The home of shockingly bad sci-fi book covers

There used to be a blog or website dedicated to American advertising. I think it was called ‘Ephemera’ or something along those lines. It was an enormous library, extremely well curated and I think it could be searched by year, by product etc

It featured futuristic advertising from American Steel manufacturers and Dupont and General Electric etc., and it had ads for American cars and rail lines and general industry from the late '40s to the mid '60s all rendered in this idealised futuristic Mad Men aesthetic.

I’d finish working in the evening and go to this website for a few minutes of dopamine hits and suddenly it would be midnight. I was completely addicted to the stuff.

There is one image jammed in my brain. It featured a large city street, devoid of traffic and a man with a suit, briefcase and hat about to get into his enormous, absolutely and entirely impractically enormous, black and chrome batwing automobile and drive home for the evening on those wide, empty of traffic streets.

That image filled me with longing. I kept returning to it, wishing I could climb into that world.

It’s all a bit odd, cos I’m generally immune to actual advertising. But anything futuristic will suck me in.

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Seems to be some overlap in what boingboing calls terrible covers and what it calls amazing covers, but whatever. These things are subjective.

I have noticed that although the Gaean Enchantment cover is awful, the model for it is till famous, especially in the Philly area. Here he is with his shirt off.
display

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I collect these!

Plan is to use books to damaged to be saved (or put into the little free library) to make a giant mosaic of cheesy sci fi art. Late 70’s and early 80’s tends to be the best.

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Retro-future stuff is hysterical/bizarre/silly/superb, and much more rarely accurate. I’m exceptionally fond of the retro-future car and similar transport art, and many of the '50s - early '60s futuristic concept cars:
1961 Ford concept
like this '61 Ford thingy.

You may enjoy this tumblr:
Advertising Pics


Just look at it!

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I’d love to look at it but are you sure that link is correct. I get a ‘nothing here’ tumblr page.

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Dontcha love Gritty’s blue belly button?! :smiley:

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WTAF?! It was a lovely, functional blog when I posted that link! :cry:

Lemme see if I can do anything about this…

ETA: Well, shit. Looks like their blog’s been deleted since I posted that link and began following them! :sob: :sob: :sob: :sob:

Thank Gawd I got that banana first.

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https://www.perrypedia.de/wiki/Titelbildgalerien

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https://www.instagram.com/paperbackparadise/

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Dune Messiah


A comic book, but still:

Not sci-fi, but how TF could I resist?

“By the author of I Don’t Think They Go to Church”

My BF sent me these.

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I remember this as a pretty fun fan convention murder mystery. I wonder if it stands up?

(Please fix “Ronald Dahl” btw.)

Attempts to fix Dahl weren’t very successful even when he was alive.

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Hhahahahaha!

Moral panic books!

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Richard Kadrey’s vault:

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That last one was used on on of the Stainless Steel Rat books IIRC

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God, I love those stories
tophat-biggrin
tophat-cool

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Slippery Jim diGriz indeed.

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Nice way to sneak ■■■■■ past the filter. Real nice.

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