Friday Face-Off: Aliens
Welcome to The Friday Face-Off, a weekly meme created by Books by Proxy! Each Friday, we will pit cover against cover while also taking the opportunity to showcase gorgeous artwork and feature some of our favorite book covers. If you want to join the fun, simply choose a book each Friday that fits that week’s predetermined theme, post and compare two or more different covers available for that book, then name your favorite. A list of future weeks’ themes are available at Lynn’s Book Blog.
This week’s theme is:
“Aliens–if they exist–are little green men with big eyes and spindly arms…or giant insects or something like a lumpy little creature”
~ a cover featuring ALIENS
Mogsy’s Pick:
Sundiver by David Brin
For this week’s theme, I’ve decided to go with an oldie but a goodie. Sundiver is the first book of The Uplift Saga, a series featuring the central theme of “biological uplift”, a term used to describe the process of transforming a certain species into more intelligent beings by other already intelligent beings. In this universe, humanity is an anomaly – a species that apparently got to where they are with no patron race. But is this truly the case? Or did a mysterious race begin the uplift of humankind a long time ago before abandoning them? The matter is one of fierce debate.
Let’s take a look at the following selection of covers from around the world:
From left to right, top to bottom: Bantam Spectra (2010) – Little Brown and Company (1996) – Bantam (1981)
Spanish (2010) – Romanian (2013) – Polish (1995) – Spanish (1993) – French (1995) – German (2014) – Czech (1995) – Russian (1995)
Winner:
I hate to admit it, but some of these older covers are just way too goofy looking for my tastes, so simple and elegant wins it for me this week.
What do you think? Which one is your favorite?
The BiblioSanctum 
Oh man, those are some old-school covers! This should have been a tbt post. 😀 You know, I don’t think I know of any book with aliens on it! Do the Star Wars books count? This is an interesting prompt for this week for sure. Great choices!
Have a fantastic weekend. =)
Alyssa @ The Eater of Books!
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Star Wars books would totally count! I actually thought about using one – some of the short story collections like Tales from Jabba’s Palace or Tales of the Bounty Hunters had some great covers 🙂
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I like the Spanish one the best. (I think it’s spanish!) The white one in the mid. But all syfy is good syfy to me, even with a little cheese 😉
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That is my favorite too.
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I really like the clean, simple design.
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It’s true, I love a lot of older vintage sci-fi covers BECAUSE of the cheese!
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I like the polish cover myself. Very reminiscent of heinlein’s covers from the 70’s and 80’s…
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Yes! Great observation!
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Ehhh, oh they are so ugly
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Haha, I can’t really say I loved any of the ones this week 😀
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I agree it’s my fave as well
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Great minds 😉
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Either the Little Brown and Company (1996) or Spanish (2010) would have grabbed my attention the most I think.
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I agree, both are quite striking in their own ways.
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The Bantam Spectra cover is kind of fun as is the Romanian one! None are greatly to my taste to be honest.
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I’m with you – I don’t really care for any of them, really, but some of them are quite fun 🙂
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The older covers look great. For some reason I’m drawn to the first one by Bantam Spectra. I think the alien has some appeal to me for some reason I can’t explain. I don’t know that I would actually pick up any on the cover alone, but if I did, that would be the one.
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I kinda wanted to choose an alien one for the winner, but I just couldn’t do it! LOL, most of these are fun, but oh man, the cheese…
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Ohhhh I haven’t read this book nor heard of it before but I really like the spanish cover!!
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It’s an older book, but I think quite well known among hardcore sci-fi fans 🙂
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Oh okay!:)
I tried to read a lot of classic SF when I was in high school but not a lot were either translated in french or available at my local library!
Always nice to see there’s an infinity of books left to know about ^^
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Good choice, indeed: simple, linear and with an arresting color choice 🙂
The middle cover in the first row is not bad either….
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I do love the color choice! I find it interesting that most of these covers also went for the orange/yellow motif.
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The first one is hilarious! It’s looks like Gollum in the animated Hobbit movie. But I think your pick and the second in the top row are tied for my faves 🙂
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LOL, I know right? That’s what I kinda meant by goofy. That’s the edition I own, and that big alien on there always cracks me up.
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Hah, I love this selection of covers. The first cover with the alien dude – he’s all like ‘hey, how you doin?’. Then there’s the giant donut. I love the blue ET guy too. My favourite (I do like your cover because it has a simplicity that is classy) but the very last cover, the green one with all the space ships – it just has this great comic feel. I have to go for that one.
Lynn 😀
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LOL! Like I said, that’s the edition I own and looking at that cover always puts a smile on my face. That alien is just so chill 😀
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Good Choice! The 1981 Bantam cover isn’t too bad either. Interesting that the covers got more cheesy and ugly in the newer editions!
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LOL, that’s too funny! I think a lot of the newer editions also kept the original cover (the first one) and that to me is such a missed opportunity!
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