Apr 12
Frank Comments: Let’s go for something colourful! Whatever that is in red in the foreground (a suit? a robot?) clearly needs a couple Behind You tags. One for the Goop From Above, one for the lady with the bow.
Published 1964
April 12th, 2013 at 10:17 am
The head of the Zargon Fleet regretted ever agreeing to appear on Noel’s House Party.
April 12th, 2013 at 10:28 am
Samus! Is that really you?
April 12th, 2013 at 11:55 am
Very poor cover blurb, no? And it would sit even worse above other titles:
The world that could not be
DEATHWORLD
The world that could not be
RINGWORLD
April 12th, 2013 at 11:56 am
WILLY WONKA AND THE FUDGE MELTDOWN
April 12th, 2013 at 12:06 pm
Looks more like the Testicles of Time….if time had testicles.
April 12th, 2013 at 2:07 pm
This cover confirms my suspicions that Ace Books used to have a pile of unpublished manuscripts in one corner, a pile of unused cover illustrations in another corner and a wheel of random title words. Pick a book, a cover and spin the wheel twice. Result: The “Coils” of “Time”
or … Switch the titles and covers with the flip side of this Ace Double and they make a lot more sense. Error at the print shop?
April 12th, 2013 at 3:03 pm
Poor robot. With no depth perception and those weird and impractical fingers, no wonder he has been deemed obsolete. Of course being recycled into processed cheese spread seems absurd, but that’s the future for ya.
April 12th, 2013 at 3:20 pm
This cover was clearly drawn while the artist was very high and playing on his original 8 bit NES system. Samus in the foreground and Zelda with the bow in the back. I know super Mario and Luigi are in here somewhere….
I love the underwater OR dreamy sequence fonts as well, good show sir!!
April 12th, 2013 at 7:07 pm
Would it be better if the blurb read: “The World that Should Not Be”?
April 12th, 2013 at 7:14 pm
Is that a giant booger on the cover? No, its snot.
April 12th, 2013 at 7:18 pm
The Coulis of Time.
April 12th, 2013 at 11:25 pm
Why is ‘of time’ outlined while ‘the coils’ is not? Are there other ‘the coils’ books out there or maybe ‘of time’? The coils of Newsweek. The vacuum tubes of time.
April 13th, 2013 at 11:30 am
Bibliomancer’s right: there is not just a lack of correlation between the covers of either half of an Ace Double and the contents (often at least one was a bantamweight British writer smuggling very parochial in-jokes into the US mass market) but in this case it seems the covers were so close that they deliberately swapped them over to avoid any hint of the events within.
April 13th, 2013 at 7:55 pm
The curse of GSS — it encourages me to take some of these books home and read ’em so I can find out what the cover has to do with the story. And here I was trying to keep my Chandler focus on the John Grimes stories.
April 13th, 2013 at 9:23 pm
Wait. Title at left. ‘Slaughtermatic‘? They wrote a whole book about the lunch I had with my ex’s parents?
April 13th, 2013 at 10:20 pm
Investigating Slaughtermatic. According to WikiPaedia, ‘A synesthete, Aylett claims to have books appear in his brain in one visual “glob” which looks like a piece of gum.’ That’s it, right on the front of Coils. Mr. Aylett, we’ve found your next literary creation. Just peel it off and put it on the keyboard. 😉
April 13th, 2013 at 11:39 pm
Intrigued was I by this ‘Slaughtermatic’ as well. To Amazon went I. Dissapointed in this was I. A truly unremarkable cover this has. 3 1/2 stars rated of 5 was this. Ordered this I have. When Yoda I have stopped channelling, read this I will.
April 14th, 2013 at 4:25 am
If this book comes up on WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE, be sure to choose answer A. Bertram Chandler (not B. Raymond Chandler, or C. Bertie Bassett).
April 15th, 2013 at 11:00 am
You know, that cover art would have worked just fine with Samuel Delany’s latest novel…
(I only read the review! Honestly!)
April 15th, 2013 at 5:08 pm
*looks elsewhere in background*
Iain… 🙁
April 17th, 2013 at 6:12 pm
I should mention that the back cover is somewhat related to its story, it’s a John Grimes novel and the Mannschenn drive takes ’em to some other universe where they find and explore a vanished seagoing vessel adrift in space.
@Herm: yes, that was intentional, it was a day or two after Banks’ prognosis hit the blogosphere and as long as I had to move this book to better lighting I figured having a Banks book in the background would be a good thing to do.
April 19th, 2013 at 8:37 pm
@fred I think that the artists kid wanted to play with his/her parent’s markers, so the artist allowed the kid to outline only those words.
You like how I kept my response gender-neutral?
April 20th, 2013 at 8:54 pm
Okay, I actually read this book. (It was a gift from a friend who knows my love of all things time travel.) I remember the lady with a bow, but I don’t recall an avalanche of cheddar-flavoured bubble gum being involved.
April 21st, 2013 at 7:20 am
Now I’ve read it too. It’s more of a light entertainment than a quality read, but then what should I expect from half of an Ace Double? It does indeed start out as a time-travel story (and recycles the Mannschenn Drive/Carlotti Radio trope of crossing precessing gyroscopes and things like Möbius strips). The protagonist’s first trip is taken in a power suit that provides good protection from the elements, but the motion actuators aren’t working so he gets to stand there and look at the native fauna running away until something knocks him over from behind.
I don’t think we ever find out whether it was the goop.
August 25th, 2015 at 2:48 am
That robot is remarkably unconcerned by the fact that it’s being slowly covered by alien slime dripping from the ceiling.