Unfortunate Jacket Illustrations

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amrose

is Envy Augustine
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Tee hee.

The colors are lovely.
 

Phaeal

Whatever I did, I didn't do it.
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As Troi told Data, sometimes a knife is just a knife.
 

Becky Black

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See if it was historical romance - the natural home of the penis-sword cover - nobody would bat an eyelid. But on a straight historical it's a tad unfortunate.
 

dgiharris

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Talk about the "rise" of Rome :)

Mel...
 

shelleyo

Just another face in a red jumpsuit
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I doubt it's unfortunate so much as deliberate.

Men may buy that book and not even know why....

One of my favorite phallic references is in a James Bond movie, the one will the wonderful Sean Bean as 006, when Bond is in a tank barreling down the road, standing up with his upper body out of the hatch, and the cannon is of course right where is penis would be.

That kind of stuff is done all the time, subtly and not-so-subtly, because it works.

(And sometimes it's an accident, and the person who notices it just has a dirty mind. *looks around*)

Shelley
 

thewife

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Thanks bunches for the link to the blog about bad sci-fi covers! We were actually thinking about doing one (like the romance covers, but for sci-fi), but I convinced UW that romance was "our thing." Now I'm really glad because that site is well done.

Some sci-fi covers are truly atrocious. We do, on occasion, put one in (although, in fairness to us, the author of this one is a romance writer as well). We tried to do a contest with it, since we couldn't come up with a caption we felt was equal to the awfulness of the cover, but that was a bust. Now we don't do contests anymore.

ANYWAY, the point being that sci-fi covers are worthy of their own blog, and I'm glad to see there is one. And I'm now following it. :)
 

brainstorm77

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Big penis did not come instantly to my mind when I looked at that cover. * shrugs *
 

thewife

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It's the position of the sword. A Gladius
is a short sword used by the Roman Army.

There's also an epidemic of highlanders attempting to decapitate themselves with swords.

Then there's the people stabbinghttp://covers.unclewaltersrants.com...s-was-probably-not-his-wisest-investment.html themselves in the crotch with swords...

And scratching their backs with their swords...

But the phallic imagery is probably the worst. Perhaps this will illustrate it better?
 
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