Jan 21
Click for larger image
Click for larger imageIt’s a Two-fer Tuesday – Spinrad Special!
Good Show Sir Comments:
1. For fans who prefer an agonizing reading experience.
2. When the art director demands CHAOS, Clifton-Dey delivers!
You might remember this from here. And some recycled shit here.
Published 1967, 1972
(Average: 8.25 out of 10)
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January 21st, 2020 at 9:23 am
Publishing Executive: “It’s a bold new direction, gentlemen – agonizing books! With variants to cause all kinds of suffering! For allergic readers, we have books infused with crushed peanut shells and birch pollen… for readers with poor eyesight, we have books with blurred print… and for the really tough readers, books covered with broken glass.”
January 21st, 2020 at 10:55 am
1: “This is a new official Olympic sport?! THIS?!”
2: Future Take That reform – from primordial sludge!
January 21st, 2020 at 1:34 pm
1) Ending humans one Red Wedding at a time seems rather slow. So…
2) …unleash the even slower Blanket of Chaos.
This Chaos Agent seems rather incompetent.
January 21st, 2020 at 2:10 pm
1). Damn – I genuinely tried to send you this one a few weeks ago but it wouldn’t upload. I had special topical Dominic Cummings jokes and everything.
2) @Fred: as I mentioned last time this book came up, the name of the eponymous Agent is a by-word for incompetence. Spinrad wanted a 60-model ‘futuristic’ name so he combined the current US President with a generic Russkie to get…
Boris Johnson.
We’d be better off with ‘Round the Horne’s composite, Chou-En Ginsberg MA (failed).
January 21st, 2020 at 2:32 pm
1. If your goal is to end the human race you might find some more of them on that planet BEHIND YOU!
2. No, this image is a completely different mirror image of the Rork cover.
January 21st, 2020 at 2:38 pm
1. Evil overlord rule #17265: I will not equip my agents of chaos with weak-ass lasers that would embarrass a casual laser skirmish fan. And definitely no eye themed mirror balls.
2. That’s better. Messing with their DNA should do it. So what if it’s a recycled plan. At least we know it works.
January 21st, 2020 at 4:01 pm
1. Whoever designed that bullseye flag must have been a secret member of the resistance.
2. Yea, though I sludge through the valley of the Agent of Chaos, I will fear no GSS: for thou art with me; thy tasseled rug and thy hot water bottle they comfort me.
January 21st, 2020 at 4:16 pm
Organized anarchists?
January 21st, 2020 at 7:09 pm
1.
The Goal: The End of the Human Race
The Master Plan: Laser Disco
2.
Ghoul a: “I’m Flyyy-iiii-nnnngg!”
Ghoul b: “Oof! I couldda had a V-8!”
Ghoul c: “Can I go to the bathroom now, please?”
January 21st, 2020 at 8:39 pm
@JuanPaul: or maybe just a big fan of ‘Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea’.
(The dying fugitive at the bottom of the picture could, at a pinch, be Richard Basehart. The one to our right in the orange windcheater might be Mike Connors. I can’t see David Hedison, formerly the Most Famous Living Person from Providence, but he always was fairly forgettable).
January 21st, 2020 at 11:42 pm
1. Worried about assassins, the candidate for the Chaos Party goes preemptive on his audience.
2. “I’ll stop the world and melt with you…”
(Or, don’t trip and drop your Bag of Holding when it’s full of liquid Chaos.)
January 22nd, 2020 at 1:21 am
1. ISTM that if you want to end the human race, the laser beams are going to do it much quicker than chaos. Build more of those.
(Tries to refrain from comparing blurb to current US administration. Fails. Laughs uproariously at protagonist’s name.)
Huh. A quick check shows that the scanning-zappy-eyes are actually in the book!
Perhaps our opprobrium should be directed at the student from the Unknown Layout Editor Institute, for putting all that text and choosing the word “agonizing”.
2. That’s pretty darn chaotic. And the bilious green is going to put people off as well, hastening their demise.
Wonder if this was a generic artist-on-acid SFnal cover that then got put onto this and the aptly-titled RORK! or if it was commissioned for this
A short review in the Graun of this one is funny.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/oct/26/boris-johnson-agent-of-chaos
(Actual Spinrad story: He hit on his new bride’s sister. Who was 14. At the wedding dinner. Source: the sister.)
@Tat: I’m liking your VttBotS comparison
@Bruce: Is Liquid Chaos from the same product line as Concentrated Evil?
January 22nd, 2020 at 5:30 am
@GSS ex-noob: and Sealed Evil in a Can if you prefer fresh to concentrate.
November 22nd, 2021 at 3:50 pm
2. Bagpipe lessons in Mars’s thin atmosphere proved too much of a challenge for Egghead.