Jun 23
Raoul Comments: Ganymede’s most dangerous “god” doesn’t sound like much of a “threat” if he can be humiliated with “air quotes”
Published 1968
Raoul Comments: Ganymede’s most dangerous “god” doesn’t sound like much of a “threat” if he can be humiliated with “air quotes”
Published 1968
June 23rd, 2016 at 11:34 am
“What” “does” “a” “Ganymedean” “barbarian” “have” “under” “his” “skirt” “?”
“They” “are” “about” “to” “find” “out” “.”
June 23rd, 2016 at 11:55 am
‘Deep breath…and…’
June 23rd, 2016 at 12:04 pm
More like Trivial Pursuit on Ganymede
June 23rd, 2016 at 1:51 pm
I have no idea what the hell that thing is but at the moment I’m feeling a desperate need for space sheep.
June 23rd, 2016 at 1:57 pm
Not important enough to get its own Wikipaedia page.
June 23rd, 2016 at 2:42 pm
“Get your stinking paws off my sarong!”
June 23rd, 2016 at 2:48 pm
“I… HAVE… THE LID OF A WHEELIE BIN!”
June 23rd, 2016 at 3:04 pm
Armored halter tops are all the rage on Ganymede this season.
June 23rd, 2016 at 5:46 pm
If you think this is bad, you should’ve seen the cover when it was titled Fur Suit on Ganymede and ‘sword’ was in quotes!
June 23rd, 2016 at 6:07 pm
I can’t say I’m particularly scared of this guy, given that the low gravity on Ganymede means that your average Earth-born human could kick his ass easily.
Yeah, being the most powerful “person” on Ganymede doesn’t mean as much as it seems.
June 23rd, 2016 at 6:29 pm
“Faux-nan” is a brilliant tag. Wonder if we have enough material for a “Faux-zetta.”
June 24th, 2016 at 12:37 am
That demon-thing is gonna get kilt if he keeps tugging on the guy’s skirt.
June 24th, 2016 at 2:54 am
By the Power of Grey Skirt!
June 24th, 2016 at 3:32 am
Is it just me, or is the name “Ganymede” overused in SF? A quick search of books on Amazon netted 1,036 results. “Ganymede Takeover”…”Postmark Ganymede”…”The Ganymede Club”…”The Gentle Giants of Ganymede”…
Doesn’t anything interesting happen on other moons in the solar system?
June 24th, 2016 at 5:04 am
Adam Thane used to be an adventurer like me,
but then he took a dagger in the knee.
June 26th, 2016 at 11:04 am
My dog had the same look on his face today when he swallowed the pill and spat out the peanut butter.
June 26th, 2016 at 4:23 pm
@HappyBookworm: There’s Samuel R Delany’s ‘Triton’ but that has the most boring cover anyone ever gave one of his books. Nothing gonzo about the painting at all. It’s just a spaceship exploding very prosaically. Even space is grey.
(Here’s a remarkably unastute review showing the usual cover art https://idiotyouth.wordpress.com/2011/09/23/triton-by-samuel-r-delany/and here’s another dull cover https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triton_(novel) )
But the biggie is John Varley’s’ Titan’. The cover for that isn’t much to write home about but the sequels include this old favourite http://www.goodshowsir.co.uk/?p=9291
June 27th, 2016 at 10:08 am
If I was standing atop a rock and was being attacked by creatures from below, I wouldn’t be waving my sword and shield in the air as it does rather reduce the effectiveness of both … unless the creatures are after the sword and shield and so our hero is trying to keep them out of their reach?
July 8th, 2016 at 12:16 pm
Dictionary says that in mythology Ganymede was a Trojan youth who was abducted by Zeus (Jupiter) and taken to Olympus, where he was made the cupbearer of the gods and became immortal.
Since other moons of Jupiter are named after the god’s sexual conquests, this may not be the whole story. Apparently one slang meaning of “ganymede” is a waiter and another isn’t.
Make what you will of its popularity as a sci-fi setting. Random textual quotations offered by http://www.dictionary.com/browse/ganymede are mostly science-fictional, and, after such knowledge, appear to have double meanings. “What do you suppose Coxine meant when he said he had three passes into Ganymede?”
The other moons discovered by Galileo are Callisto, Io, and Europa. Wikipedia says that the names, which were proposed by “Simon Marius” (he also proposed calling them “Mercury”, “Venus”, “Jupiter” and “Saturn”) “were not in common use until the mid-20th century”, the moons being Jupiter I, II, III, and IV, instead.
But names are better. Well, some of them are. And you know where Magna Carta was signed – no, not “at the bottom”; Runnymede. So it’s familiar sounding and weird at the same time.
Raising the sword may be a backswing but I’m with you on keeping the shield between yourself and the enemy. But then we wouldn’t see all the man muscles which somebody certainly enjoyed drawing. Or maybe the dreaded midge is biting and he’s swatting them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_midge says that they tend to bite near to the ground – I am not sure how to apply that information in daily life but maybe that’s why he is on top of a pointy tall mountain.
December 10th, 2016 at 3:45 pm
Of course! This is what a barbarian preparing to embrace his creators in the stygian haunts of hell actually looks like!
December 10th, 2016 at 10:52 pm
@DSWBT: And his loincloth’s big enough to hold all the stuff he kept bringing out from beneath it.
(Yes. I have read aloud from this immortal work of the quest for the red emerald and even helped spread the words, lo, in the dim days of yore before the great web of all knowledge.)