Science Fiction Cover Art

[Graham1973]

Two more interior illustrations by Ed Morrow from 'If', this time illustrating 'The Hour Before Earthrise' a serial by James Blish, later republished as 'Welcome to Mars', a cover image by Peter Elson for a later edition of that story can be found in this thread.

 

[southwestforests]

Behavior is the top criterion

Thing is, here on this one planet with only the human race we have cultures which will get signals crossed about behaviors,
for instance,
and since I like to use 3 different references to a thing,

https://www.thetravel.com/10-places-where-eye-contact-is-not-recommended-10-places-where-the-locals-are-friendly/

However, eye contact has different meaning in each culture. In some countries, the presence of eye contact conveys confidence and instills trust in the interaction. In other countries, it is incredibly rude to look into the other person’s eyes during conversation. In general, Western cultures tend to value the presence of eye contact while Eastern ones tend to see eye contact as a form of disrespect. However, this is not always the case. For example, Australians greatly value eye contact in communication while native Australian aboriginals consider eye contact to be rude. The below entries include regional variations whenever they occur. Avoid cultural faux pas by avoiding eye contact in these places (and making sure you have it in the others!).

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/02/the-impact-of-making-eye-contact-around-the-world/

Cultural Differences to our Gazes

However, any discussion of human behavior must consider the differences that exist across cultures. In many Eastern and some Caribbean cultures, meeting another’s eyes can be perceived as rude or aggressive. In a 2013 study published in PLOS ONE, Asians were more likely than Westerners to regard a person who makes eye contact as angry or unapproachable. The study also suggested that gaze direction (direct vs. averted) could influence perceptions about another person’s disposition. These results suggest that cultural differences in eye contact behavior emerge from differential display rules and cultural norms.

Similarly, in a study published in the Journal of Cross-cultural Psychology, the “eye gaze displays of Canadian, Trinidadian, and Japanese participants” were recorded as they answered questions for which they either knew or had to think about the answers. When they knew the answers, Trinidadians maintained the most eye contact while Japanese maintained the least. When contemplating the answers to questions, Canadians and Trinidadians looked up, and Japanese looked down. The study, further suggests that the amount of eye contact in a conversation is at least in part culturally determined.

So, de Salluste was right— the eyes are windows of the soul. However, culture and norms surrounding eye contact influence how eyes are opened or raised and how they communicate to others.

This article was first published by the World Bank’s People, Spaces, Deliberation blog. Publication does not imply endorsement of views by the World Economic Forum.

Eye Contact Perception in the West and East: A Cross-Cultural Study

This study investigated whether eye contact perception differs in people with different cultural backgrounds. Finnish (European) and Japanese (East Asian) participants were asked to determine whether Finnish and Japanese neutral faces with various gaze ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Second, eye contact behavior differs among cultures. Maintaining eye contact during social interaction is a more important principle for Western Europeans than for East Asians [26]. While maintaining eye contact is positively evaluated by Western Europeans, it is not the case with people of East Asian cultural backgrounds [27]. In fact, in Japanese culture, people are taught not to maintain eye contact with others because too much eye contact is often considered disrespectful. For example, Japanese children are taught to look at others’ necks because this way, the others’ eyes still fall into their peripheral vision [28]. Consistent with this, previous studies have demonstrated, for example, that the Japanese show less eye contact than Canadians during face-to-face interaction [29,30]. These findings suggest that Western Europeans may be more motivated to search for and detect others’ direct gaze during social interaction, and because of their considerable visual experience in perceiving eye contact, they might be less biased in considering slightly averted gazes to be self-directed. This may hold particularly true for faces from their own cultural background relative to faces from other cultural background (with whom they have less visual experience).

Third, it is possible that cultural differences in discerning information about others emotions might also exert an effect on eye contact perception, even when the face in question does not clearly express any emotion. It has been observed from previous research that the perception of gaze direction is modulated by factors not related to gaze direction.

For a quick note about more factors, see this PDF from the US Department of Health and Human Services,

https://thinkculturalhealth.hhs.gov/assets/pdfs/CommunicationStyles.pdf

THINK CULTURAL HEALTH EDUCATION
Improving Cultural Competency for Behavioral Health Professionals
Communication Styles
The table below outlines different aspects of communication style and how they tend to vary across cultures. Being aware of how communication styles tend to vary across cultures can help you avoid misunderstandings, but it is also important that you understand your client’s unique cultural identity and individual preferences in order to communicate with them most effectively

 

[siegecrossbow]

Not often do you see alien invaders in the form of baby elephants.

 

[Sineva]

Not often do you see alien invaders in the form of baby elephants.

View attachment 734546

I actually quite enjoyed that one

 

[siegecrossbow]

I actually quite enjoyed that one

Swap aliens out for a meteorite and you’ll get this book. I always found the plot lines suspiciously similar.

 

[martinbayer]

Not often do you see alien invaders in the form of baby elephants.

View attachment 734546

Clinically, it's called intellectual laziness.

 

[Graham1973]

Bruce Pennington's rather spoilerish cover for the 1969 Corgi edition of 'All Judgement Fled' by James White.

 

[The K2]

Cyborg by Martin Caidin. This cover a tie-in for the TV series. Look closely at the B-25 crashing instead of the M2F2.

 

[Sineva]

Heres one I remember from back in the day,just for its quirkiness

And I came across this one as well in a somewhat similar vein.....

 

[siegecrossbow]

Heres one I remember from back in the day,just for its quirkiness

And I came across this one as well in a somewhat similar vein.....

Reminds me of this series.

 

[Sineva]

 

[publiusr]

Sternbach do the dolphin EVA?

 

[Sineva]

Sternbach do the dolphin EVA?

Yes
Heres an interview plus some more sf dolphin art by other artists including syd mead
https://70s-sci-fi-art.ghost.io/interview-rick-sternbacks-dolphin-suit/

 

[Graham1973]

Peter Elson's cover for the 1980 reprinting by Panther of Ian Watson's 1973 novel 'The Embedding' featuring what may be the same ship, or certainly one of the same class as that which appeared on the cover of 'The Long Result' by John Brunner featured in Post #76 of this thread.

 

[siegecrossbow]

The book for you if you want some spaceship to spaceship longbow action.

 

[pathology_doc]

This is a thread for interesting or unusual science fiction cover art. As a first post here is the cover to 'Beyond The Stars' a 1983 collection by Octopus books that aside from the usual round of short stories included chapters excerpted from the following novels:

'Star Wars' (Alan Dean Foster, pen name: George Lucas)
'Dragonfall 5 and the Super Horse' (Brian Earnshaw)
'Round The Moon' (Jules Verne)
'Citizen of the Galaxy' (Robert A. Heinlein)
'Escape from Splatterbang' (Nicholas Fisk)
'The Keeper of the Isis Light' (Monica Hughes)
'Dr Who and the Monster of Peladon' (Terrence Dicks)

The last of those was a definite surprise, as is the fact that despite what the cover shows, there's nothing relating to 'Battlestar Galactica' in this volume...

Interesting.
The girl on the cover holding the laser pistol doesn't look a day over twelve, which is how old I was when this came out and also the probable age of the target audience. Twelve year old me would have wanted a wall poster of her.

However, I'd have been very disappointed to find the cover art not reflected in the contents.

 

[Rhinocrates]

A recent Facebook post by Jim Burns.

 

[siegecrossbow]

There is a little known movie adaptation of the most famous story of the collection — “Enemy Mine” starring Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett Jr. under heavy makeup. Unfortunately the execs didn’t trust the audience’s intelligence enough and added a physical mine to the story in case they were confused by the title.

 

[F-2]

The General Zapped an Angel

Speculated to have influenced the art of “End of Evangelion”

 

[Rhinocrates]

The General Zapped an Angel

Speculated to have influenced the art of “End of Evangelion”

The art is by Karel Thole and illustrates the story by Fast, 'The Wound.'

 

[Rhinocrates]

Quite a unique artist. More by Thole:

 

[Orionblamblam]

Clinically, it's called intellectual laziness.

In what sense? The Fithp were an interesting antagonist species, and their morphology was important to the plot.

 

[martinbayer]

In what sense? The Fithp were an interesting antagonist species, and their morphology was important to the plot.

I had to google "Fithp". From what I gathered from the search, they apparently resemble baby elephants with multiple prehensile trunks. It's just another classical case of lack of original writing resulting in standard unimaginary hack output.

 

[Orionblamblam]

I had to google "Fithp". From what I gathered from the search, they apparently resemble baby elephants with multiple prehensile trunks. It's just another classical case of lack of original writing resulting in standard unimaginary hack output.

Let's see you do better.

 

[martinbayer]

Let's see you do better.

Professionally, I'm not really in that line of business, but if we can come to a financial agreement that does not infringe in any way, shape, or form on my regular work, I might be amenable to any reasonable pecuniary offer, as long as I can successfully run it past our internal company controls, so go ahead.

 

[Orionblamblam]

Professionally, I'm not really in that line of business, but if we can come to a financial agreement that does not infringe in any way, shape, or form on my regular work, I might be amenable to any reasonable pecuniary offer, as long as I can successfully run it past our internal company controls, so go ahead.

So that would be a "I can't do better, all I can do is whine." Got it.

 

[Arjen]

So that would be a "I can't do better, all I can do is whine." Got it.

Let me guess - Martin is gainfully employed, with most of his time taken by his day job. If the world wishes to see a book written by him, the world should consider financial compensation for Martin giving up his day job. No money, no cookies.

 

[martinbayer]

Let me guess - Martin is gainfully employed, with most of his time taken by his day job. If the world wishes to see a book written by him, the world should consider financial compensation for Martin giving up his day job. No money, no cookies.

Actually, I have one project in the works (since about 2012) as a labour of love that, if I ever finish it in retirement, will be released into the wild on forums such as this without any financial or other strings attached. The first few rough draft pages that I consider mostly done are attached - any criticism is welcome, but note that I will not change my trademark stile of rambling multi line sentences .

 

[southwestforests]

any criticism is welcome, but note that I will not change my trademark stile

Okay, "any" criticism, eh ...

Style vs stile

Style and stile are two words that are pronounced in the same way but are spelled differently and have different meanings, which makes them homophones. We will examine the difference between the definitions of style

grammarist.com

Style and stile are two words that are pronounced in the same way but are spelled differently and have different meanings, which makes them homophones. We will examine the difference between the definitions of style and stile, where these two words came from and some examples of their use in sentences.

 

[Orionblamblam]

Actually, I have one project in the works (since about 2012) as a labour of love that, if I ever finish it in retirement, will be released into the wild on forums such as this without any financial or other strings attached.

According the the data under your username, you've currently made about 2580 posts on this forum. Presumably you weren't paid to make those posts. So simply describing what *you* would consider an intellectually non-lazy alternative Fithp that would meet the narrative requirements of said species could be accomplished in about 0.039% of your total output to date. A few paragraphs would do... probably about the level of effort required that you would happily - and for free - expend on explaining why you couldn't be bothered.

In my own crappy space opera stories, there are dozens-to low-hundreds of intelligent species that the bulk of Mankind is aware of. All but two of them, though, were created by humans... not just AI, but uplifted dolphins and gorillas and recreated Neanders and such. Why did people do this? Because we could. Because it's cool. Because it's ᚠᚪᛣᚳᛁᚾ' rad.

Of the two generally known truly alien sentients, one (the Thessi) looks not unlike an Ewok or a Teddy Bear; the other (Narth) is a horrifying monster, but recognizably "animal." The first species gets along well with Mankind; the latter avoids humans like the plague because as scary as they are to us, we are creatures of ingrained terror to them. Why? Because *we* look like something from their world.
Could the Thessi have been replaced with something wholly alien? Sure. But why? It wasn't important. Creatures that are vaguely bear-like have evolved several times on Earth; no reason to assume that shape wouldn't arise in alien forests. It's a configuration that clearly makes sense. You don't introduce complexities to stories that don;t need to be there.

 

[southwestforests]

You don't introduce complexities to stories that don;t need to be there.

Which if I ask tomorrow at our local creative writers group weekly meeting would probably be unanimously confirmed.
If nothing else, the non-introduction of not-necessary complexities reduces the writer's workload from what it would be if those were to be introduced.

 

[Orionblamblam]

... reduces the writer's workload ...

Also reduces the *readers* workload.

Alien 1) basically human with bumps on his forehead and weird fake-Brit accent: "OK, gotcha, on with the story."
Alien 2) Requires three pages to describe appearance, then unceasing info-dumps about their incomprehensible culture and backstory:

 

[Justo Miranda]

Clinically, it's called intellectual laziness.

Clinically it is also called delirium tremens

 

[Justo Miranda]

According the the data under your username, you've currently made about 2580 posts on this forum. Presumably you weren't paid to make those posts. So simply describing what *you* would consider an intellectually non-lazy alternative Fithp that would meet the narrative requirements of said species could be accomplished in about 0.039% of your total output to date. A few paragraphs would do... probably about the level of effort required that you would happily - and for free - expend on explaining why you couldn't be bothered.

In my own crappy space opera stories, there are dozens-to low-hundreds of intelligent species that the bulk of Mankind is aware of. All but two of them, though, were created by humans... not just AI, but uplifted dolphins and gorillas and recreated Neanders and such. Why did people do this? Because we could. Because it's cool. Because it's ᚠᚪᛣᚳᛁᚾ' rad.

Of the two generally known truly alien sentients, one (the Thessi) looks not unlike an Ewok or a Teddy Bear; the other (Narth) is a horrifying monster, but recognizably "animal." The first species gets along well with Mankind; the latter avoids humans like the plague because as scary as they are to us, we are creatures of ingrained terror to them. Why? Because *we* look like something from their world.
Could the Thessi have been replaced with something wholly alien? Sure. But why? It wasn't important. Creatures that are vaguely bear-like have evolved several times on Earth; no reason to assume that shape wouldn't arise in alien forests. It's a configuration that clearly makes sense. You don't introduce complexities to stories that don;t need to be there.

There are very good ideas here, but if I were a marine mammal without hands and I was made intelligent I would be aware of my physical limitations and I doubt very much that I would be happy among humans with fingers. The gorilla thing would be even worse, everyone pretends I'm like a normal human and I'm smart enough to understand that they despise me. On the other hand, Neanderthals would have no problem integrating, in fact they have always been here.

 

[Orionblamblam]

There are very good ideas here, but if I were a marine mammal without hands and I was made intelligent I would be aware of my physical limitations and I doubt very much that I would be happy among humans with fingers.

In my fictional universe, tech has advanced so far that any jackass can uplift any animal. So there are *lots* of poorly uplifted critters, and a fairly substantial ASPCA-like system to help them - which sometimes means putting them down. But cetaceans have been successfully uplifted several times; part of the process is genetic mods that allow them to easily interact with prosthetics that they can easily don and doff as they wish.

In one of my stories, a plot-unrelated bit happens when some humans on an ocean world see a pod of orca swim by, followed by a somewhat larger whale. One of the local humans explains to a confused off-world human that the larger whale is actually a robot; it follows the uplifted orca and contains all their stuff, including manipulators, drones, fusion reactors and fabricators (i.e. "replicators"). The orca are not dependent upon humans, but interact with them regularly. Many join starship crews.

Starships that have cetaceans onboard either have larger water-filled corridors or the cetaceans can go about in "wetsuits" and "fly" through the corridors via gravity manipulation. Bad science, but... meh. Space opera.

The gorilla thing would be even worse, everyone pretends I'm like a normal human and I'm smart enough to understand that they despise me.

Except the humans *don't* despise them. Uplifted gorillas in larger society are every bit as civilized as humans or anyone else. Nobody pretends they're human, any more than they pretend Thessi crewmates are human.

On the other hand, Neanderthals would have no problem integrating, in fact they have always been here.

Oddly, the Neanders integrate less well than the gorillas. In order to uplift gorillas (and cats, dogs, ravens, etc.), a *lot* of tinkering to their brains had to be done, and as a result their thinking is often almost human-standard. The Neanders, however, were left as baseline as they could be. (I presume that before Earth goes down, quite a number of DNA samples of Neanderthals are discovered and utilized). Neanders turn out to be rather baffling. Like us, but different in a lot of ways (including a "spiritual" existence that would put most shroomed-out shamans to shame). Enough so that they don't fit well. They're left to do their own thing.

Humans create these offshoots for shits and giggles as much as anything else. Because *of* *course* we would given the ability.

 

[siegecrossbow]

Best known Chinese Sci-Fi in the world at this point.



Original cover

 

[Graham1973]

From my collection, Alan Craddock's cover to the 1980s UK editon of C. J. Cherryh's 'Chanur's Venture', the second novel in the Chanur Quintet. It's a case of a rightish idea, but the wrong cat, he should have gone with Pantera Leo rather than the household tabby...

 

[starviking]

Peter Elson's cover for the 1980 reprinting by Panther of Ian Watson's 1973 novel 'The Embedding' featuring what may be the same ship, or certainly one of the same class as that which appeared on the cover of 'The Long Result' by John Brunner featured in Post #76 of this thread.

I’d say same hullform, totally different class: The Long Result ship uses rocket engines of some variety, the Embedding ship uses some form of antigravity.

 

[Graham1973]

A third Peter Elson sphereship, I've not been able to confirm just what novel it appeared on the cover of.

 

[Graham1973]

Peter Elson's cover to the 1979 Sphere edition of 'Tomorrow and Tomorrow' a novel first published in 1956 as 'Tomorrow's World' by Hunt Collins. For this edition it bore the psudonym the author, born Salvatore Lombino was most well known by at the time, Ed McBain and may have been the only science fiction novel published under that psedonym,.