For many years my favorite science fiction novel was The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge. The book was a comfort read for me. I had read it so often I could quote it, and given a sentence or two from anywhere in the book, I could tell what came before, and what came after. …
Tag: Book covers
She Came from Planet Five
She came from Planet Five I knew it all the time She wore a metal miniskirt As she stood knee-deep in dirt
Black and White Swans
This lovely illustration, for the MG book series The School for Good and Evil, is by Italian illustrator Iacopo Bruno. It’s the cover art for the third book, The Last Ever After. Bruno’s previous covers were OK, but this one really knocks it out of the park with its black and white swans and twin …
Atompunk Reading
In the Atompunk Age, manly men read books like this one, accompanied by a dry martini.
Hijacked!
In addition to the Chronicles of Narnia, C. S. Lewis wrote the philosophical Planet trilogy (also known as the Cosmic Trilogy): Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength. These were for adult readers and in the science fiction genre (well, science fantasy, with more than a touch of the Victorian adventure novel) …
Dissing on The Dispossessed
I’m not going to snark on the book itself here, only the covers. But in doing so you’ll learn a fair amount about the book! First of all, this one, which to my mind is the classic one. It’s grand, sweeping, colorful, exciting. It boils the tale down to its basics: two worlds, very different, …
Buttscratcher
Even barbarian heroes get itches in the most private of places.
Swooning Spaceman
For a change, the BEM (Bug-eyed monster, even though it’s a robot) is carrying away a strapping but unconscious young man instead of a scantily clad young woman. His plight is equally dire as the robot seems none too friendly.
Equal Opportunity
A hopeful Atompunk depiction of the Space Age from the early 1960s complete with revolving space station and a family of astronauts with jetpacks. Now the early 1960s were likely as sexist as America ever got, and very very firmly into gender roles — boy child has a blue spacesuit, and girl child a pink …
Yellow Fairy Book
The first collections of fairy tales, like Andrew Lang’s Yellow Fairy Book above, were intended for offspring of wealthy consumers. The book itself is sturdily made and sumptuously illustrated with pen drawings in a flowing, Art Nouveau style. More decoration is seen on the spine and cover, which has embossing as well as a two-ink …