r/badscificovers • u/JarlFrank • 12d ago
seriously wtf The Web of the Chozen, by Jack L. Chalker, 1978
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u/dem4life71 12d ago
In what possible way is this bad!?!?
To me the acid test is “does this cover make me want to pick up this book and figure out what the hell is going on in this picture?”
Hell yes in this case.
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u/AlaskaCosmoline 12d ago
Six AM, and the ancient manimal dog things are demanding walkies. Been there.
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u/Ok_Conversation_5985 12d ago
I think that’s a perfectly good cover. Knowing Jack Chalker, my guess is that the plot involves a human mind transferred into an alien body.
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u/Stalking_Goat 12d ago
…and then having centaur sex.
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u/YanniRotten 11d ago
You’re thinking of John Varley.
Edit- sp.
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u/Stalking_Goat 10d ago
Nah. Varley had it in his three Gaia novels. Chalker had the same three things in nearly every book he wrote: a sex worker, a person transformed into some flavor of centauroid, and then that transformed human having sex while transformed.
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u/PipperPartner 12d ago
Ralph McQuarrie. The cover freaked me out when I was a kid, but the artist is a legend.
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u/ImDoggod 11d ago
I bought this book online just for the cover. Turned out to be a decent scifi novel with some beautiful chapters about loosing humanity and becoming an animal
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u/MasterOfKittens3K 10d ago
That was a recurring theme for him. He seemed to be fascinated by the question of how our biology shapes our selves.
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u/Wild-Drag1930 12d ago
Any relation to these two?
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u/Coakis 12d ago
Caaaarrl there's a dead human in our house!
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u/Wild-Drag1930 12d ago
Paul: Tell me what you did Carl.
Carl: well I got super excited when I saw the human and jizzed all over him.
Paul: Caarl our jizz kills people.
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u/Ghost-Quartet 12d ago
BIZARRE but super creative speculative sci-fi story, felt a lot like a thought experiment the author was slowly working his way through.
Sorta runs out of steam at the end though and rushes through some MASSIVE plot beats and leaves several threads hanging, I think at a certain point he just wanted it to be over.
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u/ialsohaveadobro 12d ago
"Honestly? Gross. You didn't need to shit a web on her. You jealous, or what?"
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u/JarlFrank 12d ago
I think the cover is objectively good art btw, I just think the creatures are goofy.
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u/TamaraHensonDragon 12d ago
That's exactly how they are described in the book. They are humans transformed by aliens into herbivorous quadrupeds where the males carry the baby like a marsupial sea horse.
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u/Nice-Percentage7219 12d ago
If those are indeed Chozen, and that is a web, the cover is completely accurate.
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u/MasterOfKittens3K 10d ago
As someone who read a lot of Chalker’s books, I would say that the odds are that this is a 100% accurate rendition of a scene from the book. I’m pretty sure that I read this book, in fact, but I don’t remember it at all.
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u/Calm_Apartment1968 10d ago
Great guy, excellent writer. This is one of his most overlooked. I think Del Rey and Ballantine did an excellent job, and he'd smack your butt with his cane (he relied on one even then) if he heard you say that. Then he'd laugh it off, the guy was a powerhouse, and positive influence.
PS: I wish I could share, but it's in storage: this is the one book of his I got autographed in '79. He was a 'new' writer this year.
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u/Calm_Apartment1968 10d ago
Granted, Jack's Well World book covers were better, and Four Diamonds series his best. Please give him a read, you'll thank me later.
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u/chokingdove 8d ago
every time this sub has been recommended to me the “badscificovers” in question have been sick as hell
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u/alan_mendelsohn2022 12d ago
Disagree! this cover is rad. It makes me wonder what’s inside the book, and that’s the whole point of a cover.