May 14
Good Show Sir’s Art Direction: Nightmare… Blue… well we can put some blue on the cover. But how do we get across… nightmare? I say that like I don’t already know the answer. Two words, cat person… with a light bulb syringe.
Published 1977
May 14th, 2012 at 12:00 pm
“And where’s that going?” asked Whitley Streiber nervously.
May 14th, 2012 at 12:21 pm
Old cat features there seems to have a python slithering up and over his head. Maybe that is who/what the tinging syringe is intended for.
May 14th, 2012 at 1:09 pm
OH GOD
May 14th, 2012 at 1:34 pm
THX 1138 at #1:
Genius! ๐
May 14th, 2012 at 2:49 pm
With fingers like those trying to hold an overfull needle? No wonder he’s focussing so hard.
The font is rather bland, isn’t it? Considering it’s supposed to be nightmarish and all.
May 14th, 2012 at 6:15 pm
Just say no.
May 15th, 2012 at 12:10 am
I tried to find out what the book is even about, to see if the cover has anything to do with the story– or if it was another cover invented whole-cloth by deranged artists– but there’s diddly squat out there. Not even a one-line plot summary.
May 15th, 2012 at 4:36 am
@ Jerk: Here’s a link to a summary:
http://www.lwcurrey.com/pages/books/133025/gardner-dozois-george-alec-effinger/nightmare-blue
May 15th, 2012 at 10:37 am
Fred’s comment prompts me to add: it’s not just Zammo. (Sad ’80s reference there; sad in more ways than one.)
May 15th, 2012 at 12:09 pm
It’s the marbled endpapers monster.
May 15th, 2012 at 12:13 pm
I remain baffled by why publishers would have chosen covers that are so damn off-putting. It’s not even that I wouldn’t take this on the bus. I wouldn’t even want to touch it.
May 16th, 2012 at 4:11 pm
M’aiq knows much, tells some. M’aiq knows things others do not.
May 16th, 2012 at 8:42 pm
M’aiq it stop!
May 17th, 2012 at 11:54 am
“… Corcail Sendijen, a lobster-like alien, to thwart the plans of the Aensalords, a supposedly benign alien race now living on Earth, who have secretly developed a highly addictive drug which they intend to use to addict and enslave all the inhabitants of the known universe…”
Well, I suppose I can see the drug, but here’s a golden chance missed for one more mighty lobster-monster.
I assume the artist was too accustomed to drawing cat people to even bother – or maybe that’s the only thing he knew how to draw.
June 12th, 2012 at 6:13 pm
The syringe is rounded at the front to give it that “futuristic look” similar to the Jetsons, where I think even their pens had little round things on them…were they antennas?
August 2nd, 2015 at 8:11 pm
“Excuse me, do you have these in Bedwet Yellow to match my eyes? No? Well, I guess Nightmare Blue it is then. It’ll at least bring out my markings. I’ll take this one.”
August 25th, 2015 at 2:42 am
Wookiee + Cougar + Dreadlocks = What.
March 27th, 2020 at 7:16 am
@Hep C: my first idea for a comment was “Nightmare blue – the #1 drug for cat-people cultists everywhere!” Seems I inadvertently ended in the correct ballpark.
I think it’s wearing a hood? Like a proper cultist, although with glow-in-the-dark fringes to give things a proper 1970s disco scene air. Heck, maybe it’s at a disco- good place to sell drugs.
(It occurs to me that it is a bit unlikely a drug would have similar effects on species as dissimilar as terrestrial cats and lobsters, let alone look-alikes from different solar systems. Maybe it’s A Small Universe After All).
March 27th, 2020 at 10:01 am
I hope we all clapped for this guy last night.
March 27th, 2020 at 11:47 am
The Star Wars film franchise would be 100% better with colorful robes.
March 27th, 2020 at 1:50 pm
Obi Wan Cat-nobi
March 27th, 2020 at 2:07 pm
This malaria drug will work. I promise!
March 27th, 2020 at 3:15 pm
Ting is one helluva drug!
March 27th, 2020 at 5:35 pm
@Biblio: Obi Wan Catnippy.
March 27th, 2020 at 5:37 pm
The movie version of โCatsโ is just as weird as they say it is.
March 27th, 2020 at 6:35 pm
Although William Morris’s Arts & Crafts movement had a profound and lasting effect on the design arts of the 20th and 21st centuries, sometimes it could go pretty badly off the rails, usually due to an excessive focus on the late 19th century penchant for psychoactive drugs.
March 27th, 2020 at 8:44 pm
This does somewhat illustrate the premise of the book.
But there are a lot of other possible covers that would have done that without scaring off potential readers.
@Alessandra (10)) gets a much-belated and probably unread GSS.
@Francis: apparently addicting to the entire universe, if past covers are to be believed. Not that we can always believe our eyes upon gazing at them.
March 28th, 2020 at 2:17 am
Those eyes make him (her? it? them?) look as if they’ve been using a lot of their own product.
November 26th, 2021 at 12:25 pm
This is drugs. This is the Gorn on drugs. Any questions?