Jan 14
MisterBob Comments: OK, a tower from earth goes all the way to the stars, but the spaceman doing the fonts has fallen off the top.
Published 1988
MisterBob Comments: OK, a tower from earth goes all the way to the stars, but the spaceman doing the fonts has fallen off the top.
Published 1988
January 14th, 2013 at 9:14 am
“You won’t copy Felix very well without the parachute now, will you?”
January 14th, 2013 at 11:24 am
Awww, I was going to do a Felix Baumgartner joke.
I wonder what the guy on the left is going to do with his gigantic micrometer. I also wonder if that’s the longest stick of Blackpool rock ever made (look, it even references Blackpool Tower!).
January 14th, 2013 at 2:23 pm
There’s so much in this cover, and yet all I can think when I look at it is “shiny red arse”. That says more about me than about the cover, I fully concede. Baboony.
January 14th, 2013 at 3:39 pm
Does EVERY tall building have words on its roof telling you what it is? I must look at Google Earth more often.
January 14th, 2013 at 5:57 pm
I’m somewhat unconvinced by the practicality of a sky tower reaching thousands of miles into space which appears to be only about 7 feet in diameter. Conditions for the occupants would be cramped to say the least, and what happens at the end of a movie on one of the (presumably several hundred) theater levels when 200 people all try to get in to the toilets at once?
January 14th, 2013 at 6:26 pm
Argentina builds a space tower? If I were approving this cover for publication my one word to the art department would be ’emboss’.
January 14th, 2013 at 9:08 pm
American Gladiators… in spaaaace!
January 14th, 2013 at 9:09 pm
Honest, Guv, sci-fi is not about overcompensation fantasies…
January 14th, 2013 at 10:18 pm
This cover would be sublimely excellent were this book published in 1948…but 1988? Apparently Dustin Hoffmans character was given good advice in The Gradute. Plastic…in the future buildings and even people will be made of plastic.
January 14th, 2013 at 11:15 pm
Also, because you CAN build something, it doesn’t mean you SHOULD. Upon gazing upon this cover and realizing what he had wrought, a stunned Phillip C. Jennings was heard to mutter “I am become…plastic.”
January 15th, 2013 at 1:59 am
I checked the perspective three times to make sure that it wasn’t off. But it still looks all wrong! Is there a word for that?
(I realize it’s rather a mistake asking a question in a forum like this one, but I’m in need of a larff on a Monday, even if it’s at my expense.)
January 15th, 2013 at 2:14 am
In space no one can hear you scream…or question the artist’s inability to master the basic techniques.
January 15th, 2013 at 3:37 am
Phil, that isn’t a “gigantic micrometer” it is what they use to replace the letters. probably a new corporate sponsor… tough job.
January 15th, 2013 at 6:11 am
Sure, it goes to the sky, but what the hell does that actually mean when every “floor” of the tower is just wide enough for a person of average height to try to lie down and end up banging their head on the wall? Just what are you using all that space for? Microgravity-farmed weasels?
January 15th, 2013 at 11:11 am
What that tower is for (looking the way it does)? Some suggestions:
A) BP’s new technology for polluting space instead of the oceans
B) An exhaust pipe for hot air, emerging directly from Washington D.C.
C) Actually a drill in disguise, built to penetrate the Earth’s crust and extract thermal energy
D) A snapshot from the calcified mind of a middle-aged science-fiction fan
January 15th, 2013 at 1:16 pm
@A..R. Yngve. If I visit your website in the near future and find any of those ideas incorporated into your own works I will be crushed, disillusioned…and intrigued.
January 15th, 2013 at 1:23 pm
It’s probably an Orbital Tower, intended to connect to a geosynchronous satellite and thus function as a lift to space. (As in ‘Web Between the Worlds’ and ‘The Fountains of Paradise’). In which case, he said pedantically, fixing the bottom end in Buenos Aires rather than an equatorial base would make it flail around, probably wrecking the weather and snapping about halfway up. And besides, you’d have to spend ten days not making eye-contact and pretending it wasn’t you who farted, whilst listening to lift-music, Argentine-style (probably Astor Piazzolo, which is fine for the first five minutes but ten solid days…)
January 15th, 2013 at 1:42 pm
Wow, that deep-sea diver really took a wrong turn somewhere.
January 16th, 2013 at 12:44 am
@A.R. Yngve. Sir, if I viisit your site in the future and find any of these ideas incorporated into your own work I will be dismayed, disillusioned, disgusted….and intrigued.
January 31st, 2013 at 1:34 pm
“Ok, I think I know where this key goes….Hey Eddy, can you turn around for me?”
August 25th, 2015 at 4:00 am
That’s one oddly designed space elevator . . .