I know, I probably should have workshopped the title a bit, but I'm already committed to that. No, what I need is some opinions about the cover art.

The story is currently published with this:

(vectors appropriated from DA, sources credited in the story description)
I mashed this together in gimp just to get the bare minimum of what I felt was worth putting in the cover. Of specific interest here is the use of HAL-9000's "eye" to represent the AI in the story. This is of course not very representative of what the actual AI in the story looks like, which is basically a cube of black glass that glows with a red aura.

I tried making a cube with simple vector graphics, but was never happy with how it looked. Recently, however, I've been experimenting with Blender and came up with this:

Now, given how much time I've sunk into figuring out how even find the right shader options to get this to look even remotely like I imagine it, I'm very biased toward the new one, but when I look at the two side-by-side, I feel uncertain. So I'd love some outside opinions about which looks nicer and if the new one feels similarly menacing as HAL.

I'm also open to other suggestions of what I might do better with it.

Both look good, but I'm a fan of the original HAL version.

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I'm gonna vote cover B. I think A stands on its own a little better, but that's because we associate HAL with evil AI already. If I read this fic and saw that it was square in the story, I'd be like "uhh what?" when looking back at the cover. Better to stick with what's in the story, and once you associate your readers with your AI, they'll know what they're looking at in the pic.

7622037
Out of these two, I'd go with A, since that one made me think there's some evil AI or robot thing going on even before I read the description. Cover B just made me stare at it and wonder why is there an odd demonic cube hanging in the air.

However, the best course of action would be to either mess around with blender and the cover art a bit more to make it easier to comprehend that we're looking at an AI cube, or, if the shape of the AI doesn't really matter, adjust it in the story itself.

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This is more-or-less why I want to put the cube on the cover in the first place, however, as pointed out by Everfree...
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made me think there's some evil AI or robot thing going on even before I read the description

This is my biggest hesitation to change anything at all about the cover. HAL makes for such an effective visual shorthand for "dangerous AI" that it immediately sets exactly the sort of reader expectation that I want for the story.
(point of fact: HAL isn't evil per-se, it's just that his objective function was misaligned with the interests of the human crew—i.e. staying alive)

The shape of the AI isn't strictly significant to the story, but I do feel personally attached to how I've written it already, so I don't think I'll be changing that. I may continue to play around in Blender and try to get something that's more visually similar to HAL, enough to hit that same feeling. (I think the movie Tau did this pretty well in its poster art, so it should be possible.)

Thanks for the feedback!