Mar 06
DPN Coments: I wasn’t sure if this was a bad cover until I discovered that it was severely edited down from this.
Published 2012
DPN Coments: I wasn’t sure if this was a bad cover until I discovered that it was severely edited down from this.
Published 2012
March 6th, 2013 at 9:27 am
“Gah, I’ll never beat Donkey Kong at this rate!”
March 6th, 2013 at 10:25 am
That is certainly a heavily edited quotation. And even the finished version is hardly wildly enthusiastic.
March 6th, 2013 at 11:16 am
Presumably the other two flaming orchids (ouch!) on the full-size cover produced Robin and Maurice Gibb
March 6th, 2013 at 11:25 am
Actually I love how it looks like he is bursting out of the other book! Good photography skills DPN!
March 6th, 2013 at 12:18 pm
Bee-Man and the Space Flowers!
March 6th, 2013 at 12:51 pm
Barry Gibb goes Super Saiyan to protect the earth from autotune!
March 6th, 2013 at 12:55 pm
I didn’t realize it was a bad cover until I looked at the tags and saw “Baen Books”. The gold standard of bad covers.
March 6th, 2013 at 1:21 pm
Jesus is back, and boy is he cheesed off!
March 6th, 2013 at 1:46 pm
I have never seen “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” before. Which scene is this?
March 6th, 2013 at 2:01 pm
@fred: from the cover quote, it sounds more like Yellow Submarine.
March 6th, 2013 at 2:42 pm
I love how the quote on the cover has “…” after “Recommended” because they cut off the rest of the reviewers sentence. The full sentence was no doubt “Recommended as a paperweight, because reading it would be a terrible idea.”
March 6th, 2013 at 3:03 pm
I seem to be a little foggy on the definition of hinterlands. Does bursting out of a flaming wormhole in the vicinity of a planet qualify as going “into the hinterlands”? Don’t you need land to be hinter of? And where are the little teenage neo-quasi fascists who keep buying these damn books allowing Baen to stay in business? Shouldn’t they be out in space somewhere engaged in wars of conquest, or unjustly persecuting alien species? Guess they jusy sit home reading Baen and listening to the geezers prattle on about the glory days of the National Front.
March 6th, 2013 at 3:14 pm
@Jon. And then there’s “…combine[s]…” in the other part of the quite. Meaning the word was originally “combine”, and, for all we know, preceded by something like, “Fails to…”
March 6th, 2013 at 3:17 pm
Oh but in America…where 98% of the people don’t do military service, or have family members who do, war is FUN!
March 6th, 2013 at 5:26 pm
@ FearofMusic: and what proportion of the population do military service in your country?
March 6th, 2013 at 6:46 pm
2%. I am American, and also served 4 years in the army. I am not about to complain about something I mysrlf wouldn’t do. I have lived overseas and had a girlfriend from Leeds so I tend to be somewhat Brit-centric. Especially on. a UK based site.
March 6th, 2013 at 7:55 pm
The dig at America is partly due to Baen being an American company, partly due to the fact that more people play Call of Duty and Halo online then serve in the military, and mostly due to our American acceptance and obsession with guns and violence. Murder, machine guns, mayhem, great! A woman’s breast…GASP! Think of the children! The people who glorify war are seldom the one’s who have been in one.
March 7th, 2013 at 1:51 am
Actually, this book takes George Washington’s experiences in the French and Indian War and puts it into a sci-fi setting in which you use pedal-powered devices to travel through hyperspace. Much as the real story was, it’s about how one can repeatedly screw up by the numbers in war, but still be considered a success because the other side screwed up more. 😉 And that war is almost always stupid and wasteful, killing people for no reason beyond the avarice of distant powerbrokers who’ll never see a shot fired in person. Patriotic, yes. A little questionable at times in the whole colonist/indig issue, yeah. But not particularly rah-rah about war.
March 7th, 2013 at 3:44 am
Subtle and nuanced critique on the validity of war? Okay, who pasted the fake Baen cover on that thing? Apologies to all for veering into political expostulating.
It really is just a poopy cover.
March 7th, 2013 at 12:56 pm
Flower children in spaaace…!
March 7th, 2013 at 12:59 pm
I’m not sure what it means when the review quote seems to segue with the book’s title:
“Recommended… INTO THE HINTERLANDS”
What? It’s recommended that we stick this book in someone’s hinterlands?
March 7th, 2013 at 1:10 pm
“Look at that savior go! Jesus just broke the light barrier!”
March 7th, 2013 at 6:12 pm
@ FearofMusic: thanks for the clarification.
March 8th, 2013 at 6:22 pm
Into the hinterlands…..of spaaaaaaaaace!
April 18th, 2013 at 7:47 pm
Fun discussion. Book covers are an arcane art cooked up between publishers and artists. Authors are not involved, no doubt a wise strategy. For the record, no book by Drake or myself glorifies war. We try to depict it in all its stupid nastiness. Drake was conscripted into Vietnam and my father was at Anzio in the Shropshires.
I really like the cover of my next novel, Wolf in Shadow. The lady who posed for Karla apparently had fun. Baen again. 🙂
April 19th, 2013 at 5:46 pm
Always a pleasure to hear from the authors.
April 19th, 2013 at 6:51 pm
Much as I am reluctant to endorse the lovely Baen corporate beast, I think in all fairness I shall have to pick up Wolf in Shadow. And the above title as well. Thank you for the inside view Mr.Lambshead
April 19th, 2013 at 11:10 pm
@FearofMusic (27) – “Corporate beast?” Baen Books is one of two major US SF imprints that’s still independently owned rather than part of a larger conglomerate. (DAW Books, which Baen heavily modeled his own company on, being the other.)
April 20th, 2013 at 12:14 am
@Don Hilliard: Was trying to be snide and it didn’t come through quite right. I know Baen is a privately owned business, I was trying to imply that Baen’s dominance of the military themed sci-fi ethos is like the massive military-industrial/ corporate entities that devour massive amounts of American tax dollars. Trying but with a spectacular lack of success.
I will still be picking up Mr. Lambshead’s works, regardless
.