The deadline for the giveaway of the book The Saucer Fleet is at noon Mountain time today! So get over there, read the rules, and leave your comment so you’re entered to win!
The authors, Jack Hagerty and Jon Rogers, were interviewed on The Space Show this week too (direct download here), talking about the book. Give it a listen!
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The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking, movie reviews, and all that) can be found here.
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 | Bad Astronomy was chosen as one of Time.com's Best Blogs of 2009. |
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March 20th, 2009 at 7:30 am
First comment – Thanks Phil Plait!
Even if I don’t win thanks for giving us all the chance to do so!
March 20th, 2009 at 7:32 am
BTW. Your “Death from the Skies” book should be coming to my local library (Blackwood, South Australia) soon too!
March 20th, 2009 at 9:22 am
When the odds of winning are 1:1 I still never win.
March 20th, 2009 at 9:26 am
Cafeen Man – you are not using your skeptic sense! Very often, those who say “I never win” use a sampling bias – remembering the hits and not the misses! In this case the hits being actually losing, and misses as winning…
March 20th, 2009 at 11:54 am
Okay, the creature on the left is from “Arena”, from the original Star Trek. Where are the creatures on the right from?
March 20th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
To all the BAB readers -
I finally get to comment here. I couldn’t in the original post to make sure I didn’t accidentally win! (CafeenMan: That’s the only time I usually win!)
First let me say that I am absolutely overwhelmed at the response. I guess that offering cool geek stuff for free really brings people out of the woodwork, but this was completely unexpected. Both Phil and I expected about 300 respondents, and we are closing in on 800!
For those of you having a nerdgasm over the book, I am extremely flattered (but it feels a little creepy). If you think that’s exciting, imagine what it’s like seeing your own work featured on the site! BTW, I’ve forwarded the link to Kris Harber (the cover artist) so that she can see that people do (favorably) judge a book by its cover.
For those promising to make a pilgrimage to Boulder to pick up the book or asking Phil to autograph it for you, he doesn’t have it, I do. That photo is of his own personal copy that I sent him for writing the Foreword.
For the bug guy and others who asked about the Martian war machines, yes, they’re in there. In fact that’s the longest chapter and was the most interesting to write. Yes, I know they’re not actually saucers, and yes I know they’re not really flying. I devote a whole page to that very point. I think you’ll be surprised to find that almost were saucers in an earlier incarnation.
A final thank you to those that showed so much creativity in your entries! The poems and snatches of dramatic scenes! They all gave me some serious warm fuzzies
- Jack
March 20th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
can we have a nerd off in the mean time and try to ID all the saucers on the book jacket?
top to bottom
This Island Earth?
Forbidden Planet. Who can name the ship without googling?
Don’t know about the big one above the title? Day the Earth Stood Still?
Earth verses the Flying Saucers? or Invasion of the Saucer Men?
Lost in Space. Can’t remember it’s name either.
March 20th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
It’s after noon Mountain time.
Where’s my Book, good Sir?
March 20th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Cllockwork: You are correct on all those (the fourth on is from EvtFS). Lost in Space is the Jupiter 2. What about the one poking in from the right side of the cover (just above Klaatu’s ship)?
- Jack
March 20th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
Is that the USS Enterprise I see?
And are they triffids standing to the right of the book?
March 20th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
Jack First I’m stumped by that saucer.. but don’t tell me someone’s bound to get it.
Secondly The book’s a must have either way but I make lots of scifi (and soon some sci-fact) models for a living (kids paper construction kits) Would the info in your book be good source material for building a bunch of saucer models (just for fun). Just asking because I noticed the BA’s link also brought up some scifi modeling books.
Lastly let me also congratulate the cover artist. They’ve caught that AMAZING STORIES look perfectly.
March 20th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
MarbleMad: I doubt if anyone will get the saucer on the right since it’s the only one on the cover that’s a little distorted from its actual shape. No, it’s not the Enterprise, but one of the Disneyland Flying Saucers from the ride of the same name. There are more vehicles on the back cover (it’s a wraparound).
Your suggested use of the material is *exactly* the impetus behind the book originally (well, behind “Spaceship Handbook” originally, and this is a continuation). Jon and I didn’t want the information on these vehicles to be lost, so it’s our sacred quest to preserve a distillation of them for posterity.
I’ll let Kris know how much you like the cover, but seriously, I doubt if she’s ever seen a copy of AS. Normally she’s a serious artist who explores all sorts of styles, and this is her “illustrator” style. She did the cover to “Spaceship Handbook” as well.
- Jack
March 20th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
Are those Wells’s Martians on the right, standing up on their tentacles? That would make me think that they posed for these figurines in the relatively mild gravitational field of their home world, and not in the crippling gravitational field of ours.
ClockworkRobot: was it the Bellerophon? Or was that Walter Pidgeon’s ship?
When I see the number of comments on the contest post I have to wonder how many of those people are actually serial contest-enterers. There’s a whole subculture out there of people whose hobby is entering contests, and giveaways on the internet are a favorite haunt of theirs. I had a friend who decided to give away some of her old stuff and decided to do it with a contest, wanting to see how the prizes would match up to her readers. She was surprised when the number of entries exceeded her number of daily readers by a factor of ten or so, and wound up shipping most of her stuff to total strangers. There was a guy who entered an MTv contest about twenty years ago and won a house and a house party featuring Bon Jovi – and had no idea who they were. (That incident was when I first heard of people entering contests as a hobby.)
March 21st, 2009 at 6:30 am
Yeh the Bellerophon was the ship or the mission that was torn apart by the ID-Monster.
I had to google but the only name I can come up with for the ship was “United Planets Cruiser C-57D”.
Dang I didn’t win but I’ll be ordering this as soon as I get back to my own PC
March 21st, 2009 at 6:33 am
I just realised I used both my silly internet handles in this thread. MarbleMad and clockworkrobot = same person DOH. sorry if i confused.