We should stress that authors don't customarily get much input into their book covers, so this image is by no means a reflection on the work of science-fiction romance author Jacqueline Lichtenberg. And any novel that features vampires fighting on the Moon, where an alien vampire spaceship has just crashed, automatically meets our criteria for awesomeness. (Somehow, I'd gotten the impression this book was newly published, but after double-checking just now, I realized it's been out in paperback for six years. And it won the Romantic Times Award for best SF novel. Weirdly, Amazon has a version of the book cover where the woman suddenly has long, flowy hair and a more doll-like face.)

Here's a description of her book, from one of the Amazon reviews:

Dr. Titus Shiddehara is a human/vampire hybrid alien from the planet Luren. Titus, an astronomer has been sent to Project Station on the moon the stop his nemesis and vamphyric father, Dr. Abbot Nandoha from contacting the home world of Luren.

Titus is a Resident - a Luren who does not drink blood from the human source. Instead, he drinks a cloned, dried blood mixed with heated water. Abbot, on the other hand, is a Tourist. He feels justified in not only drinking blood from humans, but also in their domination. To Abbot, humans are just like cattle - or orl. If Abbot succeeds in sending his message to Luren, humanity will be doomed.

Abbot and Titus, as vampires, have incredible telepathic powers. They are able to bend others to their will and create believable illusions. Using these skills, Abbot does everything he can to try contact Luren. Titus is forced to struggle to thwart Abbot and stay alive. This power struggle, set against a conflicted Earth, creates a refreshing and fascinating world with unexpected twists and turns.

Here's the full cover art, which I guess is from the 2003 paperback edition. Click to enlarge:

Our research intern, Cyriaque Lamar, pored over the most wretched and bizarre book covers that ever defaced the bookshelves, and came up with the absolute worst and most inappropriate. Normally, I feel a little trepidation about saying we've collected the cheesiest or wrongest "of all time" — but in this case, it only feels right. So here are Cyriaque's picks, with his erudite commentary.

Cheesiest Book Covers:

Most Inappropriate Book Covers (Maybe NSFW):

Additional reporting by Cyriaque Lamar.

We've collected various book covers from a number of classic science fiction novels to see how different artists have interpreted the same book. The covers are sometimes surprisingly pulpy, others are elegantly minimalist, and still others are variations on the same theme. Some of these are actual covers from various editions of the books, and some are concept designs created by individuals — on spec, for a class project, or just for fun. Bear in mind that a few of the actual book covers may not be work-safe.

1984 by George Orwell:

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley:

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury:

Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham:

The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham:

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick:

A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick:

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein:

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood:

I, Robot by Isaac Asimov:

John Carter of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

Neuromancer by William Gibson:

We by Yevgeny Zamyain:

The Space Merchants by by Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth:

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess:

War of the Worlds by HG Wells:

I was not surprised that our many io9 rock gods recognized most of the covers, and I was chagrined that I accidentally included two Queensryche covers. (But come on. Queensryche's covers are like science fiction gold!) I was, however, stoked to discover that a lot of the covers got pretty evenly divided votes, including some of the more obscure albums like Terraforming and Wolfmother.

Most people thought the Budgie album and Expect No Mercy by Nazareth were book covers. And most people thought Ellison's The Beast That Shouted Love At The Heart Of The World and Norman Spinrad's Little Heroes were album covers.

Here are all the covers we featured, plus a few more that we almost used:

A number of great present-day cover artists are blogging now, but Borgman may be the first classic 1960s pulp cover artist to start a blog. He talks a lot about the process of painting his book covers, which frequently used himself as a model. I love the fact that he admits he didn't read most of these books at the time, and says things like, "I have no idea what these glowing round things are, but they were done with an airbrush." I bet Philip K. Dick wouldn't have minded.

Borgman only did a handful of science fiction book covers, but he also did a lot of weird comic-book art and commercial projects, including this great "Plastics" ad, and the slightly abstract astronaut drawing. [Harry Borgman Art]

We were thrilled to get to hang out with Picacio at WorldCon, and see his work up close in the artists' exhibition room. We asked him what his philosophy of SF illustration was, and he said:

I’ve never thought about my work with any driving philosophy behind it, really. I just react to the things I see in my head, our chaotic world that seems to be more chaotic every day, and to the genre manuscripts that I’m fortunate to illustrate on a daily basis. But hopefully my images connect on their own without me!

His cover illustrations for The Margarets by Sheri S. Tepper and Time's Child by Rebecca Ore were both named as finalists for the Chesley Awards recently. His website is here and you can keep up with his work on his blog.

There's way more great suggestions over at the link. [LibraryThing]