Paperback 151: The Day the Machines Stopped / Christopher Anvil (Monarch Books 478)

Paperback 151: Monarch Books 478 (PBO, 1964)

Title: The Day the Machines Stopped
Author: Christopher Anvil
Cover artist: Ralph Brillhart

Yours for: $8


Best things about this cover:

• Rockets explode! Planes disintegrate into patterns roughly resembling autumn leaves! And ... Wes and Earl have engine trouble.

Wes: "Gee, Earl, I'm stumped."
Earl, wagging finger at car: "Bad car! Bad, naughty car! Oh, why did I buy a used taxi!?"

• If "Nature Reversed Its Laws," shouldn't Wes and Earl and everything else be flying up into space? Either that, or Wes and Earl should be making out.

Best things about this back cover:

• It's all very amusing, but that third paragraph ... it's a little too close-to-home, frankly. All sounds eerily relevant / plausible.
• I hate it when people malign the Dark Ages - they were perfectly serviceable Ages.

Page 123~

"Excuse me a minute." Brian's fists tingled. He was thinking of the last crack on the head, of all the insults and underhanded blows he'd experienced from Carl.

~RP

Paperback 150: The Dead Beat / Robert Bloch (Popular Library 60-2299)

Paperback 150: Popular Library 60-2299 (1st, 1961)

Title: The Dead Beat
Author: Robert Bloch
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $8


Best things about this cover:

• Her face - everything about it screams horror hilarity
• She looks like she's about to snap her own neck
• That mouth is So Red that I can only imagine / hope / surmise that this novel involves her drinking blood
• "My hair! O, why did I ever swim in that stupid, over-chlorinated community pool!"
• "My robe! It appears to have fallen open to reveal my impossibly spherical boobs!"
• "My jaw! I can't shut it! How am I even forming this sentence!?"
• Honestly, I love the design on this cover. The jagged backgrounds, the sickly colors. All gold. I believe the word "shocker" is even being struck by something resembling lightning. Fabulous.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Did we mention that Robert Bloch wrote 'Psycho'? 'Cause he did. Write 'Psycho.' It's true. 'Psycho!'"
• "(Remember the author's Psycho)" - um, hey, reviewer from EQMM: the movie adaptation was an international sensation and made a generation of people think twice about getting in the shower. I'm pretty sure folks "remember."
• "Psycho!"

Page 123~

Then he walked in. Opportunity knocks, but Larry walked in. He knew where he was going.

Did I mention that Bloch is a pretty good writer?

~RP

Paperback 149: Man on the Move / Cliff Merritt (Popular Library 445-08224-075)

Paperback 149: Popular Library 445-08224-075 (PBO, 1973)

Title: Cliff Merritt's Man on the Move!
Author: Cliff Merritt, I presume
Cover artist: Let me guess - Cliff Merritt?

Yours for: $8


Best things about this cover:

• "Cliff Merritt is ... Cliff Merritt, in ... Cliff Merritt's ... Man on the Move!"
• I remember looking at this book for So Long wondering ".... ?"
• "The different modes of transportation are not enough - we need an inset ... maybe a railroad conductor, or ... I know! An old dude doing the white man's overbite while rocking out to Huey Lewis on his weekly trip to the cardigan sweater store in Utica! That's it!"
• Cliff Merritt is Chris Ware's great-grandfather, I'm convinced.
• This book has "looming gas crisis" written All over it.
• Least appealing color palette ever.

Best things about this back cover:

• "It's hip to be square!"
• "Between book covers," HA ha. Now if we're talking "between stone tablets," "between blades of grass," or "between your buttcheeks," well, mister, that's a whole 'nother story.
• "It gets more interesting with every page you turn" - "Damn it, how do you work these book thingies again, Mildred? Oh, right, you turn the pages. Stupid modern technology."

And it does get "more interesting" (Chinese folks might want to look away now):


Cliff Merritt is basically that random older guy everyone knows who likes to show you all the trivia he knows because he imagines it makes him seem wise. That little symbol, like a "T" having its way with a "W" ... it's on Every Single Drawing. So it's a ... signature? The opening blurb in the book says that Cliff Merritt cartoons are "well-loved." I would say "well tolerated," at best. Like the drugs you see ads for on TV.

Page 123~


~RP

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

Paperback 147: Shock Treatment / Wright Williams (Beacon Books 143)

Paperback 147: Beacon Books 143 (PBO, 1957)
Title: Shock Treatment
Author: Wright Williams
Cover artist: Peeping Tom

Yours for: $7


Best things about this cover:

• I love how she looks - not terrified, but exasperated: "You again!?"
• Wait - I thought she was in her bathroom and the peeping tom was opening the window shade, but it seems just as likely she's in a hospital with mobile curtain dividers, in which case a. whose arm is that?, b. what's it yanking on?, and c. what is that red cloth? What am I looking at!?
• "AT LAST..." - HA ha. I was just asking myself, "Why is there no book that explores the borderland between love and perversity?" Now, at last, that void is filled.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Sure, big Eric was crazy. Crazy about women! And who can blame him? Am I right, guys!? Yeah, you know what I'm talking about ... [amused chuckles from drunk comedy club crowd] ... ah, chicks."
  
• Whimsical drawings of cruel medical experimentation. "It'll cure your pervertedness, but ... you're gonna experience some rubber-arm, I'm not gonna lie."
• Maybe those arms are supposed to represent the gyrations of patients at the "hospital dance" (!?)
• "Not since Snake Pit ..." - I can't stop laughing long enough to comment on that line
• "Frankly!"
• "Passion-wracked!"

Page 123~

Instead of thinking of Katrine as a lovely, attractive girl who had bravely come out of a harrowing experience, I was drawing mental pictures of her in bed with a man married to someone else. It was rotten of me, and I almost welcomed the self-loathing that I began to feel.

Well, we've all been there, right?

~RP

Paperback 146: The Gods of Mars / Edgar Rice Burroughs (Del Rey 27835)

Paperback 146: Del Rey 27835 (13th ptg, 1979)

Title: The Martian Tales of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Vol. 2: The Gods of Mars
Author: Edgar Rice Burroughs
Cover artist: Michael Whelan

Yours for: $6


Best things about this cover:

• "Hey, wardrobe, can we get some more groin coverage on set, please? STAT!"
• That hunk of "rock" behind them looks disgusting - like rock candy mixed with snot
• I like the part where the naked ballet dancer disembowels the Cyclopadusasaurus.
• Second sets of arms just look silly. That bottom set looks like the hands of someone who can't see and is flailing wildly because his head is shoved up into the torso of the sabermantis.
• Scifi artists, for whatever reason, seem to get credited a lot more than paperback cover artists working in other genres. It takes real talent to do good scifi covers. Even if the artist is super-talented, there's always the danger (manifested here) that the resulting imaginative landscape will look campy and ridiculous.

Best things about this back cover:

• Ugh, more side-arms.
• Cyclopadusasaurus is open downfield ... looks like she'll catch the moonsphere, but man is she going to take a hit from the safety.
• "Return to Peril" - do I have to?
• Dejah Thoris drops mad beats.
• I don't think you're supposed to want to "escape" from an "Eden" (which is, by definition, perfect)

Page 123~

"The great Thark, I fear, is dead," she replied, sadly.

~RP

Paperback 145: The By-Pass Control / Mickey Spillane (Signet P3077)

Paperback 145: Signet P3077 (1st ptg, 1967)

Title: The By-Pass Control
Author: Mickey Spillane
Cover artist: photo cover

Yours for: $6


Best things about this cover:

• Ugh. Ugly multi-colored text crowds this poorly designed cover. And what is that photo? A leftover still from a Prell ad shoot?
• What is it with Spillane covers and naked blondes with hair that looks starchy and untouchable?
• Apparently the "By-Pass Control" is located at the base of her skull. Stop her, Tiger!
• "Multi-murder" is a ... noun?
• "They called him 'Tiger' because ... well, he snarled during sex, frankly."

Best things about this back cover:

• And you thought that little red dot was just some kind of sale sticker. In actuality, it is one of the least explicable book design concepts in paperback history. Maybe it represents the Communist menace. Or Tiger Mann's passion for gumballs. He's irrepressible!
• I'm not sure that Denver Post blurb is as positive as the publishers seem to think it is.
• How many different ways can a book convey to you that it contains rough sex? "Snarling sex," "deadly sex," "rough-tough touch," etc. Maybe the red dot symbolizes the marks Tiger leaves on his many sex partners / victims.
• If you wanna read the awesomest, most over-the-top, ridiculous conflation of rough sex and politics, please read One Lonely Night, where Hammer hammers a commie girl, and when he's done with her, she is red ... white and blue. USA! USA! Rough sex cures women of their political delusions. Who knew? Thanks, Mickey!

Page 123~

"Don't bother packing ... just get on the first one out [...]." I laughed and added, "Besides, you can use a vacation."

"Sure, without clothes?"

"What better kind?" I said.

"I didn't mean it like that," she told me, a lilt in her voice, "but you're making it sound awfully interesting. I'll see you shortly, mud dauber."

He's not just a Tiger. He's also, it seems, a wasp.

[Organ-pipe mud dauber - Trypoxylon politum]

~RP

PS Here are some Hillbilly Hussy covers ... if you're into that sort of thing (and I am - here's one of my own)