Hi.
I have only one beef with the series so far and even though some of the covers do appeal to me, most of them are just simply way to Generic.
The series is called PLANET STORIES for crying out loud!. Go and google up a few cover galleries to the old Planet Stories magazine.
They were garrish! Bold! colorful They screamed and jumped out at you.
I know that this is always a matter of taste, but to me these covers are too dark, boring and simply look like generic Fantasy/SF covers.
Go and check out the old DAW Books covers to Moorcock's mars trilogy.That was art that was better than the books deserved.
Or the old Jim Steranko the covers of the Skaith Trilogy that was put out by Ballantine in the 1970's. This was amazing stuff which probably had a huge influence on the sales of these book.
The "new" skaith covers don't look like "buyer magnets" to me. I don't even think that those are representative of the contents of the skaith books.
Or go look at the Jim Kelly cover for Almuric in the old Berkley editions!!
I don't want to insult anyone, but have the cover artists even read the books? It doens't look like it to me, but I could be wrong.
These books need to jump off the racks and yell "THIS IS SOME OF THE COOLEST STUFF EVER TO HAVE APPEARED ON THE PRINTED PAGE!!!!!!"
Is it possible to use some classic cover art or at least get an artist who understands that this is PULP FICTION and not Goth/MOODY ?
These are stories written in very broad colorful strokes. The covers should reflect it.
I am sooooo excited about this series, but I feel that the covers do not do the series justice.
There is an old story that the first cover for Glenn Cook's "The Black Company" was turned down by the publisher. The art was still laying on the publisher's desk when a buyer for a large chain saw it and said "I'll take 50,000 copies of whatever book has that cover". So even if you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover it'll still make a huge sales difference.
Take care.
Doug
