We're told from a very young age not to judge a book by its cover. That's all well and good until you're presented with something that is so visually upsetting that it puts even the most classic of classic sci-fi stories into new, terrifying, and disappointing light. Welcome to r/badscificovers, where you too can be accosted by some of the most confusing attempts at literary illustration to ever grace the bookshelf.
Some of the work is so bad it's good, like this cover of Strange Relations by Philip Jose Farmer, or Warworld Volume III by Jerry Pournelle.
Others seem to be intentionally bad, as if they were put together using MS Paint, or by someone who had a very bad experience with Roald Dahl.
If you feel like looking for a certain period of bad sci-fi art, you can sort by decade, or if you're feeling a little randy, you can check the definitely not a penis, boobies ( • )( • ), or star whores flairs. This flair-happy hub of horrible design can and will titillate the masochistic art critic that lives in all of us.
