Nov 18
Jaouad Comments: Does this suit make my package look too small? Or anything else, for that matter?
Published 1978
Jaouad Comments: Does this suit make my package look too small? Or anything else, for that matter?
Published 1978
November 18th, 2011 at 8:56 am
In a suit like that, I think the “deadliest enemies in space” will fall about laughing.
November 18th, 2011 at 9:54 am
GRAY HUNCHBACK – stalwart defender of the posturally challenged!
November 18th, 2011 at 10:03 am
His deadliest enemies are likely to be door handles, keypads, things that need picked up and anything that doesn’t just need blasted with his laser hands.
November 18th, 2011 at 10:04 am
Don’t know about his package, but those suit-legs have got to chafe quite a bit. Does he have spikes for hands, or is he holding a pair of Black & Decker drills?
Oh, and big-metal-space-suited-guy: Lookout! Behind you!
November 18th, 2011 at 10:09 am
I don’t think that’s a metal suit, I think it’s rubber – he’s going zorbing.
November 18th, 2011 at 11:58 am
I’m sorry, the only way that suit can work is if his head has been detached from the rest of him and he’s been cyborged.
Otherwise a very apt Doc Smith cover – look, there’s the blinding report and deafening flash right behind him.
November 18th, 2011 at 12:12 pm
Methinks those tiny spaceships are flying in the wrong direction.
November 18th, 2011 at 5:16 pm
“I can’t believe they only had size XXL, I am pretty sure a L would have been fine”
November 18th, 2011 at 5:17 pm
There is only one Armor and that ain’t it.
November 18th, 2011 at 9:03 pm
The artwork does draw attention to a problem most SF tends to dodge: Men are not anatomically ideal for mechanized armor.
Or, put more bluntly: “OW!! MY BALLS!!”
November 19th, 2011 at 9:59 am
A.R.Yngve, you are right: most SF tends to dodge that issue. No mention of it in H.G.Wells that I recall, nor Verne, nor even Mary Shelley. And I don’t recall it turning up in Asimov’s Foundation series either.
November 19th, 2011 at 11:24 am
You know, from an artistic point what I find aesthetic about those spherical explosions is how neatly the pieces fit together. You are seeing something during the process of expansion, so the fire between pieces is really smoothly widening cracks and the pieces are perfect matches for each other, in an image of almost mathematical beauty. It’s like an expanding balloon, a metaphor for the universe itself.
… Orrr, you could just throw some black smudges together in the visual equivalent of a kid saying “Boom!”
November 20th, 2011 at 11:09 am
I’ve recently purchased the books from your last 2 posts. If you get a third I will have to play the lottery.
November 24th, 2011 at 3:39 pm
It’s Ben Affleck, in spaaaaaaaaace!
November 25th, 2011 at 3:55 am
he looks a bit like Adam Sandler to me, actually; an Adam Sandler who hasn’t been informed of exactly what kind of film he’s in. “wait, is this another comedy? or am i trying to do a serious role again?”
December 2nd, 2011 at 6:07 pm
That’s the problem with buying your spacesuit off the clearance rack. They never fit right.
November 4th, 2013 at 10:14 pm
It’s a giant tick–with a guy trapped inside!
(courtesy my mom, who stopped by while I had this up)
October 11th, 2015 at 8:20 pm
‘I am very, very cross.’
November 13th, 2015 at 9:32 am
INCONTINENT LENSMAN
November 13th, 2015 at 4:55 pm
Rehearsals for the Cyborg production of ‘Evita’ were going well until the set blew up.
November 15th, 2015 at 10:48 pm
Tat, you mean the production with this song?
Don’t cry for me, Arisia…
January 10th, 2020 at 6:38 am
I suppose it could just be perspective, but it really does look as if his shoulders would have to be up around his ears to go into those arms.
@A.R. Yngve does raise a point at #19: with gun-hands, does he have to hold it in until someone lets him out of the suit? Or is all that extra space in the hips for, ah, emergency storage?
You’d think he’d notice the planet blowing up behind him, but by this point in the series, he’s seen so many planets blow up that he no longer pays attention, like explosions an hour into a Michael Bay movie.
January 10th, 2020 at 3:22 pm
His suit may be otherwise uncomfortable and unfit for purpose, but at least his helmet features a comfy pink pillow to lean back and rest his head upon.
January 10th, 2020 at 3:29 pm
Famous implies infamous. Where is this series? The covers must be on a Thuvia/Opar Tarzan level.
January 10th, 2020 at 3:38 pm
I said my name was GARY LENSMAN
Why can’t these baristas ever spell it right?
January 10th, 2020 at 3:42 pm
“I’ve got blasters on me fingers!” — Ringo Lensman
January 10th, 2020 at 4:27 pm
“Gray Lensman – Cataract Surgery in Spaaaaace!”
January 10th, 2020 at 5:08 pm
So, war with the tardigrades?
January 10th, 2020 at 7:35 pm
@B’Mancer—I also think it’s supposed to be E.E. “Cod” Smith, though why he’d want to call attention to that embarrassingly small codpiece is beyond me.
January 10th, 2020 at 9:38 pm
“War with the deadliest enemies in space!”
You gotta admit it takes balls (wherever the Lensman manages to squeeze them in) to go to war against gamma radiation and the vacuum of space.
January 11th, 2020 at 1:23 am
@A.R. Yngve: Lensmen eat gamma radiation for breakfast and wipe their asses [1] with the vacuum of space.
[1] When they can access them
January 14th, 2020 at 2:08 am
I was getting database errors from GSS all weekend so I missed this.
Mr. xn bought the whole series in this set of covers, so this is in our house right now. (It’s coming from inside the house!!!) It’s a good thing this series was already legendary at this time, or the cover would have put people right off.
ISFDB has this listed as a 1967 cover, but it sure looks 80’s, doesn’t it?
Our copy says “Seventh Printing, August 1973”. Which means… once again… we’ve caught out ISFDB as being inadequate! They only go up to the second printing. So this book had to suffer with this cover for over a decade.
Our copy’s lost a lot of the blue tinge, which means outer space is magenta. In person, the armor lines around the crotch are even more strikingly bad. I HOPE he’s only a head on a cyborg body.
@JuanPaul: Yes, and his suit is designed to mimic one as well.
After flipping through the book, this seems to be Kinnison’s “space-armor” from his undercover stint as a “meteor-miner”, or in Doc’s prose “a wandering hellion of the asteroid belts”. That takes up chapter 12.
You will be unsurprised to learn that:
a) the spacesuit is nothing like what’s shown
b) the planet doesn’t blow up till chapter 24, when Our Hero is in a ship.
January 14th, 2020 at 5:16 am
@GSSxN – Sorry about the database errors. That’s what happens when you host the GSS servers in Ukraine.
June 15th, 2022 at 1:09 am
BB “Doc” Duquesne, combat proctologist – when you need to probe giant space monsters, he’s your man.
June 15th, 2022 at 1:16 am
::tilts his head to the left, then to the right::
Is it just me, or is he really offset to his left in the armor?
June 15th, 2022 at 5:23 am
In honor of the author, 14 minutes of Dr. Smith insulting the robot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyH33DXusTY
June 15th, 2022 at 8:28 am
@Hammy: I’m pretty sure his shoulders are in places they really shouldn’t be, at least not simultaneously.
June 15th, 2022 at 12:20 pm
It’s a little known fact, but the reason the armoured spacesuit is so unconvincing is because it was hastily added over the top of Kinnison’s original costume by a different artist. Jack Gaughan was going a bit deaf at this point and had misheard the title as “Gay Lensman”, and the publishers were saving all of the leather bondage gear for fantasy covers rather than SF back then.
He didn’t originally have a zap gun in each hand either…
June 15th, 2022 at 2:42 pm
The Lensman asked the store clerk for some talcum powder. The bow-legged clerk said “Walk this way.” And the Lensman said “If I could walk that way, I wouldn’t need talcum powder.”
ba-dum. A joke older than this book.
June 15th, 2022 at 7:18 pm
I’m with @ecthroi on this one, looks like Adam Sandler. Hanging out with Shaq on their new space basketball movie. Could not help himself, had to try on the suit, now he’s stuck and waiting for Shaq to help lift him out of it…
June 15th, 2022 at 10:50 pm
@Hammy: Not just you; looks like everything’s offset in different directions, in a way Quasimodo could feel superior and handsome to.
Which can’t be, since Kinnison is the end result of thousands of years of a breeding program (hmmm…. wonder where Frank Herbert got his ideas) and is the most physically perfect specimen of mankind possible.
We can only surmise that this is the Adam Sandler spoof version, which explains the goofy suit and the spaceships headed in the wrong direction.
June 16th, 2022 at 8:04 am
Off topic: if I were to upload a picture, what’s the maximum file size?
June 16th, 2022 at 9:44 pm
Fun Fact: There is exactly ONE movie based directly on the Lensman books – a Japanese anime:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lensman_(1984_film)
June 16th, 2022 at 11:54 pm
@A.R. Yngve: The Japanese have also made the only TV show based on the “Captain Future” series: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Future#Adaptations_and_other_derivative_works
There seems to have been a substantial Japanese market for pulpy old US SF?
June 17th, 2022 at 12:31 pm
@A R Yngve
As well as the Anime (which is rather fun, particularly if you know the books well enough to recognise how it’s been changed to Star wars it up a bit) I’ve heard it suggested that the Lensman books were a serious influence on the popular DC character Green Lantern as well.