Oct 31
TomM Comments: The horror. The horror!
Published 1978
Our eyes and minds today protected by Hummingbird Whale!
As requested by our wonderful Facebook followers!
TomM Comments: The horror. The horror!
Published 1978
Our eyes and minds today protected by Hummingbird Whale!
As requested by our wonderful Facebook followers!
October 31st, 2011 at 10:13 am
Security! We have a streaker on the Floating World!
October 31st, 2011 at 10:55 am
George Lucas REALLY needs to stop tampering with the original trilogy. I liked it fine without giant frogships and the gratuitous nudity!
October 31st, 2011 at 10:59 am
I bet Ursula Le Guin and Arrhur C. Clark never got book covers with frog-zeppelins menacing topless pinups.
I always wonder about covers with carefully detailed female torsos with no hands or feet.
October 31st, 2011 at 11:29 am
The frog-zeppelin thing had me hypnotised for ages, it’s really grotesque. I found this in an otherwise-respectable* antiques shop. My girlfriend hissed “put it down!” in a very embarrassed manner while I sneakily photographed it.
* actually, now that I think of it, they DID have several framed photographs of Hitler in one room…
October 31st, 2011 at 3:47 pm
Love the new censor bar! Fly, hummingbird whale, fly! (with that mass-to-wing ratio, it needs all the encouragement it can get)
October 31st, 2011 at 3:56 pm
She has the legs of a sumo wrestler. Odd (but hardly the oddest thing about this cover).
The reviewer at the Tribune was naming the only two science fiction writers he had ever heard of.
October 31st, 2011 at 4:06 pm
They are neither floating nor big enough to be called worlds. Planetoids in a Lagrange point maybe.
October 31st, 2011 at 4:41 pm
I still can’t decide whether that’s Thunderbird 2 or a bullfrog.
October 31st, 2011 at 5:52 pm
Editor: “What? Sales are low? Ok, let’s throw a naked girl on the cover. That should help.”
October 31st, 2011 at 5:58 pm
Book written by woman and with female protagonist. Book passes the Bechdel test with flying colours, mostly consisting of complex politics. However, protagonist gives birth at one point, so obviously the cover image is entirely relevant and has nothing grotesque about it at all.
Or something.
October 31st, 2011 at 7:22 pm
The fact that there’s apparently a mask and rebreather apparatus beside the woman intrigues me. At first glance you might think they were her clothes, but no. Unless she’s the kind of girl who forgets to put on a shirt but remembers her gas mask.
November 1st, 2011 at 3:59 am
Because nothing screams NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! more than a nubile young woman about to be ravished by a giant alien frog.
November 1st, 2011 at 10:18 am
Alessandra asked:
“I always wonder about covers with carefully detailed female torsos with no hands or feet.”
-Because in the Fuuu-tuure, people will teleport around and they no longer need hands nor feet!
…well, at least that’s the editors’ excuse.
November 17th, 2011 at 6:21 pm
Because the first thing I’d if I found a giant alien egg-bearing catfish over my head is check to see if I put on deodorant in the morning.
August 16th, 2015 at 12:39 pm
Lured by the bait, our quarry–the wild Donald Trump–hove in to view.
August 17th, 2015 at 10:06 am
@Alessandra, @Jane: Could be about golf..
August 18th, 2015 at 12:38 am
If you’re having girl problems, I feel bad for you, son. I got 99 problems but a space frog with supernumerary eyes coasting over a planet-sized gum rubber ain’t one.
December 7th, 2018 at 4:11 am
The unedited blurb:
“On a par with Ursula Le Guin. Or Arthur C. Clark. I forget which.”
December 7th, 2018 at 6:22 am
“Or somebody else with a tripartite name. Alfred E. Neumann, maybe?”
December 7th, 2018 at 10:59 am
Hey, hands and feet are hard to draw, and only a small percentage of SF illustrators are serial killers with a collection of appendages.
I actually like the zeppelin frog spider: it sort of says “alien worlds ahead!” (It may be lying, admittedly)
Long may the hummingbird-whale reign!
December 7th, 2018 at 12:31 pm
Making love in the afternoon with Cecilia
Up in my bedroom (making love)
I got up to wash my face
When I come back to bed someone’s taken my place
December 7th, 2018 at 4:32 pm
@ fred—GSS! let’s continue into the chorus . . .
🎼 Cecilia, you’re breaking my eyes
You’re shaking my mind with this sci-fi
Oh, Cecilia, on my giant knees
I’m begging you please to go Baen
Go to Baen
Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba, ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-baen
🎶 🎶
December 7th, 2018 at 5:37 pm
The cover elements are very isolated from one another. I am guessing that the original cover featured the hummingbird whale flying/looming over something else. When it didn’t sell, the artist said “what the hell,” painted out the bottom third and added a naked woman. Quick sale.
December 7th, 2018 at 8:47 pm
@fred and BC: GSSs.
December 8th, 2018 at 12:42 pm
@Tor: The hummingbird whale was a briefly-lasting predecessor to space sheep, slightly less seen than C.S. Lewis but slightly more popular than The Two Ronnies. Click on the image to see the more shameful original cover.
Personally this reminds me of THAT scene in Galaxy of Terror that you can’t mention in polite company. And even in impolite company is pushing it.