May 10
Dead Stuff With Big Teeth Comments: Malia Obama has kept active physically and professionally during her ‘gap year’.
Published 2016
Dead Stuff With Big Teeth Comments: Malia Obama has kept active physically and professionally during her ‘gap year’.
Published 2016
May 10th, 2017 at 8:39 am
“I want to return this copy. The cover is broken!”
May 10th, 2017 at 8:41 am
“New patient for you, doctor…”
“Oh God. What happened to her?”
“She says she punched a window with her metal bionic arm… but she forgot that the rest of her body wasn’t impervious to glass splinters and shards.”
“Kids these days. Okay, prepare for surgery.”
May 10th, 2017 at 10:56 am
I hate getting my hand caught in a cobweb as well.
May 10th, 2017 at 11:27 am
Shattering the glass ceiling.
May 10th, 2017 at 11:51 am
I see blurbs were cheaper by the (one third) dozen last year. I blame Facebook. (I blame Facebook for most things these days.)
May 10th, 2017 at 11:58 am
Dead technology…like a one year old Kindle Fire?
May 10th, 2017 at 1:37 pm
“Alliteration is dead to me.” Stephen Blackmoore
May 10th, 2017 at 1:45 pm
I also graduated from Necro Tech – Home of the Fightin’ Cyborgs!
May 10th, 2017 at 1:59 pm
“SUCK, SHARP AND SNA%$#&”
— Chuckles Wingdings, author of
Screw the Oxford Comma
May 10th, 2017 at 3:19 pm
That’s not a cyborg arm, it’s a really huge and aggressive bionic shoulder pad. Cyborg arms are way too expensive.
May 10th, 2017 at 3:22 pm
What this cover lacks is a bit of “softening” imagery. It’s just too tough, faux-punk in your face. The alliterated blurbs do a bit of that work—and aren’t they clever, crafty and comforting?
But what we really need, as I am sure you have guessed, is a . . . Unicorns!
May 10th, 2017 at 3:23 pm
@Raoul— 😉
May 10th, 2017 at 3:54 pm
A fiendishly clever piece of marketing: a memorably bad cover comes emblazoned with blurbs from unknown authors of books that nobody remembers being published. That way, four books get their names attached to an image that gets reproduced on GSS and Angry Robot (a not unworthy small press) gets four authors who owe them favours.
None of the blurbers here currently writes for Angry Robot but just wait…
May 10th, 2017 at 6:19 pm
Her right arm is tiny, and there’s something wrong with her head and neck. Hey, Tag Wizard, where’s the “anatomical issues” tag?
May 11th, 2017 at 5:24 am
They gotta lotta blurbs, but they’re harder to read than the blurbers’ names and credits. Isn’t that backwards? Is that what’s made the young lady so angry?
@Tat: the Star Wars book mentioned in Chuck’s blurb made the NYT Bestseller list… which is probably why they put it instead of his original work. I think I’ve read one of Hearne’s books (I know I’ve heard of him), but the others, nope, nada. Really surprised they didn’t make Blackmore re-do his blurb or leave him off, but maybe Angry Robot really really wants him to write for them.
Still, this is better than a lot of BAEN!explosion covers.
May 11th, 2017 at 5:43 pm
I don’t want to seem like an overbearing nag, but this woman’s right arm is disproportionately small, like someone transplanted the arm of an elementary-school-age kid onto a grown woman. Again, I think this needs the “anatomical issues” tag.
May 11th, 2017 at 6:24 pm
I see why she’s upset: they replaced her left hand with a bionic right hand.
May 11th, 2017 at 7:01 pm
I excitedly clicked on the link reading the title as “Necrotch”…imagine my disappointment.
May 11th, 2017 at 10:08 pm
Note the initials. It used to be very common for female SF writers to hide their gender either with a “masculine” pseudonym (such as “James Tiptree, Jr.”) or initials for their first name…
That practice is dying off — I hope?
May 11th, 2017 at 10:36 pm
@A.R.Yngve – And so what are we to surmise about the initials … A.R.?
May 12th, 2017 at 6:54 am
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dtz2Ie40-mo
May 13th, 2017 at 1:06 am
Mr/Ms Yngve checks website — sees photo — hopes it’s Mr. with that beard):
Sadly, a lot of women still use initials unless they’re writing in an acceptably “girly” genre like romance. KC Alexander is in fact a female person, and undoubtedly uses her initials since she writes the harder techie stuff (judging by this cover) and so many of the hard SF readers are still mentally 12 year old boys who worry about cooties. (e.g. Gamergate)
The problem is still endemic in mid-list and indie SF, though the wimmins are allowed to use their whole names in fantasy (I’m not sure why NK Jemisin doesn’t).
It’s improved a lot, though! If you’re a lady with a big publisher, you “get” to use your whole name. Please to check this year’s Hugo ballot, f’rex.
May 13th, 2017 at 5:58 am
I am worried about your damage.Not much experience in this game Thats why didn’t wanna play,got involved by accident
I think I am novice and innocent but you can call me an idiot .Anything I can do to make up for this
May 13th, 2017 at 4:59 pm
@Anti-Septic: I read it as “Neocrotch”–and was equally disappointed.