Jun 26
Click for full imageFrank Comments: I wonder about that change in skin colour at the shoulders, I seem to remember from the story that the green people were green all over.
Published 1950
You might remember Perelandra from here!
(Average: 7.50 out of 10)
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June 26th, 2013 at 9:04 am
Ironically enough, Mr Lewis’ face will not be appearing on today’s cover.
June 26th, 2013 at 9:52 am
Gives a whole new meaning to tan lines.
June 26th, 2013 at 10:50 am
Perve-landra? He’s getting quite an eyeful from that angle.
June 26th, 2013 at 11:52 am
They REALLY want you to think this book is pornographic. Nudity, conveniently concealed by a passing wisp and some convenient grey locks; and “complete and unabridged” to make you think this book usually has the rude bits redacted.
I find it hilarious that the previous Perelandra cover posted here also has convenient obscuration. It must be the first idea that pops into any cover artist’s head when confronted with naked characters.
June 26th, 2013 at 12:01 pm
Tight Blue Shorts Chap: ‘Well, well, well! Don’t we fancy ourselves all high and mighty, with our obfuscating smoke, and our body talcum, and our ravishing good looks, and our might, and our height! I’ll have you know, I don’t need your fathoms-long spear. I’m quite set to make my own way in this world of new temptation, and…’
Adam: ‘Evie, dear. Smush him.’
June 26th, 2013 at 12:09 pm
This cover was certainly part of a publishing trend in that era (and by “trend” I mean “desperation”).
Also check out this Signet Books cover for “1984” — obviously designed to make one think Orwell’s novel would give you a “sexy time”:
http://orwelltoday.com/1984bksb.jpg
Now, if only today’s publishers were as daring! We’re prudes by comparison…
June 26th, 2013 at 2:44 pm
Little Blue Shorts Guy: “I’m supposed to be impressed by all those fumes? As you can tell by my stance, I’m squeezing really hard right now – to blow one that will put you both to shame! Care to take this to a closet?”
June 26th, 2013 at 3:10 pm
That is an amazingly two-dimension fume cloud considering her torso is behind it and her left hand is in front.
@THX 1138 – #3 Good Show Sir, Indeed!
June 26th, 2013 at 3:25 pm
In the Valley of the Jolly
(woo-woo-woo)
Green Giants
Jollies indeed.
June 26th, 2013 at 3:53 pm
‘World of the New Temptation’. So this must be the untold story of how Dennis Edwards replaced David Ruffin.
Ergo, her modesty is preserved by Cloud Nine.
June 26th, 2013 at 5:21 pm
And look at the right edge – it’s Prentice Alvin! And in a different edition, by the look of it.
June 26th, 2013 at 7:16 pm
Why does she need a bigger smoke screen than he does? And is that at all connected to the size of spear he’s carrying?
June 26th, 2013 at 7:29 pm
@ Dead Stuff #5—yeah, I’m trying to figure out what’s bugging me about this cover. I think it’s the smug look on their perfect faces, like, “Oh we’ve never lost our innocence and all and we can just be freakin’ naked and never sport a woody or get moist or anything so déclassé, you poor pathetic human schnook.” But if they’re so pristinely pre-Lapsarian and Edenic, what’s he need the spear for?
Perhaps the narrative explains this anomaly, but I’ve never read Lewis’s SF.
June 26th, 2013 at 9:03 pm
“RIGHT… have you two been in my flour again!?!”
June 26th, 2013 at 11:45 pm
It’s kind of like she’s saying, “little man, look at the size of my vagina and the size of my god-freind’s penis; do you you really think you stand a chance?”
June 27th, 2013 at 7:04 am
I don’t remember them being bigger than the hero in the book. And the “temptation” was simply the temptation to sleep on land that never moves.
July 2nd, 2013 at 5:54 pm
I’m thinking that’s not supposed to be Adam and Eve but rather Mars and Venus, since Mars had a spear and they were giants compared to the human. But as I recall, the human was just as naked as everyone else. Where’d the tiny, blue short-shorts come from?
And why does the Grand Canyon appear to be in the background? There was hardly enough solid land on the planet to have a canyon of any size.
July 3rd, 2013 at 2:02 pm
@Stevie T 17—I like your theory. It would account for the smugness, at least. Perhaps Vulcan forged the tiny blue short-shorts?
July 3rd, 2013 at 9:19 pm
@B. Chiclitz: Wow, the fitting must have been agony.
July 18th, 2013 at 5:50 pm
“I dare you two to step over that river!”
December 11th, 2013 at 9:49 am
Yep, definitely Mars & Venus. However, since they are described as not even having any secondary sexual characteristics – never mind primary ones – the clouds are a tad unneccessary! It says they are not male and female, but masculine and feminine – they should just be vague humanish shapes – not normal people made big.
Pretty sure Ransom should have a beard by now – and definitely no shorts.
April 21st, 2015 at 7:03 pm
“And they told us not to go swimming in the Lake of Beige Paint! HAH!”
April 22nd, 2015 at 8:37 am
“Look what I have!”
“That’s quite a thing you have there, sir.”
“Can I touch it?”
April 4th, 2016 at 6:10 pm
So, it’s actually a plot point in the book that the main character gets a weird suntan, thanks to traveling naked in a glass box through space, where one half of his body is really dark and the other really light. However, this applies only to him, not to any of the Venusian natives or the space gods and goddesses that he meets. The cover artist really got it back to front.
Or perhaps they just ran out of colored ink.
April 30th, 2021 at 3:49 pm
Lose the shorts and it’s a Dick Blade cover.
April 30th, 2021 at 3:54 pm
Exactly how Lewis didn’t envision it!
May 1st, 2021 at 2:29 am
What fred and Ryan said.
Lewis was still alive when this cover came out. I hope he didn’t see this.
May 1st, 2021 at 3:13 am
Comic Book Guy voice: “Worst. Anthropomorphized planets. Ever!”
May 1st, 2021 at 3:48 am
That’s a lot of calomine lotion. What kind of plants did they mess with?
May 1st, 2021 at 4:52 pm
I just can’t help wondering if the UAI sophomore who did this cover first drew the giants “anatomically correct” and then added the wispy modesty clouds afterwards.
May 1st, 2021 at 8:12 pm
Giants: “None shall pass.”
Little guy: “Oh yeah? Says who? At least I’m wearing real shorts and not some wisp of vapor.”
May 2nd, 2021 at 1:04 am
Are we sure they’re clouds and not wisps of cotton wool, seeing as how they’re so thin that her hand’s in front of the modesty fog? Held on by some stickum?
May 2nd, 2021 at 5:01 am
Man, the low-hanging clouds on this planet….
May 2nd, 2021 at 5:52 pm
Maybe there’s someone to the left dressed in the style of ancient Grome ( https://www.goodshowsir.co.uk/?p=16468#comments ) and their long wispy cape is what we’re taking for mist?
May 3rd, 2021 at 1:15 am
Maybe a cartoon character ran past really quickly and the mist is the visible speed trail left behind? Because Cartoon Physics could easily fit in this cover.
(In the Grand-Canyon-esque background, a Coyote has just fallen POOF, with the distant sound of MEEP-MEEP.)
May 3rd, 2021 at 2:58 am
@GSS ex-noob: the cover certainly could include Cartoon Physics, but I wonder how well Looney Toons logic and “ethics” would fit in with CS Lewis’s explicitly religious setting.
https://shelfdust.com/2019/03/13/the-coyote-gospel-a-gospel-as-according-to-grant-morrison/