There’s nothing quite as hilarious as a weird book cover. To celebrate this, I helped resurrect the Guess the Plot feature series over at LitReactor. It’s an unabashed love story to the most atrocious and misleading book covers, and it’s wonderful.
For the grand return of Guess the Plot, we revamped the rules just a little to make it easier to enjoy. Here’s how it works:
- Take a strange old sci-fi book cover
- Guess the plot of the book based solely on the cover
- Compare the guess against a real plot synopsis and laugh/weep/vomit/other
Hilarity, gobsmacking, and eye-rolling ensues…
I decided to start with a notoriously bonkers book: The Last Starship from Earth, by John Boyd. The cover has the classic 1960s strangeness about it, and the book is at least 16 kinds of crazy. I won’t spoil anything, but I was even more surprised than I expected to be.
I hope this is just the beginning in a long line of Guess the Plot posts. The absurdity of science fiction book covers deserves to be enjoyed, so go forth and enjoy!
Speculative Intent 