Sometimes a cover doesn’t just miss the mark — it overshoots the solar system, bounces off the moon, and crash-lands in the syllabus of a freshman biology class. Enter Milijun, a book that promises alien interaction but delivers what looks suspiciously like a PowerPoint slide from “Introduction to Genetics, Week 3.”
First, let’s talk about the DNA strand. Yes, DNA is the building block of life, but here it looks like the artist Googled “science clip art” and cranked up the saturation to “nuclear meltdown.” Those bulbous ends don’t scream “alien discovery” so much as “golden sperm cosplay.” If the aliens really are coming, let’s hope they don’t arrive looking like this.
Then there’s the silhouette of our brave human protagonist — or possibly just a dude jogging on a Tron treadmill. Instead of screaming “fight for humanity,” he’s giving me “5k charity run for biology awareness.” He’s running straight into the title, too, which makes me hope MILIJUN is just the name of the world’s most aggressive treadmill brand.
The typography deserves its own category of chaos. The giant orange block letters of MILIJUN have the subtlety of a liquidation sale sign: “EVERYTHING MUST GO, INCLUDING YOUR DNA.” The tagline, What would alien interaction really be like? isn’t exactly thought-provoking — it sounds like the teacher’s opening question in a 9th-grade essay prompt. Spoiler: alien interaction would hopefully be less embarrassing than this cover.
Finally, the whole composition feels like three unrelated stock images stapled together by someone who just learned how to use Photoshop’s “glow” filter. Instead of mystery and interstellar awe, we’re left with confusion and the haunting suspicion that the real alien abduction here was the theft of a decent design budget.
Verdict: A horrible cover that takes “science fiction” far too literally. Less Close Encounters and more Crash Course Biology: Special Effects Edition.
And if you think this one is bad, you should see the other cover they tried out.