Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Paperback 933: Between Planets / Robert Heinlein (Ace 05501)

Paperback 933: Ace 05501 (1st thus, ca. 1970)

Title: Between Planets
Author: Robert A. Heinlein
Cover artist: Steele Savage (!)
Frontispiece artist (!!!): Clifford Geary

[Part of the Laura R. Braunstein Collection]

Est. value: $5-10

Ace05501
Best things about this cover:
  • Nice dismount, Space Jesus!
  • Someone was So High when they designed this.
  • "So, like, the dragons have eyes, but then those eyes have eyes ... like, seven eyes ... and the dragons are swimming through, like, an algae-covered pond toward a tiny floating city, and then there's this muscly space preacher in a hot orange spandex body suit who's like 'AMEN!' ... oh my god this is gonna be sweet."

Ace05501bc
Best things about this back cover:
  • Not to bring the room down too much, but this is really poorly written. It's like a 10-year-old trying to summarize a story.
  • I see now why they needed the psychedelic nutjobbery of the front cover—to offset this soporific nonsense.
  • "Don, the hero of this story" is an improbable sentence.
Bonus feature ... FRONTISPIECE!

FrontispieceAlone
Best things about this frontispiece:
  • Oh, man, I'm gonna be having man-goat-chicken nightmares for days now...
  • The twin dildos on top really tie the whole look together.
  • The human appears to be unzipping his fly. I'm now a little worried for man-goat-chicken.

Page 123~

Involuntarily Don grunted with pain.

Choose your own context!

~RP

1 comment:

DemetriosX said...

Terrible cover for a pretty good book. That frontispiece is pretty awful too.

Based on the cover price, ISFDB suggests this is from 1975, though the art was originally for a 1971 printing.