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Apr 26

Ah whales... when will they learn they can never win against science. Those bastards.Click for full image

Christal Comments: Unbeknownst to the author, the night before the cover art was due the artist stayed up all night smoking weed and watching The Mummy and Star Trek IV on an endless loop all night long.
Published 1985

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: 6.45 out of 10)
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35 Responses to “The Cingulum”

  1. Adam Roberts Says:

    That is one high-tech strap-on your lady is wearing there.

    Ah, uncle John Maddox! How could you soil the Roberts name like this?

  2. Adam Roberts Says:

    Actually, looking again: is that ‘Maddox’? Or ‘Madddx’?

  3. SI Says:

    Look out! That C is about to eat the ingulum!

  4. Mat T Says:

    That spaceship looks like it’s heading straight for her cervix. ‘The Speculum’ might be a better title.

  5. THX 1138 Says:

    Ah, Kate O’Mara, poised ready for the call to return to Doctor Who.

  6. Tom Noir Says:

    Is she SUPPOSED to be a Cat Person (is that the PC term? I hope I don’t get a strongly worded letter from the Feline Libel Effacement Association (FLEA))? Or are those just scratches on the cover that my brain has interpreted as whiskers? Does my mind just WANT her to be a Sexy Cat Lady? What does this say about me?!? Oh my god…

  7. Zycrow Says:

    The latest advertising experiment by Cingulum Wireless was not a success.

  8. A.R.Yngve Says:

    If the artist is a bona fide Furry, consider this: Maybe he wanted to paint a whale with a cleavage and long hair, but the editor drew the line at cats.

    You may scream now.

  9. A.R.Yngve Says:

    Is it just me, or is that blue whale about 200 meters long?

  10. fred Says:

    I want to know what artistic awesomeness got deleted for the sake of an uncluttered title and authors name. Pyramids, volcanoes, dinosaurs, zeppelins, mimes…

  11. benny Says:

    the king and I meets Cats meets star wars oh and free willy but with a whale thats bigger than mountains sounds good to me

  12. Dear Prudynce Says:

    Is she supposed to be a cat girl? She looks very odd.

  13. A.R.Yngve Says:

    Well, more like a half-hearted cat girl.

  14. Phil Says:

    I think she’s a very subtle cat-woman. From a distance, she just appears to be wearing eyeliner. But zoom in and, whoa, she has whiskers!

    Cingulum DOES sound a bit medical.

    Another cover to add to my campaign for a “Behind you!” tag.

    Oh, and not only might Maddox actually be Madddx, but ‘John’ might actually be ‘Iohn’. Font problems indeed!

  15. Infoqueen Says:

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059039/

  16. A.R.Yngve Says:

    If the inbreeding of the British Royal Family goes on, the next Queen is going to REALLY LOOK like that.

  17. Dalton H. Says:

    The guy in the back just realized his in the wrong cover.

  18. arch9enius Says:

    It looks like someone scratched those whiskers on for some reason. Didn’t even notice for some reason. Eyes V
    V
    V
    O O

  19. Dead Stuff With Big Teeth Says:

    BREAKING: Barbara Streisand sues all whales in the waters off of California for invasion of privacy.

  20. anon Says:

    It takes balls to put one of those “real” sex dolls on the cover.
    Or would, but I’m guessing the author wasn’t consulted.

  21. tor mented Says:

    In the U.S., Flashback Friday comes on Thursday. Throwback Thursday?

  22. Tat Wood Says:

    @Tor: as anyone who’s tried to explain chin and pin to a US shopkeeper or buy a doner kebab will tell you, America is usually a bit behind the UK. Then again, we used not to get your hit TV shows until they’d been cancelled. (Or at all.)

  23. Tat Wood Says:

    I’d like a hint about pronunciation: is it a soft C, to sound like ‘Singulum’, a hard one as per ‘Kingulum’, a Latinate ‘Chingulum’? Is the stress on the first syllable?

    Or is this in fact yet another dentistry-themed romp like ‘Prostho Plus’?

  24. Tor Mented Says:

    @Tat: Here we call them gyros, but can’t agree on the pronunciation. When I’ve ordered a yee-roe, I’ve been corrected to jie-roe, and the very next time was corrected to yee-roe.

    The term shawarma is becoming more popular.

  25. GSS ex-noob Says:

    @Tat: “chin and pin”? Do you mean “chip and pin”, like what credit card machines use? Shopkeepers understand that. I guess they wouldn’t understand “chin and pin” unless they were shopkeepers of an extreme piercing place, who likely have some even odder term for that.

    @Tor: Any place I’ve bought one, they don’t much care whether you say yee-roe or gee-roe, though people are realizing it’s “yee-roe”. They will correct you to one or the other if you say “jai-roe”, though, as that’s clearly wrong.

    As to this, I’d go with “singulum” unless we were trying to go accurate Latin pronunciation, which would be “kingulum” — rather like the modern vs. ancient pronunciation of “Caesar”. (Gaius Julius was K; the salad is S)

    Having learned a bit o’Latin as a wee noob, I see this and wonder what a belt or girdle has to do with this cover illustration. I mean, shirtless ancient chap has a belt and futuristic semi-cat girl’s got a fancy bejeweled belt/girdle, but how the ridiculously oversized whale, the space ship, and the blurb fit in, I don’t know.

  26. fred Says:

    Hire a vastly inferior artist, lose the aircraft, put a wee harpoon wielding man on top of the whale, and presto, you have yourself an average Dick Blade cover.

  27. Tag Wizard Says:

    @Tor #21 – Throwback Thursday? Add Bank Holiday Monday and we can get this site down to two new covers a week! That sounds very manageable.

  28. Bibliomancer Says:

    Where are the bracers? Isn’t that British for suspenders or something? Or did you mean brazzers?

  29. THX 1139 Says:

    I was recently pleased to see in Ready Player One’s attention to detail, they put a cat person in there. And to think some called that pandering!

  30. Yoss Says:

    ]

    There, that’s better. That open bracket was like looking at a crooked picture frame.

  31. Tor Mented Says:

    If you want to have fun with someone who has never heard of doner kebabs or gyros, tell them it’s “spit roasted” and watch their reactions.
    @TW: How about a Tor Tuesday? I sent in some covers a while ago and am planning to send in more.

  32. JuanPaul Says:

    Who wore it better: yesterday’s Party Girl or today’s Cat Woman?

  33. Yoss Says:

    @32 JuanPaul

    What’s odd is I think yesterday’s party girl has a more flexible spine than the cat woman up there.

  34. Bruce A Munro Says:

    Apparently an actual cat girl, not to mention a cat-burglar: https://www.amazon.com/Cingulum-I-John-Maddox-Roberts/dp/0812552008

    No explanation why the guy is doing “The Mummy” cosplay, though.

  35. GSS ex-noob Says:

    @Tor: We could have a BAEN!pewpewcleavageautomaticweaponsovercompensatingexplosion MONTH, let’s face it. I sent Tag a bunch quite some time ago.

    About to send some more — I have a compendium including some very 1960s, an Ace Double with giant shuriken and floating eyeballs, and a rather dull Dick Blade. A veritable smorgasbord of WTF.

    @Bruce: Holy cow, there’s 3 of these and the covers are all GSS worthy. #2 has Wizaaaaard. The plots sound like JMR was on something, or should have been.

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