1.28.2009

Wednesday Quickies

Okay, I know I've been letting y'all down recently, and I'm sorry. Mucho gracias to Rex who's been holding up the Judge a Book torch all by himself. A round of applause for Rex, y'all! Whooo hoooo!

Anyway, just a few quickies for Wednesday:

First up is something I saw and immediately dubbed "Condom Head."





Sorry for the size, but a funny thing happened when I went looking for a copy of this picture. It seems other folk have noticed the "condom head" phenomenon; the only pictures I could find without a super ton of digging didn't have the condom tip.





More Amazon censoring, perhaps? In fact, the only pictures I could find with the "tip" were user uploaded covers from Library Thing. Hmmmmmmmm.

UPDATE: The first cover is the real cover. I saw it in person. The tip is there and the title is Last Train to Arcturus. The second is the cover that appears at Amazon and other places on the net (fantasticfiction.co.uk, Bunns and Noodle, etc.) because they steal the image from Amazon. I propose that Amazon or someone equally creepy (Dick Cheney?) altered it to appear more "palatable," i.e. without the condom tip on the head. In the process, they FUCKED UP THE TITLE!!! Thanks, DocTurtle, for pointing this out. In the second cover, Arcturus is spelled Acturus. Ah hah! Conspiracy!


All your base are belong to us*.


I would totally read this book if it were called All Your Heart are Belong to Us.

*google it, Mom

10 comments:

DocTurtle said...

Did they mean "Arcturus"? I'm guessing they did.

Miss Maggie said...

OMG, you're right! It's spelled correctly on the real cover, and incorrectly on the doctored cover! I feel like a conspiracy theorist.

Erik said...

And why did they feel the need to insert "A" at the beginning of the title? It's not there on the real cover, where the whole bar over the title is ribbed for her pleasure...

Miss Maggie said...

Holy shit! More conspiracy!!

Anonymous said...

Wait, wasn't Dean Koontz at one point just a rung or two below Chrichton and Grisham in turns of churning out terrible, insanely profitable books? Has he fallen so far that his publisher is no longer wasting decent designer money on him? It seems sad that this novel's cover art is practically self-published-worthy.

Anonymous said...

Maughta, what am I supposed to google?? And, how do I do it. Maugtamom

Anonymous said...

Your Calla Lillies Belong To Me

BikerPuppy said...

Actually, the misspelling was on the original cover and Amazon won't change it. I sent this email to one of the authors: "I'm curious if the title of Slow Train to Arcturus has been officially changed? Amazon and BN.com list it as A Slow Train to Acturus [sic], and even show the cover of the book with the misspelled title. Just wondering."

Here's Eric's reply: "Sigh. No, the title is still and always has been SLOW TRAIN TO ARCTURUS
-- and it's spelled correctly on the actual jacket cover. The problem is that the original art work had the misspelling and that's what Amazon used for the cover image. And trying to get Amazon to correct something afterward makes the labors of Hercules look like nothing. So we just live with it."

Miss Maggie said...

Thank you for the clarification, BikerPuppy. DocTurtle has been trying to get me to tilt at the Amazon windmills, but it's nice to know I don't hafta!

Don't tell Eric where you discovered this discrepency...I make waaaay too much fun of Baen...

BikerPuppy said...

LOL. I wouldn't think of it!