May 08
Good Show Sir’s Art Direction: Well here’s my Nephew, a silver jump suit and a box of mangoes. Now just head out to that field and get me a picture. I’m sure whatever you come up with will be just fine.
Published 1969
My favourite thing about the book.
Weird Cover – Written by the book store owner!
May 8th, 2012 at 10:08 am
The Killing Right Arm
May 8th, 2012 at 10:13 am
Any horny handed son of the soil will tell you the crop of 1979 Gary Numans has not been bountiful this year, the weather being what it is.
May 8th, 2012 at 10:19 am
The mafia are just getting lazier and lazier. They haven’t even tried to bury that body!
May 8th, 2012 at 11:20 am
This would just about work as the cover of THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH, but is better suited as an illustration of the perils of growing potatoes.
The title and the author’s name are not separated in any way, which may lead some readers to think there’s something amiss with the syntax. It should surely be called THE THING KILLING KATE WILHELM. (With apologies to Ms Wilhelm, who I gather is thriving at the age of 83.)
May 8th, 2012 at 11:44 am
Why did they rake the dirt across his shoulder?
May 8th, 2012 at 12:11 pm
You say potato, I say… Arrgh!
May 8th, 2012 at 12:13 pm
Although for a moment I thought that this was a novelisation of the acclaimed Danish police-and-knitwear procedural by a new Scandinavian writer, Thing Kate Wilhelm.
May 8th, 2012 at 1:39 pm
Evil Knievel should never have tried to jump his bike across the Field of Dreams…
May 8th, 2012 at 2:26 pm
Is he….smiling? And, if so, the dirt across his mid-section, coupled with his left hand position, makes this cover a bit….odd.
May 8th, 2012 at 3:04 pm
Hmm, maybe he’s growing in the ground, INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS-style.
May 8th, 2012 at 3:05 pm
Obviously the Killing Thing is quite the agronomist … it knows astronauts are a good source of nitrates.
May 8th, 2012 at 4:21 pm
“Thing Kate Wilhelm” remains my favourite Danish crime-writer, and ‘The Killing’ is her masterpiece.
May 8th, 2012 at 5:06 pm
“And then the kids tried to bury me alive after pelting me with green apples. Those scamps!”
May 8th, 2012 at 5:06 pm
The little moon and star on his non-naked arm just make this for me.
May 8th, 2012 at 6:40 pm
Looks like he’s halfway through making a dirt angel.
May 8th, 2012 at 6:46 pm
No, wait, we’ve got it all backwards. This is science fiction for panthers, that’s the size of the litter box, and those round things are…are…
May 9th, 2012 at 12:24 am
I think we have stumbled upon The Genesis Moment for those “get rid of cable” DIRECTV commercials.
May 9th, 2012 at 4:25 am
Wait… that bare arm is a zombie dragging that space suited dude underground!!
May 9th, 2012 at 4:25 am
Ah I think someone took “Pomme de terre” literally… apples of the dirt.
May 9th, 2012 at 6:06 pm
Panther Science Fiction: Look for the Logo!!
Oh, wait, we don’t have a logo. OK, just look for the books with the weird photographs for covers!
May 9th, 2012 at 9:20 pm
“In Russia you don’t play bowls, in Russia bowls plays you!”
May 9th, 2012 at 9:22 pm
It is oh so tempting to make a pun on “balls”… but I fear a diving 13-ton weight dropping from the sky onto my head.
May 9th, 2012 at 9:23 pm
“Hey, where’s Fredo?”
“Fredo sleeps with the balls.”
June 4th, 2012 at 7:36 pm
The balls look like mini Jupiters.
June 4th, 2012 at 7:37 pm
Maybe he’s being crushed by the gravitational forces imposed by the mini Jupiters….or it could be just gas.
March 28th, 2015 at 11:34 am
So it’s not just “Star King Jack Vance” but also “The Killing Thing Kate Wilhelm” who wrote “Panther Science Fiction”?
Not the kind of sci-fi/fantasy book covers I was expecting.
June 9th, 2017 at 6:39 am
The ground is controlling Major Tom
June 9th, 2017 at 1:26 pm
“Is Kate such a killing thing? Are mangoes her deadly weapon?”
June 9th, 2017 at 1:41 pm
Death by automatic tennis ball launcher must be horrible.
June 9th, 2017 at 1:53 pm
Whatever these things may be, they can be cultivated by seed or by cuttings.
June 9th, 2017 at 2:25 pm
It’s a clever puzzle: “Ok kids, who can find the Panther in the field of mangos?”
Strike “clever.”
June 9th, 2017 at 2:25 pm
I’m trying to imagine what this photo shoot was like.
June 9th, 2017 at 2:56 pm
I don’t care if it is faithful to the book or not but he really should be dressed as a clown.
June 9th, 2017 at 3:57 pm
When no one was looking, Scott Bakula stole eleven mangoes. He stole 11 mangoes. That’s as many as 1.1 tens. And that’s terrible.
June 9th, 2017 at 5:02 pm
BREAKING: Trump accuses cover model of lying.
😀
June 9th, 2017 at 7:36 pm
He’s not so much ‘the man who fell to earth’ as he is ‘the man who threw a hissy fit while planting potatoes’.
June 9th, 2017 at 9:55 pm
@DSWBT: That’s not Scott Bakula. It’s John Barrowman.
June 10th, 2017 at 2:04 am
@GSS Whovian: Good show, ma’am! 🙂 But not enough forehead, I’m afraid.
June 10th, 2017 at 4:01 am
@GSS ex-noob: the thought of John Barrowman Quantum Leaping into the bodies of people in 1950s midwest America and making them get their willies out and belt out show-tunes is almost enough for me to wish Donald Belisarius would revive the series.
“Oh boy”.
June 10th, 2017 at 10:18 am
@39 TW: More like “Oh, boys!”
June 13th, 2017 at 8:42 am
@Tat: I’d damn well tune in to that, and probably buy the DVDs.