Recycling Visual Motifs
So, I was poking through my archive of paperback book cover scans and I selected 'Serpent's Reach,' a 1980 DAW Book by C. J. Cherryh, for my sidebar Image Gadget. After posting it, something about the cover art, by David Mattingly, tugged at the back of my brain. Where had I previously seen that visual motif of the background image of the big, bug eyes ?
The answer ? On the cover of 'Mad Eyes,' Doc Savage novel No. 34, from 1969. The cover art is of course by the incomparable James Bama. Looks like Mattingly consciously evoked it for his DAW cover, 11 years later. I guess if you're going to recycle a visual motif, one from Bama is as good as anything you'll find.........
C.J. Cherry is severely underrated. Not all her novels are great, but when she is on her game, her depictions of alien societies are unequaled. The Downers subplot (basically H. Beam Piper's "Little Fuzzies") in the Alliance-Union books are okay (and recycled in Star Wars as Ewoks), but her Chanur books depict that Kzinit-feline-type society so well. The only modern one as good that I can recall are Neal Asher's Prador's, but would love to hear other thoughts.
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