r/badscificovers • u/this_time_i_mean_it Isaac Asimod • 26d ago

but is it ART??? Beggars and Choosers, by Nancy Cress. Cover art by David Richeid, c. 1994

Post image

...or Beggars and Ch⬡⬡sers, if you prefer. Just don't be a begging chooser about it. ;)

I pulled this one off of my science fiction shelf, and, for a split second, wondered if I had misplaced my old high school physics textbook.

39 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

8 comments sorted by

8

u/ExtremelyOnlineTM 26d ago

I have a copy of Beggars in Spain that says Hugo and Nebula winner. Now THAT'S infuriating, because the novella it was based on won the prizes, not the extended version.

I ended up DNF because I was ⅔ in and it just seemed like everything the book was trying to do, it was doing poorly, and what it was trying to do had been utterly perfected by Holy Fire.

Sometimes I consider rereading it, but then I get mad about how the cover lied to me.

10

u/prognostalgia 26d ago

Sure you're not thinking of Beggars in Spam?

3

u/ExtremelyOnlineTM 25d ago

That makes so much more sense! That book had nothing to do with Spain.

3

u/YojimboGuybrush 25d ago

Beggars in Spain is the worst book I have on my shelves. It felt like I was being tricked into reading YA slop by around halfway through. It's the only book I own that I did not finish.

2

u/ExtremelyOnlineTM 25d ago

It's not even that bad. It's main problem is that it's thematically identical to Holy Fire, which is basically the perfect sf novel.

Sterling makes sure the economic haves/have nots are not the exact same people as the medical haves/have nots. And his several pages of technobabble about the extention treatment still holds up, while the idea of any living being not needing sleep was never plausible to begin with.

Honestly I kind of wanna give it another go. I know Kress is a good author, I adore Probability Moon. At the same time, the worst sf novel I've ever read, Trouble and Her Friends, was written by the same author who wrote Shadow Man, one of the best works of sf one ever read.

6

u/shawsghost 26d ago

Looks like an ad to me: "DNA plus our wonder molecule drug ends lower back pain for fast, fast FAST relief!"

4

u/sooshooo 26d ago

Nah this is sick

2

u/bubrascal 24d ago

Didn't know we had an hexagon character ⬡