Sep 25
Click for full imageExcuse me, Sir, there is a phone call for you.
Art Director: Is it ready?
Mysterious caller: It’s more glorious than you could ever imagine.
Art Director: You remembered the…
Mysterious caller: Vampire, Minotaur, Robot, Damsel, Roman man in toga with sword, Angel and death star?
Art Director: Don’t forget Saberhagen.. he must be in there to! Mu hahahahahahaaha!
Mysterious caller: MU hahahahahahahaahhahaaha
Art Director: No… only I may laugh! Mu hahahaahahahah!
Mysterious caller: ………………………
(Average: 8.45 out of 10)
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September 25th, 2009 at 10:17 am
Sexist bastards. They missed out a busty sword-weilding Amazon.
There’s room. Right above the robot, underneath the winged bloke.
Is that a disco ball?
I see…Gay Night. It all becomes clear.
I’ll be quiet now.
September 25th, 2009 at 10:26 am
Roses: Hahaha 😀
Yes it so could be! Does look like a friday night at the, ‘meat factory’.
*coughs* Not that I would know….
September 25th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
I might be imagining this but is the golden robot like thing on the left a lady?
September 25th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
Cyberdamsel, perhaps. You’d have to read the book to find out! 😀
September 25th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Kinda looks like she has a nun’s face though.
CSA: was this worth the wait? Eh?!
September 25th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Its beautiful :'(
Four distinctly different fonts. and a mash of randomness, dare i say its better than Jim Baen’s Universe book?
… yes, i dare… it’s better than jim baens universe
Its so awful, its gone full circle to be awesome again. I’d proudly read that on a train.
September 25th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
Take that back, CSA. Take it back!
January 29th, 2010 at 9:13 pm
Is this legitimate genre fiction or the cover for a Conan O’Brien sketch? Where’s PimpBot 3000 and the Masturbating Bear?
April 29th, 2010 at 3:05 am
Re: Karl’s comment
It is legitimate genre fiction, as Mr Saberhagen has written stories where Sherlock Holmes fought Count Dracula in Victorian London, which was approved by the Conan Doyle Estate, & published as a full length novel in the U.S (although serious Holmes fans regard this story, & indeed Saberhagen’s “origin story” for Sherlock Holmes, published in Omni Magazine inthe late 1980’s as “Non-canonical” in the extreme).
The Robot & the “Death Star” are in fact Berserker constructs, examples of a species of self replicating robots, originally believed to be a “doomsday weapon” that turned on it’s creators, & in the “Berserker Universe” are rabidly trying to destroy all biological lifeforms in the universe, as to the Berserker’s, they represent Chaos…
(Personally, I wonder why said berserker’s in the cover, were not trying to destroy Dracula, as to them, he counts as a annoyingly persistant strain of “Badlife”…)
October 5th, 2011 at 5:14 pm
I missed this cover before. It is truly awe-inspiring in its sheer awfulness. I especially admire how after having crammed a minotaur, a vampire, a robot, a death star and a series of explosions onto the cover, they still decided they needed bright orange fonts.
You know… to get people’s attention.
December 3rd, 2014 at 8:16 pm
Fred Saberhagen, of Berserkers, Swords and Vampires…must be a junior partner, then…if there are Vampires, they’re solicitors…if there are Berserkers, it must be copyright court…but swords, I haven’t a clue what that’s about. Maybe the chap in the back with the sword is a paralegal?
December 8th, 2014 at 2:32 pm
Are you SURE this isn’t the cover to FRED SABERHAGEN OF COSPLAY…??
December 9th, 2014 at 1:18 pm
Ground floor: Perfumery, stationery, and leather goods, wigs and haberdashery, berserkers, swords and vampires. Going up…
July 1st, 2016 at 9:25 am
Dude writes with a pencil. That’s just weird.
July 1st, 2016 at 11:13 am
Of Money, Money & Money: A Baen Retrospective.
July 1st, 2016 at 11:16 am
EDUCATION! Button down collar rules.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBcCpHTj8bY
July 1st, 2016 at 1:17 pm
Isn’t a “behind you!” tag much needed here?
July 1st, 2016 at 2:20 pm
@THX – Yes. But in some sense, all flashbacks are BEHIND YOU!
July 1st, 2016 at 3:47 pm
Oh dear god i cant believe my eyes my eyes
July 1st, 2016 at 10:59 pm
What kind of second-rate vampires, minotaurs, robots and eagle-men can’t get through a dry-ice cloud at a signing?
July 2nd, 2016 at 6:04 am
At first glance I thought Icarus back there was being crucified.
July 2nd, 2016 at 8:57 pm
@B.Chiclitz: it looks as if he’s been shot in the back by the Baen logo.
July 3rd, 2016 at 2:49 pm
They all be like, “We were written by THAT guy???”
July 3rd, 2016 at 6:20 pm
It’s as if the word omnishambles was created just to describe this.
January 21st, 2017 at 7:29 am
Would BAEN! (I type it like that only because there aren’t any explosion or boob keys on my computer) go out of business if it became illegal to use orange on a book cover, or even just on a font?
January 25th, 2019 at 6:12 am
But you have to give Saberhagen credit: He was able to write all these stories with a bent and curving pencil.
January 25th, 2019 at 8:14 am
@Tor Mented: he’s just snapped his pencil in reaction to the godawful photoshop. Mind you, it’s so awful that he’s snapping his pencil years before this cover came out.
(Perhaps we need a “peeing on the author’s grave” tag)
January 25th, 2019 at 10:09 am
Even though he never wrote them, this cover needs a cat people.
January 25th, 2019 at 12:29 pm
He should have put the eraser end of that pencil to more use.
January 26th, 2019 at 7:44 am
This… just hasn’t gotten any better in the past 10 (!) years of GSS, has it? It seems to be on its third go-round and we’re still finding more horror in it. And not the kind of horror Fred would’ve appreciated.
Fred was a practicing Catholic, so all I can say is: Thank God he was dead before this book came out.
Repackaging old stuff and slapping a hideous cover with a goofy photo on it after the author rings down the curtain and joins the choir invisible seems to be an M.O. with them, doesn’t it? Seems a bit distasteful to me. Like their “art” department. And “editorial” department. And pretty much everything else.
Considering the world view of their readers and many of the authors, one wonders what they think of this illustration of the halcyon* days of Halloween in the Castro. Heck, there aren’t even any norks front and center.
Reaction from Mr. xn: dead silence, gobsmacked expression, slight headshake.
*Or possibly Halcion; this does look like something you’d see after a bad drug reaction some night.
January 26th, 2019 at 11:06 am
But hey — at least the Baen art department knows how to grab your attention.
Imagine a “serious” book like, say, Margaret Atwood’s ORYX AND CRAKE, done in the style of a Baen release…
January 26th, 2019 at 11:39 pm
@ARY: Their head “editor”* openly admits that they don’t bother to proofread or copyedit b/c their audience simply doesn’t notice. And their audience likes font abuse, bright colors, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink illustrations, preferably with guns, cleavage, body armor and shiny Ting!
They print with a cheaper grade of paper and ink than other publishers, charge exorbitant prices for ebook ARC’s, do a lot of cheap reprints (like this), some of which are rewritten to fit house “style” and shuffled/recombined regularly with a different ridiculous cover. I have my suspicions about their payment rates, but absolutely no data to back that up. They do pay promptly and in full, though.
And this works for them — they keep costs down by having a very small staff of basically freelancers scattered about the US, so not much real estate costs, cheaper physical books, emphasis on ebooks, and very little distribution outside the US, even for their few good authors, like their sole multi-award-winner Lois McMaster Bujold.
5 Hugos and 2 Nebulas, and Lois still has to fight to keep her covers nork-free — and doesn’t always succeed, as we’ve seen here. The books she has the rights reverted for, or with other publishers, have either minimalist or otherwise tasteful covers that you’d be happy to read on the bus.
So they’re perfectly happy in their little right-wing niche, and I think they can best be summed up as:
BAEN! ‘MERICA, FUCK YEAH!!!
(if the “blink” tag still worked, I’d have used it there)
* I put it in quotes b/c I know far more than I ever wanted to about their process, b/c years of being Worldcon attending and SMOF-adjacent,** particularly during the Puppy Kerpupple — shan’t further bore you. And what editing they do do is sort of a catch as catch can group effort, kinda sorta.
** Seriously, I knew George RR Martin when he had long dark hair, a short beard, no hat, and we both had many fewer pounds/kilos. I have about the same income, though, which is why I went to GRRMs fancy catered open bar party last Worldcon instead of the other way around. ***
*** Nobody died, though there are always jokes about “Is it really a good idea to go to one of his parties? Eh, it’s not a wedding, we’re probably safe.”
January 27th, 2019 at 4:01 am
@Biblio: Zing!
January 28th, 2019 at 2:48 am
@B’mancer: Remember, Fred was dead by then and had no control over the cover. Else I’m pretty sure he’d have erased everything except his name, and provided a non-dorky photo of himself.
That bent pencil is a very small detail, easily missed since the average viewer is either blind or wishes they were by the time they get down to it. But it’s also the sloppiest. I’m no ‘shop expert (neither was the cover maker, har har), but wouldn’t it literally have been easier to continue something in a straight line?
January 28th, 2019 at 3:52 am
@GSSxN: I made the bent-pencil joke, but in fairness to the artist, I think it’s an illusion. Note how the bottom of the cover is not a straight line in the photo. There appear to be curves in the cover that distort the image. The pencil somewhat follows the curve at the bottom of the book.
January 29th, 2019 at 5:42 am
@Tor: If it’s a dust jacket and the spine’s slid around to the front, that would account for it.
BUT! The photo on ISFDB, with no crease, shows the bend as well.
AND! So does the paperback cover, obviously no dust jacket.
SO! You were right the first time.
The way the cover bends out at the bottom right makes me think it’s the paperback version. Which means we were actually lucky; if ISFDB is to be believed, the hardback cover was even more brightly colored and lurid. Yikes.