Making fun of cover art

Not well yet.  Nor king.

Steve labors under these exact conditions, though about a day ahead of me on the symptom train.

We here in Central Maine are looking forward to the Winter Weather on the overnight, which is to bless us with 1-3 inches of snow finished with a tenth of an inch of ice.

But that's not why I called you all together today.

A couple days ago I got a tweet from someone who was going to talk about the Liaden books, which was cool and gratifying and all like that.  Not only where they going to talk about the Liaden books, but they were (so it said) going to mock the "90s cover art" because that was always fun.

. . .and so I didn't retweet the announcement of the talk, even though it was to my benefit, and even though someone had taken the time to talk about my books on the internet.

I was just going to content myself with not retweeting, but I realize that this thing is still bothering me, so here I am again, displaying my wrongheadedness and lack of humor.

Those mock-worthy "90s" covers?  Were created by professional SF artists, most of whom are still working today.  Human folk who take pride in their work, and who have survived in a very tough field.  They are not the enemy; and their work -- even given that everyone is an art critic -- ought not to be held up for laughs just to make oneself look cool -- or for any reason, really.

For the record, Steve and I have been very fortunate in the cover art for the Liaden books from the very first cover (which appeared in the 1980s), to the eighteenth cover, revealed only yesterday.  Stephen Hickman, Michael Herring, Alan Pollack, Melisa Michaels, David Mattingly have all done splendid covers for us.  And, while I'm on a roll,  let's not forget the artists who have covered our non-Liaden work:  Colleen Doran, Tom Kidd, Eric Williams, Chris McGrath, Thomas Peters -- all of whom have done fine work for us, for our characters, and, ultimately, for the people who picked up our books and took a chance on them -- very likely because the cover -- something in the cover -- drew them.

Maybe the world had changed that much since the "90s" -- maybe every book now is sold through word of mouth, maybe browsing bookshelves is so last century that covers aren't even needed any more.

But even if that's so, politeness counts, gratuitous mocking is rude.

And cover artists are not the enemy.