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Dec 02

In space no one can hear your kid screamingClick for larger image

Alice Comments: Bubble helmet, check, breathing regulator, check, oxygen tank, check. OK, let’s change that diaper!

Published 1978

Actually, that cover IS a classical work of art!I would touch it without protective gloves.I've seen worse. Far, far, worse.Interesting, but I would still read it in public.Middlng: Neither awful nor awfully goodWould not like to be seen reading that!Awful... just awful...That belongs in a gold-lame picture frame!Gah... my eyes are burning! Feels so good!Good Show Sir! (Average: 6.92 out of 10)
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20 Responses to “Women of Wonder”

  1. Bruce A Munro Says:

    Woman: not only am I a working space mother, but I can jump-start a space car with my head!

    Baby: you taunt me, metallic robo-nipple.

    Editor: OK, we want a picture of a woman and baby in full spacesuits. But it’s the 70s, so we gotta get some titty in there somehow.

  2. THX 1139 Says:

    …but in spacesuits designed by a man.

  3. fred Says:

    Flandry was here

  4. JuanPaul Says:

    Woman wondering when she will break out of her gender role.

  5. fred Says:

    The needles on her arm gauges are too big for their housings.
    They won’t have to wonder where to find a comb.

  6. A.R.Yngve Says:

    Bubble helmet design by M.C. Escher. (Who was a man! Callously sabotaging women’s efforts with his patriarchally skewed perspectives and phallocentric oxygen tubes appearing both in front of and inside the helmet at once!)

  7. Bibliomancer Says:

    That kid will need a socket wrench if he wants to eat.

  8. Francis Boyle Says:

    I think I’m on the edge of being traumatised by that tiny, tiny hand

  9. B. Chiclitz Says:

    @Bibliomancer—And the kid’s thinking, “Shit, how am I ever going to work that socket wrench wearing these stupid space mittens? And mom can’t even hold it in those tiny, tiny hands. I think I’m about to starve to death.”

  10. Leak Says:

    @A.R.Yngve: just be glad they went for MC Escher and not HR Giger for the “phallocentric oxygen tubes”…

  11. Verylatetotheparty Says:

    @THX1139: This one was designed by a woman – I don’t know if that makes it any better…

    The more I look at this, the less I know what to think. Was Candy Amsden deliberately aiming for a sort of Madonna and child vibe? – IN SPAAACE! Would it be a better picture if she was actually breastfeeding, (suitable adaptor sold separately I assume) making the spacesuit boobs functional, or would that be much, much worse?

    That helmet also looks a bit too tight, they grow out of their spacesuits so quickly don’t they?

  12. THX 1139 Says:

    @Verylate: Maybe it was designed by a woman to look like it was designed by a man?

    There’s something… suffocating about this image.

  13. Tat Wood Says:

    Van Klomp’s best-known work.

  14. GSS ex-noob Says:

    I am a Woman who Wonders — who thought this cover was a good idea? Trying to lure in the boys to read stories by women by tempting them with robo-nip?

    Also, no woman would shape her spacesuit that way. It’s making my chest chafe just to look at. And a nursing mother would pump and put it in a bottle in baby’s suit. Or, most sensibly, just leave the kid in a pressurized environment and feed it when she’s indoors!

    Maybe it’s not even her baby, and she is a Woman Wondering why she got stuck with it, but not really wondering because it’s the same reason she’s got robotits. She blames the patriarchy.

    Of course, I don’t know why her helmet has jumper cables attached to alligator clips, and her arms have TV remote controls either. Baby’s got a normal suit. Looks like mom has a robo-hand as well. Is “she” in fact some kind of childcare gynoid, thus can’t chafe and needs the control buttons? “She” blames the patriarchy too.

    @fred: GSS.

    @Vlltp: It would be so much worse. Particularly in the 70’s. And they’re gonna have to cut baby’s helmet off with a saw, there’s no way that giant noggin is fitting through the neck hole.

    Maybe they’ve been lost on some distant world for a while and this is their last despairing picture before death. The last photo/video, looking directly into the lens, of “Dying Aryan Mother and Child” in one of those “Nazis-Won” futures.

  15. Verylatetotheparty Says:

    @GSSxn: ‘Last despairing picture before death’… ‘in one of those “Nazis-Won” futures.’ I was about to make a comment about the cute little mittens, but it seems so trivial now.

    @JuanPaul 4: Breaking out of her gender role might be easier than getting out of that space suit.

  16. GSS ex-noob Says:

    @Vlttp: Thus more despair as she realizes both she and the kid are stuck in those get-ups. Can’t get the helmets off.

    Possibly this is one of the “USSR-won” futures and that explains the color scheme of baby’s suit. (The East Is Red. So Is The Suit. The Mittens Are Yellow.) What the New Soviet Woman is dressing her proletarian baby in for the conquest of the Red Planet, comrade!

  17. Bruce A Munro Says:

    The suit is constructed of NANOTECHNOLOGY, so when you want to take it off it just melts, flows across the room, and reforms into a chaise lounge.

    (The alligator clips and arm calculators are purely aesthetic creations.)

  18. Verylatetotheparty Says:

    I think they look like NANA-TECHNOLOGY, the spacesuit equivalent of a badly knitted Christmas jumper made by your Granny.

  19. Bruce A Munro Says:

    @Verylatetotheparty: heh. Would explain a lot.

    “I swear, dear, if I lose _another_ limb to explosive decompression, I’m not wearing any more of your Nana’s X-mas presents.”
    “She means well, honey. And she really enjoys home manufacturing.”
    “I have alligator clips on my head and metal nipples which play Christmas tunes when pushed, _dear_.”

  20. GSS ex-noob Says:

    @Vlttp and Bruce: LOL and GSS!

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