Paperback 1160: Dell SF 12648 (PBO, 1978)
Title: Visions and Venturers
Author: Theodore Sturgeon
Cover artist: Wayne Barlowe (illus. by James Odbert)
Condition: 7
Value: $5
- The Man Who Shot Fire From His Nipples!
- This cover is disorienting. The man is apparently part of some illustration that has been torn open to reveal a vibrant green spacescape of some kind. But what is the illustration an illustration of? What on god's green planet is happening there on the left, under the title and author. An inscrutable sepia jumble.
- Now that is an artist's signature! Dated and everything. Of course the book itself doesn't credit the cover artist (only the interior illustrator), but that signature is clear and unmistakable (thanks to the isfdb for the identification—what a resource)
Best things about this back cover:
- "Sturgeon's People" sounds like a public access show featuring interviews local freaks, weirdos, cranks and crackpots
- I have some questions for Dad (if that is your real name...). Namely, what have you done with my peanuts?
- I like when characters throng a story. None of this meek "inhabit" or "populate" bullshit! Throng or move along!
Page 123~ (from "Won't You Walk—")
He kept the bathrobe they gave him pulled snugly over his amplifier, and under a hot towel he reached almost the euphoric state he had been in last night.
"His amplifier" sounds like some kind of euphemism, so I don't really want to know what's going on under that towel, thank you very much...
~RP
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Letterboxd]
4 comments:
That cover is a real puzzle, the mess on the left is part of the overall design failure of a ripped kraft packing paper, had to find a larger size to make sense of it.
I like the mundanity of "Patty" after "Jokey" and "Osser".
One of the books I retain from when I was young is Wayne Barlowe's 1979 _Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials_, illustrating aliens from sf stories. All those illustrations are easier to parse than this cover.
This is not good Barlowe; he's much better than this. Sure, it's tough when you're coming up with something for a short story collection, but this is a mess.
Most of the stories are from the period when Sturgeon was at his peak, and they've all been collected several times, but none of them jumps out at me as being classic or noteworthy. So maybe not a great collection. But even mediocre Sturgeon can be really, really good. And the back cover copy is right that characters were his real strength.
Post a Comment