Feb 24
Click for larger imageJimbo Comments: He could be in three places at once. On three different rocketships at the same time!
Published 1958
(Average: 5.56 out of 10)
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Jimbo Comments: He could be in three places at once. On three different rocketships at the same time!
Published 1958
(Average: 5.56 out of 10)Loading...
(10.00 out of 10) (9.27 out of 10) (9.21 out of 10) (9.03 out of 10) (9.00 out of 10) (9.00 out of 10) (8.97 out of 10) (8.96 out of 10) (8.95 out of 10) (8.95 out of 10)
February 24th, 2022 at 9:45 am
“Beep – look out, your gun is on fire!”
February 24th, 2022 at 11:32 am
Scarf, tiny cape, back fin, mind controlling parasitic alien. Whatever it is, I hope it’s integral to the plot.
February 24th, 2022 at 12:51 pm
Oh my God, they killed Marvin! You bastards!
February 24th, 2022 at 1:20 pm
In the future Dance Dance Revolution will become so advanced that the only way for humans to compete with robots is with a gun.
February 24th, 2022 at 2:00 pm
I guess its a magnet gun pulling the robot to him? Personally I’d want to push it away…
February 24th, 2022 at 2:01 pm
Other cover in the Double. Titles, blurbs, covers are easily mixable to increase your reading pleasure.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/cdrummbks/3859549773
February 24th, 2022 at 2:25 pm
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.”
February 24th, 2022 at 5:20 pm
Next time you are building a robot, do not use an old curling stone for the head. It will make him top heavy.
February 25th, 2022 at 1:34 am
“Aargh – ya got me, Tex!”
Gunfight at the 010010100110010 K corral.
February 25th, 2022 at 2:21 am
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.
February 25th, 2022 at 3:14 am
@fred, GSS ex-noob: maybe it’s his lobster bib and he’s doing a dine and dash, pursued by angry waiters.
February 25th, 2022 at 4:11 am
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?
February 25th, 2022 at 2:58 pm
If memory serves, there are quite a few gingies on Doubles covers.
February 25th, 2022 at 4:52 pm
@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.
February 25th, 2022 at 6:23 pm
@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.
February 25th, 2022 at 6:40 pm
Well, crap…
I just realized Stepson shot Robbie. That’s why it’s falling over.
@JJYoyo – thanks for pointing out the gunsmoke.
February 25th, 2022 at 11:46 pm
@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.
February 26th, 2022 at 12:42 pm
@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!
February 27th, 2022 at 1:47 am
@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.
February 27th, 2022 at 7:43 pm
“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
February 27th, 2022 at 11:26 pm
@Bruce: You might also get eaten by time pterodactyl-spiders.
https://youtu.be/r4zrWyi7iAk?t=92
It’s just a bad idea.
February 27th, 2022 at 11:44 pm
Isn’t he wearing the obligatory futuristic jumpsuit, and thus needs another tag?
February 28th, 2022 at 8:13 am
Sequels were:
UNCLES OF VENUS
COUSINS OF PLUTO
and
THAT UNBEARABLE, NASTY HAG OF A MOTHER-IN-LAW OF JUPITER
March 1st, 2022 at 4:22 am
also
THAT NEPHEW FROM MARS WE DON’T MENTION.
March 1st, 2022 at 4:49 am
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.