Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Paperback 148: The Cosmic Rape / Theodore Sturgeon (Dell 1512)

Paperback 148: Dell 1512 (1st ptg, 1968)

Title: The Cosmic Rape
Author: Theodore Sturgeon
Cover artist : Lehr (Just Lehr, like Cher, only less famous) [damn, he has a first name after all - it's Paul]

Yours for: $6


Best things about this cover:

  • It's like a horrid disease, all red and inflamed, with pustules and what not. Yuck.
  • I'm guessing (i.e. hoping) that the "rape" is metaphorical.
  • I should read this. Sturgeon is a fantastic, inventive author whose work I keep meaning to read more of.
  • This appears to be a picture of some kind of Mad Max-ish tractor pull. Only the tractors have tails and are being orbited by small aircraft.
  • I just put actress IONE Skye in a crossword puzzle that I co-wrote, so I keep reading "lone" as "IONE." Not sure what an "IONE man" would be.

Best things about this back cover:

  • Wow. That's a lot of ... text.
  • Apparently I paid $3.50 for this (?!)

Page 123~

Screw that. I just read the opening paragraph and that's what I'm going with...

Page 5~

"I'll bus' your face, Al," said Gurlick. [memo to self - steal that name] "I gon' break your back. I gon' blow up your place, an' you with it, an' all your rotgut licker, who wants it? You hear me, Al?"


If I were Al, I would run. Far.

~RP

2 comments:

JamiSings said...

Is it just me or does that dome-thingie on the cover kind of look like an egg being fertilized by a sperm?

Anonymous said...

The artist is Paul Lehr -- not as famous as Cher, perhaps, but an extremely prolific and well-known American illustrator.