Most Striking Covers

[Smellincoffee]

What books, in your opinion, have had the most memorable, striking, or generally well-done covers? The Vanguard series as a whole enjoys stunning artwork, and both Over a Torrent Sea and First Frontier are unforgettable. (If you've never read First Frontier, picture TOS-Kirk and Spock standing in front of a velocioraptor!)

 

[William Leisner]

Vanguard, hands down.

Though special props have to go to the retro-
Pocket cover for The Case of the Colonist's Corpse.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Loved "Immortal Coil" with Data as Leonardo's Vitruvian Android.

The crystal skull on "Genesis Project 3", but the story was bleh.

The recent "Typhon Pact: Paths of Disharmony" - Shar, yay!

"Captain's Table: NF: Once Burned" - a great Calhoun.

 

[nickyboy]

1. New Frontier: After the Fall
2. Vanguard Book 1
3. Vanguard Book 3
4. Destiny Book 1 (The German cover)
5. New Frontier: Restoration

 

[ST-One]

Vanguard, hands down.

I really like the books (that's, the story), but the covers aren't really all that good.
TBH, they look like a noob's renders.

 

[aaon80]

Though special props have to go to the retro-Pocket cover for The Case of the Colonist's Corpse.

Totally agree with this, it is a great cover. I personally am a fan of the cover of The Never-ending Sacrifice. It really sets the scene for the novel for me, and it is a nice piece of artwork. I also like the Titan covers, though not so much the cover of Synthesis, which comes across a little romance novel-y. I think in general the NF covers are quite striking, though I have only read the first book...

I really like the cover for Ex Machina quite a lot. I think it captures the TMP era of Trek quite well. The fact that enclosed in the nice cover is a simply superb novel is icing on the cake!

 

[jedimaster]

Losing the peace german cover:

How come the German covers are always better than the English-language ones? (with the exception of their standing image for Mac Calhoun)

 

[bfollowell]

While there are many awesome Trek covers, I'd have to say, for me, Vanguard is the series with the most consistently wonderful covers.

I was a techie and grabbed up as much Trek tech as I could as far back as grade school in the seventies, back when the only TrekLit was from Bantam & Ballentine. The ships are still some of my favorite "characters". I simply love all of the Vanguard covers.

- Byron

 

[F. King Daniel]

All of the old Bantam novel covers (both James Blish's adaptations and the originals) are fantastic. They're not official or novels, but I love the Best of Trek covers, too.

I recently saw a copy of Price of the Phoenix in a used book store that featured a guy in an alien mask (with vaguely Romulan features) riding a horse on a desert landscape. It had nothing to do with the story, but it was imaginative.

Recently, I liked the cover of The Needs of the Many, showing an upgraded Sovereign-class ship, a planet (Vulcan?) and the amber coloured Hobus Nebula behind. The Never Ending Sacrifice cover was cool, and I liked the idea of the Fearful Symmetry one. I also loved seeing the STXI warp effect on the Children of Kings cover - the idea of nuTrek ideas in old Trek gets me buzzing.

Worst Cover In Recent Memory award goes to The Romulan War: Beneath the Raptor's Wing. I'm just starting to figure out Paint Shop Pro, but I could do a better job than that.

 

[Mysterion]

I would say that the cover of Reap The Whirlwind is a recent favorite of mine. Really jumps out at you from the shelf.

 

[Greg Cox]

The Immortal Coil cover is one of my favorites.

 

[PikeFan]

Burning Dreams. (Yeah a Pike novel) The hellish fire and Pike's look really made be want to read it!

 

[bfollowell]

and I liked the idea of the Fearful Symmetry one.

I really like that one as well. I'd forgotten about it.

Would anyone happen to know where I might be able to find a decent copy of the back "Iliana Ghemor" cover that isn't obscured by the bar code? I'm sure it's copyrighted though. I'd love to have a good, unobscured copy of that back cover.

I'll have to look through my collection and see what other great covers I've forgotten about.

- Byron

 

[Clawhammer]

Losing the peace german cover:

How come the German covers are always better than the English-language ones? (with the exception of their standing image for Mac Calhoun)

This is quite easy to explain, the German cover designers think they have less to worry about if it comes to copyright infringement etc. For example the cover on one of the Destiny books, is using a copy of my "captain dax" hobby attempt. (A non commercial, personal attempt made for this board.)

While I warned them to not use it (because the source of the image was not from a Star Trek series)
they did the following:
Apologized to the extreme,
Changed the cover with another image of Ezri,
Than decided to use "my" version anyway because it looked better. (Without letting me or the studio that shot that picture of Nicole de Boer know...)

At first I did not notice, all advertising was done with the other "image of Ezri" cover. But at a certain point I see an image of a guy reading the German book, and to my suprise.... so I mailed them and got this excuse: it's for a small market only, we dont make much money on it etc...etc.

Personally: I like the result, but I dont like how it came to be. God knows how many other things are being "abused" in the same way. I need and WANT to make sure that every pixel in my commercial work is either my own or fully backed by it's original creator. This isnt a grab and paste game.

 

[JD]

EDITED TO ADD: Wow, that is a really crappy thing to do. Would you have been able to take any kind of legal action if you'd wanted to? What about the people who made the original Ezri image?

Original post: The ones that come to my mind immediate are the Titan (except Synthesis, like someone else said up thread, it's got to much of a romance novel vibe to it), and Vanguard books. I also really like the Warpath, Immortal Coil, Avatar combined, Destiny (both Pocket and German version), and the last 3 or four Corps of Engineers omnibuses have also had beautiful covers. There are a ton of others I've liked over the years, but those are the ones that really stick out in my mind.

 

[LightningStorm]

Vanguard, hands down.

I really like the books (that's, the story), but the covers aren't really all that good.
TBH, they look like a noob's renders.

As the saying goes. Don't judge a cover by its book. Er, um, waitaminute.

Also, I think SCE: Wounds had a cool cover.

 

[DeVario]

I really like the covers for the Terok Nor trilogy.

 

[JD]

Yeah, me too. I've always liked the covers that combine to make one image.

 

[Smellincoffee]

Yeah, me too. I've always liked the covers that combine to make one image.

Crucible did that too, if I'm not mistaken.

 

[Christopher]

The technical term for multiple works of art that combine into a larger whole is polyptych (Greek for "many folds"). Two is a diptych, three a triptych, four a tetraptych, etc. using Greek numerical prefixes.