Good Show Sir

Look at the calendar. It seems we have a very important day circled there. No, it’s not a Monday Bank Holiday. It’s the Good Show Sir 10th Birthday Gala! I guess we need to post OUR GREATEST COVER EVER! Which, unfortunately, Tag Wizard forgot to organize. So we will just have to fish something out of the slush pile. At least the title is somewhat relevant.

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Good Show Comments: The whole Good Show Sir experience was eerily foretold in B. Flackes’ classic science fiction novel “Ten Years to Oblivion”!

Thanks to all of our GSS After Dark club members for making it to the JuJu Chelsea for a wild evening of wining and dining. And what a surprise! Thanks to our good friends at Baen for picking up the tab. Didn’t you know? They bought us out last month in an unfriendly takeover. Well it’s been a good run.

We even ordered a very appropriate birthday cake:

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Good Show Comments: Yeah, it’s photoshopped. We bought one of those edible photo cakes and even sent over a picture of our favourite book cover on a thumb drive for the baker to put on the icing. Unfortunately this is what was delivered to the party:

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Good Show Comments: But thanks anyway to all the loyal kooks who have been showing up these many years and somehow keeping this shitshow going. And for all the commenters who have fallen by the wayside. And for the one-off drive-by’s who remind us that it was really a great book and the cover is very professionally done and shows something that was really in the story. Remember, the real Good Show Sir were the friends we made along the way. Or some such bollocks.

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Good Show Comments: … Let’s end the next decade with a bang!

Published 1951, 1964

(Average: 7.56 out of 10)

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Monty Comments: Those colors.

Published 1995

(Average: 6.33 out of 10)

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Happy New Year 2019! We will remember 2018 for all the cameo appearances of actual professional artists, authors and editors in the comments! Surprisingly, they are not happy! Why would they mistake our lovely site for some sort of Museum of Bad Art? Just because our tagline is “Only the worst Sci-fi/Fantasy book covers”? First thing to do in the near year is to change that to “Only the wurst Sci-fi/Fantasy book covers” so they don’t misunderstand our intent. Not all though. Some get it.

We here at Good Show Sir Headquarters are looking forward to the new year and our gala 10th Anniversary bash scheduled at an undisclosed location sometime in March. Our special friends will have their invitations hand-delivered by a uniformed government agent sometime in the very near future.

As always, GSS After Dark Platinum Club Members can get their party invitations here.

On to the honours. Be aware that this post was prerecorded and if the order of the top three keep shifting, well, fuck it. I’ll just have to go in and delete some ratings.

First, the top rated cover of last year:

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Down in the Black Gang
Sexual innuendo. Always a crowd pleaser.

Our silver medal winner is the Jack Chalker Honourable Mention clusterfuck:

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Honourable Mentions 19

As Bruce A Munro aptly put it: Well, if anyone was uncertain that Jack Chalker was dead, this should serve as convincing evidence.

And the bronze medal winning:

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Carnacki the Ghost-Finder
pot-bellied dude and pot-bellied pig

My personal favourite cover of 2018:

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The Image of the Beast/Blown
Cover Blown. Mind Blown.

And Tag Wizard’s chosen favourite from the year:

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Chaos Mode
Es car go go

Peace out
— GSS Admin

(Average: 7.56 out of 10)

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Good Show Sir Comments: I think it’s a tale of Merlin showing a boy Robin Hood his model airplane collection and time machine, but I don’t care enough to read it and actually find out.

Published 1952

(Average: 6.44 out of 10)

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Baba Louie Comments: Italian sign language: “Whya me Lord?”

Published 1963

(Average: 8.11 out of 10)

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Tag Wizard Comments: Nicola Alter writes the Thoughts on Fantasy blog and last year she set out to create an over-the-top fantasy book cover including all the standard fantasy clichés. As she wrote:

“I’ve encountered a few covers that take it a bit far, but I thought it’d be amusing to go even further, and have a bit of fun with the tropes of my favourite genre… so here is my recipe for a no-holds-barred, all-boxes-ticked, epic high fantasy book cover (accompanied by examples from the most clichéd design I can muster).”

Well, we here at Good Show Sir! consider ourselves the experts on bad covers. So we’ll be the judge of that!

So check out her post where she walks you through the steps:

How to Make a Clichéd High Fantasy Cover

And be sure to visit the rest of her site and welcome her to join us here at Good Show Sir: the home of ethnic and erudite book cover curation.

Published 2017

(Average: 8.33 out of 10)

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Bibliomancer Comments: Supermind is a very stable genius. The F.B.I. will never outsmart him.

Published 1963

(Average: 7.67 out of 10)

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To my great surprise I’ve realised that this in fact isn’t the original and somehow a familiar man-tiger has made its way into the Hammer Horror classic The Devil Rides Out!

Have a good evening and please remember not to pick up any Clavicles of Solomon that you might find. Who knows when – or how – the great RX might be conjured!

(Average: 8.67 out of 10)

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A bit late but we had the pleasure of talking with Ken MacLeod (kenmacleod.blogspot.com) and Adam Roberts (www.adamroberts.com) at the Edinburgh Book festival on Sunday. Very interesting talk of which we could have sat through for hours more. Both jolly nice blokes, who didn’t flinch when asked to sign my copy of Rx For Chaos.

So watch out future authors, you too might be asked to sign the Chaos!

(Average: 8.56 out of 10)

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Hey.

This is just a quick message for those who follow along here at Good Show Sir or for those that are passing by. I apologise for the lack of updates recently and I put it down to not actually having any more book covers in my personal archive. Within the next few weeks I am hoping to get more Good Shows and do a little bit of web site changes to make everything look that little bit more special.

I do know there are people who regularly head to this website even though it has only been up for two months and I have done next to no advertising. It’s much appreciated!! And remember, if you have any terrible book covers then please send them in. Together we can create something truely awesome!

Yours,
– Good Show Sir

(Average: 4.67 out of 10)

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