Feb 14
Click for full imageMangraa’s Art Direction: We need a different cover for the Vor Game! Do that, “soldier being led to jail”, scene we talked about. Only make the prisoner a clone… no, a SMALLER VERSION clone of the Captain! Genius! And make sure the Captain smells what mini-clone did while crossing the Captain’s path. Irresistible!
Published 1990
You might remember me from here
(Average: 6.89 out of 10)
Loading...
Lastest Tweet
February 14th, 2012 at 9:12 am
“I’d give you guys some money for matching uniforms like me and Jason here. But… I’m a little short…. ah come on… it wasn’t that bad.. was it?”
February 14th, 2012 at 9:54 am
“Breathtaking. I shall call him… Mini-Me.”
February 14th, 2012 at 12:06 pm
I find no real fault with this cover — and it doesn’t take itself seriously, which is a big plus… but it’s striking how the cover image puts the finger on why so many Baen books are not my primary reading choice.
This one cover displays almost all the problems of the “typical” Baen book (in fact it seems to be making fun of them):
1. Militarism
2. Backward-looking
3. Fixation on “yesterday’s futures” instead of plausible “future” futures
4. Flirting with the extreme right
5. Pandering to the “armchair general” type of reader
6. Obsession with guns
February 14th, 2012 at 12:43 pm
This cover about halfway accurately captures a scene from the book… namely, Miles’s arrest/detention by Imperial Security. And he is short (though maybe not THAT short… he’s just under five feet), and he was at a military base, and the General did hate his guts. But he wasn’t handcuffed to the ImpSec officer (because his hands and feet were in medical mittens/socks being treated for frostbite), and they were near the north pole so it was MUCH colder, and he wasn’t forced to walk past a handful of soldiers.
February 14th, 2012 at 12:51 pm
The look on the captain’s face is PRICELESS. I’m not sure if I should give this cover ten stars or one.
February 14th, 2012 at 2:24 pm
They don’t have the hunched back, either, and that expression is really not Miles: recall that at this point he is simultaneously nervous — an arrest was not what he’d expected — relieved to be out of there, and, oh yes, frozen half to death. He’s not *smirking*. (And the perp walk is, as Seamyst says, ridiculous: ImpSec is hardly likely to go out of its way to embarrass Miles without cause, one of the fairly small handful of people it exists to protect.)
The irony, though, is that this is the one book in the entire series that *could* legitimately have an entire *fleet* of exploding spaceships on the front cover, it being the only place the protagonist is dropped into a major fleet engagement. But, perhaps uniquely among Baen covers of Bujold books, it doesn’t have one.
(In _Shards of Honor_ there is a major fleet engagement, the invasion of Escobar, but we are thankfully watching that disaster from a distance. In _The Borders of Infinity_ there is an exploding spaceship, but firstly we’re watching from the ground and hearing about it at one remove, and secondly it’s a shuttle, not quite the same thing. But both of these have exploding spaceships on at least some of their Baen covers.)
Still, it could be worse: at least this isn’t the class of Baen cover that makes *everyone* look like a bobblehead doll.
February 14th, 2012 at 9:22 pm
It’s bring-your-child-to-work day down on the parade ground…
February 15th, 2012 at 7:44 pm
This was on my list to send in but someone beat me to it! I love the smirk on the little guy. Priceless.
February 15th, 2012 at 11:24 pm
Yngve: actually, the Vorkosigan books derive a lot of their conflict from the need to drag a backwards-looking militaristic right-wing gun-nut society forward. And Miles does his fair share of the dragging. Bujold doesn’t fit the typical Baen mold as well as the covers of her books might suggest.
March 6th, 2012 at 1:56 pm
“Man, for a little guy, he really lets out some big stinkers!”
August 27th, 2015 at 2:49 am
The big soldier and the midget both look like they’re floating.