Furries Untie!

A cover illustration guaranteed to chase away the readers in droves, appealing only to the slim section of the Canadian SciFi reading public who also had a thing for rodents.

Brought a pistol to a sword fight and lost.

The wacky, comical tone of the artwork is undone by the act of stabbing the animal to death.

A somewhat less goofy cover:



I wonder if the aliens are genuinely meant to have blue blood, or if the artist thought red blood would make the cover a little too grim?

>3 daard23: The arm makes it look like they were stabbed while trying to surrender, which makes it even more humiliating.

Googling the story, it looks like the aliens were supposed to look more like kangaroos?

>5 bam2001: I didn't know the guy from The Church of the Subgenius, Bob Dobbs, was a fan of medieval cosplay.

I think "bemused" is the best way to describe me at this moment.

>6 bam2001: Indeed. They were referred to as Hoppers.

In order to maintain their rule, they instituted an analogue of Middle Age Europe and reserved all technology for themselves. Thus, the guy on the right in the orginal cover - Sir Howard Van Slyck, a younger son of the Duke of Poughkeepsie, whose motto was indeed "Give 'em the works!" The second cover does show Hoppers in an automobile.

Fun fact - the railroad cars in "Divide and Rule" are pulled by elephants. The New York Central must have had huge poop-scooping bills....

I've read the story at least once (it was "Duke of Poughkeepsie" that jogged my memory) but don't remember it in detail. The second cover seems more like what I remember.