May 13
Click for full imageLauren F’s Art Direction: Since this story is about elves and changeling babies and magic, it definitely makes sense to represent it on the cover with an electrical plug attacking a lady holding a fluorescent light bulb.
Published 1982
(Average: 8.42 out of 10)
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May 13th, 2014 at 10:51 am
What a shocking cover!
(Someone had to say it)
May 13th, 2014 at 11:05 am
You’d be surprised too if your electric nose flute fell out while you were punting through space and… this book has the wrong cover, doesn’t it?
May 13th, 2014 at 11:53 am
That poor woman’s head seems to be largely a two-potato clock and a Mayan tape deck.
May 13th, 2014 at 12:17 pm
This cover is hideous. My brain keeps telling me to look at something else instead.
May 13th, 2014 at 12:27 pm
I’m with rev. And somewhat at a loss for words. I’d be unable to buy this simply out of fear that the cover might actually portay accurately a scene from the book.
May 13th, 2014 at 12:46 pm
Far-future cleaning lady attacks a space-toilet clog with a light-saber plunger.
May 13th, 2014 at 1:36 pm
Does anyone else think that the objects in the room behind the book in question look like they have been altered—maybe to protect the innocent book vendor or library?
May 13th, 2014 at 1:59 pm
Looks like she’s getting ready to pole vault with Luke Skywalker’s light sabre.
And hopefully there’s no water nearby…
May 13th, 2014 at 2:40 pm
Hmm, reminds me of the wheel chair bound Captain Christopher Pike from the original Star Trek series, with the lights on his shoulders representing the “YES” and “NO” blinkers.
– Chris, is this one horrific cover? Should the artist be flogged?
(Frantically flashes YES over and over again)
May 13th, 2014 at 5:07 pm
To unknown artists everywhere, when you are in doubt as to the quality of the cover you are making, just add some gratuitous nudity as a distraction.
May 15th, 2014 at 12:25 pm
No wonder my server wouldn’t let me look at this for three days.
Eighties hair and moustache on ‘The Dragon Masters’, now shoulderpads and neon. Will there be puffball skirts and legwarmers next?
May 15th, 2014 at 1:27 pm
“Ged ghich ching och nyh ghongue!!”
(=”Get this thing off my tongue!!”)
May 19th, 2014 at 6:40 pm
How well some of us remember those wonderful fashions of the eighties. Nice to know that, here, in the future, they’re making a comeback.
May 20th, 2014 at 11:51 am
I’m curious: closer inspection reveals that the magic broomstick, although apparently luminous, isn’t the source of the green light on gimp-boy’s hands – if it were the glow would be on the underside of the fingers, not on the knuckles. The real illumination is from his radioactive chest-wig but it’s whatever he’s poking with a stick that scares him, not that or the precipitous 300 foot drop behind him.
May 20th, 2014 at 3:58 pm
Now for today’s illustration class we will cover “radical foreshortening” where the key is not to make your subject’s nose tilt so far backward that the reader has no choice but to look all the way up his or her nostrils. It is also important to maintain some semblance of a forehead. These are not easy tasks, but if you want to be a top notch SF cover artist, you will need to master them. Or maybe not.
May 21st, 2014 at 3:58 am
@Tat Wood – there is obviously a second light source. It is difficult to make out anything in this cover because all the edges fade off and it it is hard to say what object starts where and what exactly you are even looking at. Kind of like the Ford AU Falcon. I guess what I am saying is this: if you should find yourself attempting to reverse park a freaked out glowing broomstick boy with a pig nose and indescribable features plus plug face, I suggest winding down the window to get a good look at where you are going.
May 21st, 2014 at 4:12 am
@Rev—maybe that second light source is the little green globe down in the corner? The one thoughtfully marked “sphere” in case we thought it was a square.
May 21st, 2014 at 6:03 pm
The human imagination is a wondrous thing. It’s amazing what the mind can do with two mismatched eyes, a nose, a half-covered mouth, two hands and a random collection of unrecognisable objects.
I just wish mine would stop doing it.
May 21st, 2014 at 6:31 pm
I’ve been in my mind
It’s such a fine line
That keeps me searchin’ for that broken sword
And I’m gettin’ bored
July 28th, 2014 at 9:08 pm
@NCB Glow polevaulting is the latest fad.