Best Covers

[Christopher]

Plus I forgot I like Ghost Ship #1. Riker and Data's heads look funny and thier faces too round. Plus Mister LaForge doesn't look like himself. Maybe they didn't know who was gonna play the characters.

Of course they knew. Those are clearly representations of Spiner, Frakes, and Burton, and the latter two look very much like they did in the early first season. The artist's rendering of Spiner is off, but it's obviously meant to be Spiner. If they hadn't known who was playing the parts, they'd have had no way of even approximating what they'd look like. Especially in the case of Data, who was originally conceived as Asian or Pacific Islander in appearance until Spiner was cast.

Plus is that white space ship supposed to be 1/2 of the Enterprise.

No. It's an upside-down image of the original battlestar Galactica seen from the front and below. It's the second time a Trek cover artist used Galactica imagery; the cover of The Romulan Way has McCoy and Arrhae being strafed by Colonial Vipers.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Plus I forgot I like Ghost Ship #1. Riker and Data's heads look funny and thier faces too round. Plus Mister LaForge doesn't look like himself. Maybe they didn't know who was gonna play the characters.

Casting had definitely already occurred, and the poses are from frame grabs of "Encounter at Farpoint", IIRC.

Actually, around the same time, a friend of mine used to use her 35mm camera to photograph characters from her TV screen, so she could do line drawings of episodes for our ST club newsletter that didn't look like released publicity shots - and many of her drawings turned out wide and chubby, too. It was a distortion from the TV screen.

 

[BaloksPuppet]

Black Fire is still one of my favorites. And I've kept Troublesome Minds on my desk for the past few months because I can't bear to put it on a shelf where I can no longer see it.

 

[Zatoichi]

"Vanguard" has some of the best covers I've seen lately. I'm also partial to "Warpath" and "Troublesome Minds."

 

[TenLubak]

Plus I forgot I like Ghost Ship #1. Riker and Data's heads look funny and thier faces too round. Plus Mister LaForge doesn't look like himself. Maybe they didn't know who was gonna play the characters.

Of course they knew. Those are clearly representations of Spiner, Frakes, and Burton, and the latter two look very much like they did in the early first season. The artist's rendering of Spiner is off, but it's obviously meant to be Spiner. If they hadn't known who was playing the parts, they'd have had no way of even approximating what they'd look like. Especially in the case of Data, who was originally conceived as Asian or Pacific Islander in appearance until Spiner was cast.

Plus is that white space ship supposed to be 1/2 of the Enterprise.

No. It's an upside-down image of the original battlestar Galactica seen from the front and below. It's the second time a Trek cover artist used Galactica imagery; the cover of The Romulan Way has McCoy and Arrhae being strafed by Colonial Vipers.

Oh ok. I didn't know. It was one the first books that I got when i was little and my paw said that was maybe why they looked funny and why the Encounter Book just was a picutre of stars. I just never questoned it


I never watched BAttlestar...i didn't know. That doesn't make a lot of sense to me tho..if you are being serious...I remember 2 little spaceships and an old indiana jones lookin old building...Col. Vipers i am not familar with.



So i guess this cover is my favorite for sentimental reasons. When i started watching TNG it was in its last season so i didn't know that was supposed to be Riker on the cover at first...and thought the stripe on the top of unifrom w/o collar was cool but weird..thought those are the old kind of uniforms....I never knew Riker was ever beardless. Plus I was confused by the Yar character, and why they called La Forge Lt.... later when i saw reruns for season 1 on DC20 Washington it made sense tho

And the Torrent Sea cover is pretty. I just finished it in the first week of September and enjoyed it, tho i should have been studying.

 

[Arpy]

My least favorite TV series has had some great covers:

Shockwave
boldly mysterious
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0743464567/ref=rdr_ext_sb_pi_sims_3

Last Full Measure
vibrantly somber
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Last_Full_Measure

God Thad Men Do
you're right there, on the adventure, in the tech
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_That_Men_Do

Romulan War
woulda likes something romulan but anyway what a great faux painting of our founding fathers...besides they never saw their romulan foes, and the book's probably more about them than the unseen enemy
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/The_Romulan_War_-_Beneath_the_Raptor's_Wing

Rosetta
is the asian writing and the asian babe too much? pretty though
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Rosetta

Daedalus
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0743471180/ref=rdr_ext_sb_pi_sims_2

 

[F. King Daniel]

My vote is for the newest Titan book - I haven't laughed so hard at a book cover in my life! Riker hasn't looked like that in decades (if ever). I may be confusing unintentionally hilarious with good, though.

 

[JD]

Yeah, it's definitely a unique cover, but luckily what's inside it is much better.

 

[F. King Daniel]

My proper vote goes to the old James Blish novelizations (original versions, except 2 and 3 which had rubbish photos) and Trek to Madworld. Nothing else comes close to these IMO.
They’re a wonderful mix of the old sci-fi book covers I love (which often have nothing to do with the books themselves) and Star Trek. If only TOS had the budget for scenes like those! (and what a missed opportunity TOS-R with it’s ultra-bland space scenes was)

The first edition cover for Trek to Madworld is a lovely picture of the Enterprise laying waste to an innocent space station (firing phasers from the tractor beam emitter, obviously).

I’m not sure this counts (the books are unofficial), but The Best of Trek books had fantastic covers, too. I haven’t actually read the books, but I’ve seen cover pics online. The faux-Enterprise on TBoT #5 is my favourite, but I like them all.

Oh – and Dreadnought! too, because I love the design of the USS Star League.

As far as modern stuff goes, I liked the covers for the Destiny trilogy (they fixed Ezri’s hair!), even if book 3 blatantly screamed “Atlantis ripoff!” with that pic of the city in hyperspace (not that I mind, I loved SGA). Anyone else notice the Klingon capital building from Enterprise as part of the city on the cover of book 1?

 

[Dayton Ward]

I know it's already been mentioned, but one of my absolute favorite covers from the past few years is the one created for Constellations. I remember talking to Marco back when he was trying to figure out what to do for the cover, and the notion of paying some kind of homage/tribute to the old Blish covers came up. The ones for 1, 4, 5, 6, and 8 were the ones discussed the most. The final version is very much inspired by 6 and 8. (I lobbied for Kirk to be carrying a space helmet, but oh, well.).

So far, Constellations is the only cover flat I've had framed to hang in my home office.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

So far, Constellations is the only cover flat I've had framed to hang in my home office.

I have the flat to get it framed, but I've yet to do that.

I meant to ask Marco, and never quite got around to it, if he had a super-high res JPEG or TIFF of the cover. I wanted to use it to make a Xbox 360 faceplate. Just never got around to it, mostly because I never play my 360. 'Course, I don't play anything else, either. *shrug*

 

[new_mercury]

the Vanguard covers are awesome and also like the ones for Cox's Khan books

 

[F. King Daniel]

A thought: on the CG covers (and going off-topic a little), the Enterprise always looks exactly the same, and so the covers have become fairly interchangeable and generic (no offence CG artists, but if you’ve seen one “pixel perfect” TOS Enterprise you’ve seen them all). The classic covers had a little freedom: The cover of James Blish’s Star Trek 10 made the Enterprise look like a war machine, just by changing the proportions slightly, and painting the ship gunmetal grey. A few old covers of the 80’s had weird mixes of the TOS and TMP versions of the ship.

The TOS Enterprise has been re-interpreted several times for TV and film, most notably in TMP and STXI. Both ships are unmistakably the Enterprise (and are supposed to be the same ship), yet they look different. I’m not saying use the TMP or STXI versions of the ship on a TOS novel – that would be false advertising. What I’m saying is that maybe some creative freedom be allowed in reinterpreting the ship a little to suit the story. Like STVI had a broken-down, worn-out, cramped Enterprise (which effectively mirrored the ageing characters) while TMP’s (and STXI’s) version was shiny, new and spacious. I’m talking about an artistic thing, not some “refit”, and nothing would be mentioned in the story itself.

As much as I wanted to kick in Gabe Koerner for his mullet alone after seeing (enduring?) Trekkies, his BSG-style Enterprise looks really cool. It’s clearly the TOS Enterprise, just seen though different eyes. It’d fit nicely on the cover of a somewhat ‘dark’ TOS story, conveying the tone of the novel though the look of the ship (which, admittedly, could be achieved to an extent by lighting the original ship differently).