Sep 12
Click for full imagePhil’s Art Direction: Are you SURE Bradbury is sufficiently recognisable enough to appear on his own book covers? Well, jazz it up a bit; he looks a bit plain.
Published 2009
(Average: 8.03 out of 10)
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Phil’s Art Direction: Are you SURE Bradbury is sufficiently recognisable enough to appear on his own book covers? Well, jazz it up a bit; he looks a bit plain.
Published 2009
(Average: 8.03 out of 10)Loading...
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Lastest Tweet
September 12th, 2011 at 9:12 am
The man who said:
“Lets get Bradbury on there with an exploding book.”
I salute you! Good Show Sir… good show!
September 12th, 2011 at 9:47 am
Paris is always primary when Rays in town. Has he ever presented countdown?
September 12th, 2011 at 10:14 am
Shouldn’t the more appropriate title be RAY BRADBURY’S BOOKS OF BLOOD…?
Oh, right, Clive Barker’s got dibs on that one.
September 12th, 2011 at 10:16 am
You have to look a LOT of times at the author name to spot the “super-duper-clever” use of color to hide “Ray” inside “Bradbury.”
Way to go, Art Department.
September 12th, 2011 at 12:03 pm
“Read this and you’ll be aware of my work!”
September 12th, 2011 at 1:28 pm
I bet it was this cover that inspired Rachel Bloom to write her masterpiece:
.
September 12th, 2011 at 1:29 pm
Woops, let’s try the link again…
http://www.ucbcomedy.com/videos/play/6825/fuck-me-ray-bradbury
September 12th, 2011 at 4:57 pm
Subtle use of the flag colors of Fran…Romania? We’ll always have Bucharest.
September 12th, 2011 at 8:06 pm
That “hide the name RAY inside the name BRADBURY” trick has been annoyingly used on a whole load of his books:
http://tinyurl.com/embeddedray
Another favourite in this vein is his book of essays which appears to double as a TWO RONNIES tribute:
http://img.neoseeker.com/boxview.php?iid=14140&eid=33989&type=front
September 13th, 2011 at 10:16 am
Ray Bradbury’s THE DAY THE EIFFEL TOWER WAS COVERED IN BLOOD
(Parental Advisory – Lots of Blood)
September 13th, 2011 at 6:29 pm
It looks like Ray blasted the Eiffel Tower with a giant “sh-art”. He’s trying a bit of subterfuge by showing us his book of lights.The look of guilt is clear on his face.
October 1st, 2011 at 11:29 pm
“That “hide the name RAY inside the name BRADBURY†trick has been annoyingly used on a whole load of his books”
I bet they’re paying the designers by the number of characters.
October 2nd, 2011 at 9:21 pm
Who here has played Ultima series of games?
“KILLER JOKES
by Trixter
Welcome reader and learn the age old art of practical jokes. I, Trixter have studied long and hard from the tomes of the ancient masters to achieve the knowledge and wisdom that I may now impart on you, the novice.
Chapter One:
Exploding Books
(Heh, heh…)”
July 27th, 2012 at 7:46 pm
Re: bRAdburY:
It could have been worse. At least they resisted the temptation to to for
bRADbury. Totally radical, dude!
January 9th, 2017 at 2:06 am
Cool guys walk away from explosions, but our Ray just stands there holding them and smiling genially. This is why he’s a legend.
October 8th, 2021 at 5:26 pm
It’s not an exploding book, it’s like those birthday cards with chips playing 70s hits: he has an interactive pop-up ‘Fahrenheit 451’, playing ‘Disco Inferno’ as it spontaneously combusts.
That must be why he’s doing the pained ‘what a lovely thought’ smile all parents of seven-year-olds learn.
October 8th, 2021 at 7:24 pm
Where’s the beret?
It is impossible to find a bad version of ‘As Time Goes By’ on YouTube. Just when you think you’ve found one, the song overcomes the crappiest vocal. Tiny Tim and Loretta Swit, I’m looking at you.
October 8th, 2021 at 7:32 pm
Ray goes to Paris, tries LSD.
October 8th, 2021 at 7:46 pm
I actually met Ray in Paris once, back in 1995, outside Shakespeare & co. A Canadian film crew was doing a documentary of him. And while they were on break, he chatted and discussed various literary things with me and my companion for almost an hour.Totally cool, no pretensions at all. Just a sweet wonderful man. RIP.
October 9th, 2021 at 2:34 am
@B’man: Ray was a fascinating guy to talk to/listen to.
@Tat: It looks like the book is like those annoying cards that not only play music, but spew confetti all over. Except it’s lava.
This really is a lazily-designed cover. Probably no artist credited because Photoshop. With no layers. It’s half a step up from MS Paint.
October 9th, 2021 at 2:36 am
The Little Red Eiffel Tower and the Great Graying Author.
@B. Chiclitz: science fiction’s greatest fantasy writer.
October 9th, 2021 at 5:48 am
@Bruce—His best stuff holds up, maybe gets better, across the years.
October 9th, 2021 at 2:53 pm
One of a series of covers. The others had Robert A. Heinlein opening a book to be punched in the nose by a boxing glove, and Piers Anthony opening a book to be hit in the face with a custard pie.
October 9th, 2021 at 5:20 pm
I noticed the color-coded letters right away.
I wonder if that has ever been done on a cover by Moorcock.
October 10th, 2021 at 1:12 am
@Bruce: that would be an excellent children’s book.
@THX: GSS!
October 10th, 2021 at 7:05 am
@B. Chiclitz: not dissing the man, just saying he was a unique, distinctive voice.
October 10th, 2021 at 9:06 am
@Bruce—I read no diss in your comment. The line between SF and Fantasy is, IMHO, often in the eye of the beholder, and except for the extreme ends of the spectrum, not worth thinking much about. There’s no “definition” I know of that won’t immediately call up a whole bunch of exceptions. Ray wrote good fiction, some of it really good; it has given me much pleasure, and some insight, over the years.
THX: ditto GSS!
October 10th, 2021 at 4:30 pm
I think I’ve finally worked out what’s wrong with this (apart from the colours, the font and the gimmicky name-checking): the whole thing looks as if it had been composed the other way around, with the Eiffel Tower on the left, then someone remembered it needed a Shuriken of Approval so they flipped it. On realising that the author-portrait was no longer identifiable, they flipped the face, which is why it looks like someone was wearing a Ray Bradbury mask then got slapped and the mask shifted 45 degrees.
The wedding-ring is the only flaw with this idea but that’s an easier fix than painting the whole thing again from scratch.
UPDATE: I tried looking at it in a mirror and reverso-Ray looks more Bradburyesque than the vaguely Richie Benaud-ish person on the cover. So what’s going on?
October 10th, 2021 at 4:32 pm
@Tor: it would say MOCK.
October 10th, 2021 at 11:49 pm
@Tat: I think you might be on to something; he’s recognizably Ray, but off somehow.
Not that a sense of general unease that something’s slightly wrong isn’t Bradbury-esque, but I’m not giving whoever did this that kind of credit — it’s just a bad cover, done badly. It’s not like the shuriken couldn’t have been on the other side.
HOWEVER: looking at many pix of him online, that is the side he always parted his hair on.
Here’s a pic of Ray at 14 or 15, with George Burns:
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/classichollywood/la-et-classic-hollywood-20150821-htmlstory.html
Possibly it’s a composite of a suited gent and Ray’s head pasted on from some other picture where his head was at a different angle?
And MOCK is exactly what MB’s cover would say in this style.