YES! It’s not only a bank holiday on Monday but the site is working! Woo! That means we can finally do another Honourable Mentions!
Thanks to all of you who constantly checked the site for over a month to see if it was working again! I missed all your comments, though oddly I actually got some work done. Anyway, I’m back to my normal pace now! Till the site breaks again…
Click for full imageScott W’s Art Direction: Ok, I need me a Ben Franklin, some lecherous 18th century dudes copping feels (or having their feels copped) by busty harlots, and oh yeah, can you possibly have Mr. Hundred Dollar Bill ride in on a cardboard lightning bolt with a pleasantly startled expression on his mug?
Published 1980
Matt Comments: It wasn’t the airplanes. It was chain smoking that killed the beast.
Published 1977
Ian R Comments: Do you accept old pulp sci-fi magazine covers? I hope you use them, if only because of that… thing on the woman’s neck/shoulder. It looks quite uncomfortable.
Published between 1955 & 1958
(Average: 7.73 out of 10)
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May 23rd, 2014 at 9:54 am
Yes, I was dimly aware of the existence of the third-wheel name on the top of the Infinity cover, but in that context, with two other Big Name Authors ahead there’s only one thing to say:
I don’t be-LEEV it!
May 23rd, 2014 at 10:20 am
The corner of that zig-zag bolt slowly pushing its way into poor Bens tummy will surely leave a mark.
He seems quite content none the less.
May 23rd, 2014 at 10:25 am
What’s that, Burgess? You told him to eat lightning and crap thunder and he got mixed up?
OK, who manufactures megaphones bigger than helicopters? And doesn’t King Kong have fairly stentorian tones anyway?
His name is “Harlan”, eh? Where do these guys get their ideas?
May 23rd, 2014 at 10:31 am
@THX 1138: But human sized Zippo-lighters and tree trunk cigars are abound?
May 23rd, 2014 at 11:36 am
Pleased to see that Fritz Leiber is back. I didn’t expect him to look quite so busty, however.
May 23rd, 2014 at 12:50 pm
Top to bottom:
Ben Franklin shows off his new invention … the electric chair.
It wasn’t authored. “Typed up by Walter Wager”
Is that Edgar Rice Burrows on the cover?
May 23rd, 2014 at 12:52 pm
@Jeff Vader: Well, we all have our human-sized Zippo lighters and tree trunk cigars, I don’t know what happened to yours.
May 23rd, 2014 at 1:20 pm
Ah. But let us not forget: sometimes a cigar of tree trunk proportions is just a cigar of tree trunk proportions.
May 23rd, 2014 at 2:02 pm
I get a kick out of the way they capitalize the word “Details.” Those must be some details, over there on the other side.
A-and, hey – that guy getting groped in the Hellfire Club stole Elvira’s wig!
May 23rd, 2014 at 2:32 pm
‘romancing with a woman’. Why wasn’t Asimov jailed for peddling smut in the 50’s?
May 23rd, 2014 at 2:49 pm
The 4th cover (Asimov), has anyone else read the synopsis? It is very funny, you can almost hear the writer screaming as he writes it.
It appears Harlan has landed on a dirt road where a very attractive woman just happens to be playing in the mud (playing in the mud was big int he 40’s and 50’s).
I really like the “grapefruit†designed spaceship. I assume the vegans have taken over the planet in the future and all devices are plant based, could happen….
His face says it all as he looks down disheartened at his “ray gunâ€, I believe the damsel just said “it’s so small, I expected it to be biggerâ€
May 23rd, 2014 at 2:56 pm
Ah yes, the earlier innocent and idealistic days of pulp Sci-Fi. Ah, the escapism.
When the taste of forbidden love didn’t mean marriage, it meant murder!
May 23rd, 2014 at 8:53 pm
It’s well known that Ben Franklin discovered the electric nature of lightning by flying a kite during a thunderstorm. But where that kite was tied to…
May 23rd, 2014 at 8:54 pm
I cannot wait to see My Side by Kalix the Werewolf.
May 24th, 2014 at 8:17 am
“My Side by Kalix the Werewolf” reads like this:
“Arf… arf arf aouuuu… arf… arrrr… arf arf arf, aouuu….”
(Ghost writer: Dan Brown)
May 24th, 2014 at 2:47 pm
The Details on the other side go on to explain how 3 ‘great Science-Fiction classics’ for 100 bucks is actually a steal.
May 26th, 2014 at 1:00 pm
Cover #1:
Worst. Playground slide. Ever.
May 26th, 2014 at 1:02 pm
That sales copy about “forbidden love” is unbelievably creepy and just screams “the writer’s got issues.”
May 26th, 2014 at 4:26 pm
Steve Greenjeans, Interplanetary Explorer, dodges Layla Torpedotits by sneaking through a bile artery perpendicular to infinity!
Did anyone else forget today is a bank holiday and show up for work?
May 28th, 2014 at 12:56 pm
Wow, nothing like slicing off Ben Franklin’s balls.
Just sayin’… 😉
May 28th, 2014 at 8:19 pm
I assume my comment is awaiting moderation.
July 28th, 2014 at 9:01 pm
Okay, which literal album/song names are depicted here in addition to Ride the Lightning?
And is Hulk supposed to be crawling inside a body cavity or something? You know, placement being symbolism?
July 29th, 2014 at 2:00 pm
Only FRITZ LEIBER could have written this rubbish!
February 16th, 2024 at 5:34 pm
4) Time kettle? Really? Time kettle? Inconceivable.
February 16th, 2024 at 5:48 pm
“Yes, Benjamin. We all know how you fought Zeus[1] and stole his thunderbolt. It’s getting a bit tiresome.”
[1] https://www.deviantart.com/sharpwriter/art/Ben-Franklin-VS-Zeus-271337266
February 16th, 2024 at 8:27 pm
@ Bruce – Ben also seems to have an adamantium skeleton.
February 18th, 2024 at 1:56 am
@Bruce: Good find. Which reminds me…
John Dickinson: What’s so terrible about being called an Englishman? The English don’t seem to mind.
Dr. Benjamin Franklin: Nor would I, were I given the full rights of an Englishman. But to call me one without those rights is like calling an ox a bull. He’s thankful for the honor, but he’d much rather have restored what’s rightfully his.
John Dickinson: When did you first notice they were missing, sir?
Mr. Dickinson of Delaware must have espied the future and seen this cover.
Also, John Adams:
“Franklin then electrified him with his miraculous lightning rod and the three of them, Franklin, Washington AND the horse, conducted the entire revolution all by themselves.”
(It’s almost always the right time to quote “1776”)
Why is the dark-wigged man frolicking below Ben turned at angles not possible in our space-time continuum?
They couldn’t build Kong a giant typewriter too? Guess it was much cheaper to have Walter take dictation. Miss Not-Appearing-In-This Scene: Fay Wray.
I think the woman on the cover of “Infinity” needs to be checked to see she’s not smuggling missile warheads. (And Fritz would nobly volunteer to do that.) For all we know, she’s using the steampunky thing around her neck as a control device for them. Fembots!
That SFBC ad is… overwritten in every POSSIBLE way! Positively Shatnerian.
“The Demolished Man” is the only one of those books considered a classic today. Although in the late 50s, the Astounding anthology would have been good value for money.
February 18th, 2024 at 6:17 am
@fred: or at least an armor-plated crotch. That can’t be comfortable.
@GSS ex-noob: Maybe New Jersey hair Kong is directing his own, “the real story” movie?
Fritz Leiber: he was willing to work cheap!
“Do you suffer from an infestation of spacemen in your privet hedges?”
So is she one of those friends that obliviate the need for enemies?
Man, that _is_ overwritten.
…”time kettle?”
I’m a bit annoyed: I was almost sure I had that “Omnibus of science fiction” somewhere in my library, but now I can’t find where I put it.