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Feb 24

Cute KerchiefClick for larger image

Jimbo Comments: He could be in three places at once. On three different rocketships at the same time!

Published 1958

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: 5.63 out of 10)
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25 Responses to “Stepsons of Terra”

  1. THX 1139 Says:

    “Beep – look out, your gun is on fire!”

  2. fred Says:

    Scarf, tiny cape, back fin, mind controlling parasitic alien. Whatever it is, I hope it’s integral to the plot.

  3. A. R. Yngve Says:

    Oh my God, they killed Marvin! You bastards!

  4. Francis Boyle Says:

    In the future Dance Dance Revolution will become so advanced that the only way for humans to compete with robots is with a gun.

  5. Griz Says:

    I guess its a magnet gun pulling the robot to him? Personally I’d want to push it away…

  6. fred Says:

    Other cover in the Double. Titles, blurbs, covers are easily mixable to increase your reading pleasure.

    https://www.flickr.com/photos/cdrummbks/3859549773

  7. The Blue Are Coming Says:

    Looks like he pushed the robot from behind on one of his other instances.

    His third instance is in the crowd looking at instance one and thinking, “Damn, the mini-cape makes my ass look fat.”

  8. B. Chiclitz Says:

    Next time you are building a robot, do not use an old curling stone for the head. It will make him top heavy.

  9. Bruce A Munro Says:

    “Aargh – ya got me, Tex!”

    Gunfight at the 010010100110010 K corral.

  10. GSS ex-noob Says:

    He could be in 3 places at once, but Emsh told them it would cost extra, take more time, and look stupid besides.

    @fred: Another vote for tiny cape.

  11. Bruce A Munro Says:

    @fred, GSS ex-noob: maybe it’s his lobster bib and he’s doing a dine and dash, pursued by angry waiters.

  12. JJYoyo Says:

    No snark from me this time: the Stepsons cover is marred by the inebriated robot, Tiny Cape and a ludicrous blurb – but the backdrop is gorgeous and the rocket design is cool as all heck even if physically impractical. And the Double cover pointed out by #6 @fred, missing those flaws, would have really fired my imagination if I had come across it as a kid in the late 50s. The rocket there too is awesome.
    Now we return to our regular programming: is that a little wisp of gunsmoke coming from Discount Superman’s pistol? Really, with a friggen spaceport and an emaciated Robbie the Robot you can’t imagine a world beyond 20th century firearms?

  13. fred Says:

    If memory serves, there are quite a few gingies on Doubles covers.

  14. Bruce A Munro Says:

    @JJYoyo: yeah, I noticed the gunsmoke as well, which combined with the fact that the robot seems to be toppling over like some dude who got shot gives a somewhat absurd air to things.

    Those _are_ some nice spaceships, although the giant circuit board (?) between Red and the robot is one of those stylized “SFnal” elements which don’t really work for me.

  15. Tat Wood Says:

    @Bruce: circuit board or a glass platform so you can look at the whole city underneath you? I think it’s like the scary bit of floor-glass at the Toronto tower (but with a grandstand view of a seventy-foot sign saying ‘EMSH’.. )

    That sort of makes sense: you don’t want your rocket-launch facilty in the basement, unless you’re Jeff Tracy.

    @JJYoyo: I got it for 50p in John Menzies, as part of a dump-box of US imports (lotsa Signet Classics too, so I could finally read ‘Frankenstein’ properly and wonder about that long trip to Oxford where they discuss the Civil War). It was with this cover http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?33227 which was less imagination-firing but more indicative of the way Grand Theft Spaceship was depicted in the novel. The two-places-at-once thing is a mild abuse of time-travel technology developed by people wo couldn’t imagine any more uses for it than shifting their embassy a second forward in time to avoid unsolicited callers and junk-mail.

  16. The Blue Are Coming Says:

    Well, crap…

    I just realized Stepson shot Robbie. That’s why it’s falling over.

    @JJYoyo – thanks for pointing out the gunsmoke.

  17. GSS ex-noob Says:

    @Bruce: And the robot is the security/bouncer so he’s gotta shoot it to make good his escape from Surf N Turf night?

    @JJYoyo: There is a wisp of smoke, but it also seems to be a sci-fi zap gun. Maybe it’s coal-powered? Whatever, it took out Robbie.

  18. JJYoyo Says:

    @Tat: I for one can think of no better use of time travel technology than avoiding spam and robocalls. What use is tomorrow’s stock market close when you’ve already gone insane? I also started to think about everybody having time travel ability, such that anyone could see tomorrow’s equity prices , and what that would do to financial pricing models, including “perfect foresight “ models, but then a robocall Porlocked me….
    @GSSxN: Coal powered zap gun! He’d probably have to wheel a huge power plant behind him and shovel coal in it to “reload” after every shot. That’s going to make 24th century gunfights rather comical. And slow. Steampunk on a whole new level!

  19. GSS ex-noob Says:

    @JJYoyo: It could be steam-powered by a miniature atomic reactor, as was a trope at the time, and that’s the plume venting.

    I wonder, if they’re the stepsons of Terra, who’s the spouse and the step-parents in this idea? (after Wiki walk — Janus was Terra’s step kid, which maybe fits with the time travel? Or that’s a coincidence. Saturn was her kid.)

    Short review:
    https://jamesreasoner.blogspot.com/2011/04/forgotten-books-stepsons-of-terra.html

    Goodreads gives it a total of 3.34 out of 5.

  20. Bruce A Munro Says:

    “The two-places-at-once thing is a mild abuse of time-travel technology”

    Want to cause a paradox and get eaten by time worms? Because that’s how you create paradoxes and get eaten by time worms.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vwip6gtkqO4

  21. GSS ex-noob Says:

    @Bruce: You might also get eaten by time pterodactyl-spiders.

    https://youtu.be/r4zrWyi7iAk?t=92

    It’s just a bad idea.

  22. GSS ex-noob Says:

    Isn’t he wearing the obligatory futuristic jumpsuit, and thus needs another tag?

  23. A. R. Yngve Says:

    Sequels were:
    UNCLES OF VENUS
    COUSINS OF PLUTO
    and
    THAT UNBEARABLE, NASTY HAG OF A MOTHER-IN-LAW OF JUPITER

  24. GSS ex-noob Says:

    also

    THAT NEPHEW FROM MARS WE DON’T MENTION.

  25. Bruce A Munro Says:

    GSS, both of you.

    Couldn’t make a comment on the latest: Joanna Russ getting that cover just left me incapable of doing anything but Oy-ing.

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