If you've been in any bookstore in your lifetime, you're probably familiar with that most peculiar of book retail locales: the Fantasy & Science Fiction section. This strange and sweaty place is kept separate from the rest of the bookstore so that its residents, the soap-averse fans of Fantasy & Science Fiction novels, can go about their plots and dark rituals without disturbing any of the normal-smelling clientele.

But there' another very good reason for keeping Fantasy & Science Fiction books segregated. They look really weird. The absolute worst part about every fantasy novel, apart from the writing, is the ludicrous cover art they all seem to have. It' so bad, that ironically enough in this modern age, it' still very bad.

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And so, after a great deal of very stinky research, I present to you the absolute worst Fantasy & Science Fiction book covers.

Like most guys, I've got posters of heavily muscled men on the walls of my room, and can say that I honestly have no problem staring at the male form for hours on end. But here things may have gotten a bit out of hand. These guys look like they're made out of balls of twine.

Pictured on the cover is our hero, The Golden Queen, accompanied by both his hairstylist, and a bear, boldly striding out of this novel and into a better one.

Zeor: "No! Come back! You haven't seen any of my good pentagrams yet!"

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Ninja versus a man-snake with four arms. For some reason, the ninja is positioned to attack someone just off the cover. Who could it be? A man-snake with four legs? It is a mystery.

Author, Jack L Chalker: "Hey Bernie, what' the biggest number there is?"

Editor, Bernie Ciscain: "Ninety trillion. Why do you ask?"

Jack L Chalker: "No reason."





My lord, that is a lot of horses. I gather that for pre-teen girls this is basically pornography. I would bet ninety trillion dollars there' a scene where the heroine comes across an unloved horse, and seeing the potential within him, takes him and wins the gold medal at the county fair horse championship.



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More pony-porn. In this one the heroine has to pretend to be a boy. She eventually proves to the world that girls can do anything just as well as boys can by revealing her gender at the dramatic conclusion, after winning the county fair horse championship.

There' nothing exceptionally funny about this, except that Crystal Walls sounds sort of like a retirement home for porn stars.

What kind of fantastic world is this, where snowmobiles are towed along by tiny polar bears? Oh, what adventures they must have in this ridiculous fucking land!

Little known fact: every one of these polar bears is named 'Wesley.'

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I actually don't see anything that funny with this one. I'm not sure why I even included it.

I think I actually own that belt even.

The Fey is the special code name given by the government to the two most precious assassins in the land of Nar'Blip'pt'anana.

I really like the subtitle on this one. "It wouldn't be easy for Sklar Hast to kill a sea monster that refused to die!" No, I guess it wouldn't.

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