Oct 04
Click for full imageArt Direction: Look it will just be like every cover you have ever seen but this time… they’re cat people! They’ll have everything a cat would normally have like fuzzy hair, cat mouths, pointy ears but no tails. Tails, I think would be a step too far! We don’t want people to be too embarrassed when they buy it!
Published 1983
(Average: 7.55 out of 10)
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October 4th, 2011 at 10:09 am
“Why, yes, we are the Krazy Katz Ant and Dec sang about.”
October 4th, 2011 at 12:31 pm
I’m trying to untangle the narrative in this picture:
“Oh, wonderful! I’ve found the perfect cliff to park my rocket ship on. Come along, Sphere 1 and Sphere 2! Let’s go exploring.”
“Bloop!”
“Bleep!”
“Why, look! Two steps away from my rocket, and here we have a female. I’ll just pick her up and get some hair styling tips from her.”
“WHOA! Shirt goes back on, miladdo.”
October 4th, 2011 at 1:11 pm
I don’t get it. They could have been all transgressive — Pyanfar Chanur being female and all, and rescuing at least one helpless human man — but they chose to print… *that*.
Further inaccuracies: I think in the entire five books of the Chanur series they set down on a planetary surface *once*. It is not a blasted desert world, and they dock like anyone else, at the station, not by landing in a fifties rocketship. The series is full of fantastically intricate and claustrophobic maneuvering between multiple alien races, with hardly a human to be seen, and certainly no open spaces (very Cherryh really) — so they make it look like bloody Conan the Barbarian with a feline facial.
I do note that this book predates Cherryh’s use of the hoary old ‘disguise my first name and my sales go up because everyone thinks I’m a man’ trick (which I am quite appalled still works, but apparently does). Maybe this is why they tried to make it look like a romance novel: written by Uh Woman after all. Sigh.
October 4th, 2011 at 1:34 pm
Now, with patented ankle scarf!
Seriously, why is that there? It’s Rowena, so I know she can paint feet.
October 4th, 2011 at 1:36 pm
Oh, and what is it hooked onto, behind her knee? Nothing is there, not even the male’s elbow.
And she’s a female lion. Shouldn’t she be maneless?
October 4th, 2011 at 1:59 pm
Straight out of the Golden Age. All it needs is his-and-hers space suits, armoured steel for him, transparent vinyl for her.
Aimed at the furry market, perhaps?
October 4th, 2011 at 2:09 pm
“Why Chanur, what big balls you have!”
“The better to cover you with drapery, my dear.”
October 4th, 2011 at 2:27 pm
Maybe there’s an international conspiracy of cover artists to make the public shun science fiction. (I can’t blame the public, can I? Not with covers like these!)
October 4th, 2011 at 2:28 pm
“Chanur No. 5 — the fragrance that unleashes the lion in your partner.”
(Oh, the humanity!)
October 4th, 2011 at 4:02 pm
Will I ever understand the weird love between sci-fi covers and cat people?
I hope not.
October 4th, 2011 at 5:41 pm
Do I see the twin moons Pantene and TRESemmé looming in the sky?
October 4th, 2011 at 7:07 pm
Open-toed swashbuckling boots for cat people. Is that canon?
October 4th, 2011 at 8:36 pm
Catman is amusing himself whilst his rocket-ship relieves himself on a giant rocketship-potty. It’s embarrassing, really. Look away!
October 4th, 2011 at 10:11 pm
No tails? They’re obviously Manx cats.
Philosophical question: why so few covers with DOG people? What’s wrong with dogs?
October 4th, 2011 at 10:39 pm
To be fair, the cat people really are the protagonists of the story, and it is accurate to make them look like bipedal lions.
October 4th, 2011 at 10:42 pm
Phil> exactly or hamsters! Just think of the things they could put in their cheeks!
October 6th, 2011 at 3:29 am
I’m embarrassed for the artist by how easy it is to tell which parts were photo-referenced, and which ones were whipped up on top of the photo.
October 6th, 2011 at 8:04 pm
One word: Hairballs.
October 6th, 2011 at 8:10 pm
You know what would be really ironic? If humanity has a First Contact and the aliens we meet turn out to actually be furry cat-people.
They’ll have one look at these book covers and say: “You realize that this means war.”
October 7th, 2011 at 5:43 pm
I would so read any books I saw about dog-people, Phil (#14). Even with a cover as gender-boring as this one.
Cat-people are meh.
October 7th, 2011 at 9:49 pm
Herm, you could be in for a long wait!
October 8th, 2011 at 2:02 am
“To be fair, the cat people really are the protagonists of the story, and it is accurate to make them look like bipedal lions.”
Well, Khym and Pyanfar don’t really have the “meek damsel in distress/big ol hero” dynamic depicted on the cover.
And there are problems with anatomy….Pyanfar’s reaction to seeing human females (during the coda of the first novel) makes it clear that by Hani standards, human women have WEIRD body shapes.
Michael Whelan’s covers (and David Cherry’s, come to think of it) get closer to the description given in the books. Hani aren’t just lion heads plopped onto human bodies.
October 9th, 2011 at 6:54 am
Hey Herm & Phil, how about raccoon-people? See _The Architect of Sleep_.
http://www.sfreviews.net/boyett_architect_of_sleep.html
October 10th, 2011 at 8:13 pm
Raccoon people, eh? Are you sure he’s not a skunk? A bit of a Pepe le Pew floppy fringe going on there.
October 18th, 2011 at 6:34 pm
Judging by the pants Lion Man is wearing, I think we finally know who won the fight back from The Hunters of the Red Moon.
http://www.goodshowsir.co.uk/2010/03/hunters-of-the-red-moon/
That’s still one of my favorites!
October 25th, 2011 at 11:38 am
A. R. Yngve, if we meet furry cat-people we’re in trouble anyway. They’re *cats*: ‘this means war’ is their response to pretty much all situations.
March 19th, 2013 at 2:37 pm
It appears this cover was SO AMAZING that they recycled it from (or for) another book:
https://plus.google.com/118216361924782341223/posts/3ZnSuqGgBhk
[2013/07/17 admin edit: linked directly to G+ account’s Firebird post]
July 16th, 2013 at 10:06 pm
This is a cover from a Charles L. Harness book titiled “Firebird”. I bought it back in 1981 when it came out in paperback for the immense sum of $2.25. The cover actually fits that story a bit better. The open toed boots were even mentioned in the book. The cover totes does not fit the Chanur books at all.