The Hugos and covers
Apr. 19th, 2015 03:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
valarltdOne of the big criticisms the Sad Puppies are leveling at the genre is that you can't trust covers to be just SF anymore. Someone is always slipping in some gender or race or diversity or whatever into the story.
I got to thinking about my SF covers.
Pictures and discussion under the cut to spare your feed
Adventuresses makes no bones that it is a lesbian collection. Sf, steampunk, horror and fantasy blend in this collection of stories. Israeli, Native American, black, and white, (even one non-human) the women hold their own against everything from zombies to vengeful billionaires.
Post-apocalyptic gay biker gangs in Kansas. It's not about the apocalypse. Nobody knows what happened. Nobody cares. THey're too busy surviving the aftermath.
Parts of the Eight Thrones universe. In the not too distant future, a group has taken over the world. The balkanized US is not a pleasnt place to live, although parts are better than others. None of these is space opera. They're more akin to 1984 and Brave New World than The Last Starfighter.
This is the cover for Hard Reboot, a cyberpunk novel. The blue is the cover, the other is a cover concept. The look voyeuristic. This is not exactly SF Romance, it's a love story, but a bitter one.
More stories in the Cyber'verse Only the first says "space opera" And it's really not. It's cyberpunk erotica
NOW we're into space opera. A planet wide rave. Gladiatorial arenas with a Decahedron Death Match! Spaceship troubles in transit. Human supercomputers. Jumping from a low-orbit satellite. Chasing down a wanted man across multiple systems. Escaping prison moon. Breaking people out of an arcology. Rescuing someone from a space station. But oh, dear, that pesky gay gets everywhere....just like glitter.
Space ship, check. Ray gun, check. Space opera, check. And yet more gayness.
So yeah, my covers look like exactly what they are. Space opera, with gender and sexuality in play, (because people like sex in my galaxy), or SF with social issues (in the tradition of Orwell and Huxley and Atwood).
I got to thinking about my SF covers.
Pictures and discussion under the cut to spare your feed
Adventuresses makes no bones that it is a lesbian collection. Sf, steampunk, horror and fantasy blend in this collection of stories. Israeli, Native American, black, and white, (even one non-human) the women hold their own against everything from zombies to vengeful billionaires.
Post-apocalyptic gay biker gangs in Kansas. It's not about the apocalypse. Nobody knows what happened. Nobody cares. THey're too busy surviving the aftermath.
Parts of the Eight Thrones universe. In the not too distant future, a group has taken over the world. The balkanized US is not a pleasnt place to live, although parts are better than others. None of these is space opera. They're more akin to 1984 and Brave New World than The Last Starfighter.
This is the cover for Hard Reboot, a cyberpunk novel. The blue is the cover, the other is a cover concept. The look voyeuristic. This is not exactly SF Romance, it's a love story, but a bitter one.
More stories in the Cyber'verse Only the first says "space opera" And it's really not. It's cyberpunk erotica
NOW we're into space opera. A planet wide rave. Gladiatorial arenas with a Decahedron Death Match! Spaceship troubles in transit. Human supercomputers. Jumping from a low-orbit satellite. Chasing down a wanted man across multiple systems. Escaping prison moon. Breaking people out of an arcology. Rescuing someone from a space station. But oh, dear, that pesky gay gets everywhere....just like glitter.
Space ship, check. Ray gun, check. Space opera, check. And yet more gayness.So yeah, my covers look like exactly what they are. Space opera, with gender and sexuality in play, (because people like sex in my galaxy), or SF with social issues (in the tradition of Orwell and Huxley and Atwood).
