that beat all?”
October 1st, 2021 at 9:58 pm
That could be one of those fire starting beetles from the 1975 movie ‘Bug’.
October 1st, 2021 at 10:05 pm
The one is a dimensionally displaced Grizzly Adams impersonator .
The other is a lizard-man and giant beetle fancier.
Together, they fight crime.
October 2nd, 2021 at 7:49 am
@Bruce: But what does the beetle do? Seeing-eye beetle, bloodhound beetle, K9 beetle, comic relief beetle?
October 2nd, 2021 at 2:03 pm
In the future, there will be folks walking beetles.
October 2nd, 2021 at 3:01 pm
@GSS ex-noob: perhaps he[1] has multiple beetles for different occasions? (Shades of The Man from P.I.G.)
[1] Or possibly she.
October 2nd, 2021 at 4:29 pm
“I was talking to the beetle.”
October 2nd, 2021 at 7:47 pm
It’s a series. GSS has covered Sword of Fire. I sense some kind of pattern in the titles.
https://www.goodreads.com/series/288997-guss
October 3rd, 2021 at 1:08 am
@fred: they all have an air of “the author takes himself too seriously?”
(Looks at book descriptions)
All this and world(s)-threatening Islamic terrorists as well. Hawkins was a man ahead of his time, clearly.
Edit: for some reason I find myself looking at the lizard in white shorts and t-shirt in the background. I bet they’re having a nice summer day, possible a spot of tennis?
October 3rd, 2021 at 2:43 am
@fred: That answers my question (guard-dog beetle), but raises so many others, like “pretentious much, Ward?”
October 3rd, 2021 at 10:10 pm
Hawkins wrote for TV, a few early movies as well.
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0370252/
October 3rd, 2021 at 11:32 pm
@fred: interesting. I see he was born in 1912, so he wrote these stories in his 70s. No wonder if they have an old-fashioned flavor: he’s only four years younger than “dean of SF” Jack Williamson, and would have been 14 when Amazing Stories, America’s first all-science fiction (or “scientification” as they called it back then) magazine debuted.