Jan 08
Before:
Click for larger imageAfter:
Click for larger imageIt’s a Two-fer Tuesday: Andre Norton Before & After
Good Show Sir Comments:
Before: “This mission is so popular the men are dying to get in!”
After: “Damn! I thought filling the cabins with hydrogen would reduce our take-off weight!”
Published 1954
(Average: 6.27 out of 10)
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January 8th, 2019 at 9:39 am
1: “If this gadget’s good enough for Leonard Nimoy, it’s good enough for me!”
2: “The central heating’s a bit high, men.”
January 8th, 2019 at 9:40 am
Who else thought one of the writers of Space Pioneers was Raymond Z. Gollum?
January 8th, 2019 at 10:35 am
1. Is that Robin? The Boy Wonder?
2. Last one’s out’s a dead pioneer!
Where in the World is Bibliomancer? First day of my vacation is in London! No time to stop by GSS HQ, but if GSS Admin or Tag Wizard is free I’ll be in the British Museum this afternoon. I’m the guy in the glasses with the short gray beard wearing an Impeach Trump button.
January 8th, 2019 at 12:43 pm
2. “Alright, we’ve salvaged the back issues of Mad Magazine and a giant can of Whip-it™. I think we’re going to be just fine!”
January 8th, 2019 at 12:56 pm
All this civilization founding and space pioneering seems to be taking place without the I would think absolutely vital input and assistance of the opposite sex.
January 8th, 2019 at 2:43 pm
@ fred; I have been reading a lot of Andre Norton on the bus this past year. In the Sci-Fi exploration one (Plague Ship, I think), I don’t remember a single female character. (Maybe some of aliens?) Perhaps these were written a time when Ms. Norton felt the need to keep her beard firmly in place.
January 8th, 2019 at 3:23 pm
This diptych is the 50s prototype of a 70s Public Information Film. It needs a voice-over by Edward Judd saying ‘think once, think twice, think don’t launch a rocket from the bottom of a coal-mine’.
January 8th, 2019 at 4:42 pm
“I’m just saying I don’t think the rock hopper is the best place for our secret hideout.”
“OK, everyone not already on fire please disembark in an orderly fashion.”
January 8th, 2019 at 5:08 pm
@Bibliomancer—Enjoy your sojourn in the Karl Marx reading room. I think I’ve located the Secret GSS HQ™️ in case you want to pay a surprise visit and collect some of the royalties they owe you for your many fine cover postings. It’s in the pod right at the top.
January 8th, 2019 at 8:03 pm
I fear for those two Robin clones in the cart full of rocks. The one in the front, with the binoculars, doesn’t seem very concerned, but his buddy is clearly trying to get out before they’re dumped in the furnace. This seems like it’s more of a horror book.
January 8th, 2019 at 8:52 pm
@drlemaster 6 – Was going to reply that I have read only one Norton book/story, ‘Left Hand of Darkness’, in my life. Must be my lack of access to public transportation bringing on premature senility. Sorry Ursula.
January 8th, 2019 at 9:25 pm
“OK, we’re 50 feet away from the burning spaceship. Our stuff should be perfectly safe if we pile it up here.”
January 9th, 2019 at 1:04 am
Egads, these covers are BUSY. As in busy-work. Did Mr. Finlay get paid by the number of people on the cover, with a bonus for some kind of fire? And why green spacesuits? Peak 50’s sci-fi.
@THX (1): And the outfits are reminiscent of Nimoy’s “Zombies of the Stratosphere” too!
@B’mancer: Ooh, I love the British Museum. I embarrassed my English friend by sneaking around the back of the Rosetta Stone and touching it. Just so not done. But I figured I wasn’t going back any time soon, and if they’re not going to keep it in a case or even with a velvet rope around, well, they’ve got to expect American tourists to do that (I did touch the rough broken side, not the shiny top. I’m not a complete barbarian). Have they blocked the thing off since then?
Not sure if the guy you referred to is Robin, or if the perv binoculars to the side have blacking on the eyepieces.
@JP: Two large cans of Whip-it™! Par-TAY!
Sausage party, as @fred noted.
January 9th, 2019 at 5:24 am
@GSSxN – Since you violated the Stone they have encased it in foot-thick bulletproof glass. Couldn’t get near it. They’ve stationed a cordon of one-hundred Japanese tourists tightly-packed each holding a security camera.
January 9th, 2019 at 5:53 am
Cover No. 2:
The boy stood on the burning deck,
Whence all but he had fled;
The flame that lit the spaceship’s wreck,
Shone round him o’er the dead.
The flames rolled on – he would not go,
Without his father’s word;
But dad’s comms did a gasket blow,
His voice no longer heard.
He called aloud – ‘Say, father, say
If yet my task is done?’
His father waved an arm his way:
“Run, you dumb bastard, run!”
Yet beautiful and bright he stood,
As born to rule the storm;
A creature of heroic blood,
But wits below the norm.
We looked in horror him to see
Crushed by the falling roof. Us
Folks with sense enough to flee
Felt bad for the poor doofus.
January 9th, 2019 at 7:12 am
@Tor – Rhyming roof Us and doofus. Good Show Sir!
I’d hate to go up against you at the next poetry slam.
January 9th, 2019 at 5:32 pm
@ Tor M—Winner of the Bonker Prize for poetry, or at least short listed. Good Show Sir! 😉
January 9th, 2019 at 9:45 pm
“Holy extraterrestrial spectroscopy, Batman!”
January 9th, 2019 at 9:46 pm
You’ve gotta hand it to these spaceship designers — they know how to pack their cargo.
January 10th, 2019 at 1:28 am
You may remember the first one from here:
http://www.goodshowsir.co.uk/?p=13252
So the women may be in those large cans they’re carrying.
January 10th, 2019 at 7:02 am
@Tor: Brilliant! GSS! Great rhymes (esp. the end) and so on-point to the art.
@B’mancer: glad to have had an effect on a world treasure! I suppose the Japanese tourists will also especially keep away the Chinese tourists, who apparently are making us Americans look couth overseas nowadays.
(Frankly, the thing should have been in SOME case decades ago.)
April 6th, 2022 at 2:10 am
@Bibliomancer, @Tracy: I think the Robin clone trying to escape the box of rocks kinda looks like Andre Norton in profile with really funky reading glasses and maybe, just maybe, the artist did it on purpose.
Look at the cover, now look at a photo of Ms. Norton… Now look at the cover again… Squint a bit… no, take off your glasses first, NOW squint a bit… see? I might be on to something!