Possibly the greatest ad for books, ever

I, Robot

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: ads • books • Old school • robots • science fiction

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The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

Preston Sturges

Definite Cybermen vibe in the graphic.
http://www.facebook.com/paul.wilmot.shuster Paul Shuster

Ah, I used to read all these guys (and C. L. Moore, the distaff side of Padgett, too!) as a kid. I don’t know if I’ve read anything except for I, Robot on this particular list though. (Sometimes they re-released stuff under different titles.)
sockdoll

It’s a picture of a robot just looking at a banana, from the banana’s point of view.
Eden S.-G.

Funny that the name if the publisher is the same as the Linux distro., – GNOME.
- tacochuck
  
  GNOME is a Desktop environment, not a linux distribution.
  - Eden S.-G.
    
    Sorry, you’re right.
http://twitter.com/digitalArtform Joseph Francis

Somewhat interesting wiki page for the publisher
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnome_Press
Asimov was not happy with them.

Location looked nice. I street viewed it out of idle curiosity.
Douglas Rushkoff

Robots have no tails?
- NickPheas
  
  Can we be sure it’s not a forgotten masterpiece? 5 the others have held up.
Kibo

Ooh, that’s Ludlow Tempo Heavy with the alternate characters that make it think it can try to pass as Linotype’s Metroblack No. 2, rather than the ones that make it look like Futura Bold. Such pointy “A”s!

I still wish someone would finally digitize all the styles of Tempo, especially the happy slightly-curly italic:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/myfonts/7008821545/sizes/o/in/photostream/

Sorry for the tangent, it just always makes me sad to see cool old graphic design using the few common fonts of the 20th century that HAVEN’T been digitized to keep them in circulation. If Asimov ever writes his first book again, how will we advertise it? Arial? Papyrus?

…Comic Sans?

(Also, “Daddy, what was a ‘Please rush books I have listed on separate sheet with my enclosed remittance’? When were ‘sheets’, Daddy?”)
Kibo

And, for anyone who finds the big-shouldered Scary Laser Death Robot too menacing, here’s some non-threatening line-art of Asimov using his mental powers to symmetrize butterflies:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tellygacitua/3941366671/
SamLL

Jarring implicit reader gender assumption in the big headline?
- Kibo
  
  They’re just using “man” as the opposite of “robot”. “Woman” wouldn’t be appropriate because all right-thinking Earthmen know “woman” is a synonym for “dishwasher”.
  
  Besides, we don’t know what this scary robot’s capable of. Everyone he’s staring at might be a man now! GREETINGS, EARTH-MANS READING THIS, YOU HAVE JUST TURNED MALE BECAUSE OF MY EYE-RAYS. YOU HAVE BEEN GENDERVIZED. BEEP.
  - http://www.facebook.com/paul.wilmot.shuster Paul Shuster
    
    Maybe it’s a female robot?
- http://www.facebook.com/paul.wilmot.shuster Paul Shuster
  
  Also, planetary origin assumption…
Halloween_Jack

“Crammed full of chuckles and startling gadgets” sounds exactly like the sort of thing that Chris Ware used to write in his pages full of fake comic ads.
- Preston Sturges
  
  What about geegaws, gizmos, and gimcracks?
http://artdonovan.typepad.com Art

Hey, Mr. Earth Man! I want to be an Earth Man too!
Budda-Bah. Budda-Buh-Ba. Buh-Ba.
Andrew Porter

These books are classics of science fiction; they were NEVER released under different titles. ROBOTS HAVE NO TAILS was a collection of stories involving Gallagher, whose creator made him when he was drunk. The robot liked to admire himself in mirrors. Beer features in all the stories, and it turns out the robot is the perfect beer…. ack!