Mar 08
Frank Comments: Now here we have an example of how to punch up a work by giving it a new title and new cover art. The story is from 1950, and was previously published as “The House That Stood Still”.
Published 1960
Frank Comments: Now here we have an example of how to punch up a work by giving it a new title and new cover art. The story is from 1950, and was previously published as “The House That Stood Still”.
Published 1960
March 8th, 2013 at 9:14 am
It was also rewritten to “spice” it up. Beacon Books did the same to about a dozen sf novels of the 1950s. The House That Stood Still, incidentally, was published in the UK as The Undercover Aliens, but it has no aliens in it.
March 8th, 2013 at 9:20 am
It’s actually a very well executed cover painting, if you can put up with its probable inappropriateness (on so many levels).
Very much of its time. It reminds me of a couple of recent Ellison re-issues which play on the “nostalgia” value of such images, but reverse the gender roles: http://nortonrecords.com/kicksbooks/ellison.php
March 8th, 2013 at 9:28 am
Being Van Vogt, I expect that the doll in the chair is a psychic projection of one of the figurines on the shelf (‘doll’ being the only word that fits the bill) and the guy on the far left is some kind of cosmic judge deciding whether Humanity deserves to be given celestial advancement. Many of his books turned out to be ‘Earth’s Got Talent’.
March 8th, 2013 at 10:08 am
That’s pretty foul.
Where’s whip-guy’s left arm, by the way?
March 8th, 2013 at 10:39 am
Maybe this is very wrong of me to think. But she has the expression of, “Oh sorry did a bee just sting me… you call that a whip do you?”
@Phil – Agree with you there! It’s more the content rather than the quality with this one.
March 8th, 2013 at 11:44 am
They didn’t think the picture was offensive enough, so added the strapline to remove all doubt. They couldn’t be doing with friendly puns or whatever, no sir.
March 8th, 2013 at 1:42 pm
This isn’t science fiction. There aren’t any cat people or dinosaurs on the cover.
March 8th, 2013 at 2:28 pm
I see absolutely nothing wrong with this cover.
March 8th, 2013 at 2:42 pm
Ah, the good old days when women were submissive objects of repressive male desire. Really, why did women want to change things. Oh so fun!! Wasn’t this originally the cover off an issue of True Detective Stories, or Shocking True Crime! She repaid them with…hot lead and droll one linets!
“I’m sending you back to mommy…in a pine box!”
“I’m here for your pleasure…as long as a slug between the eyes is your idea of pleasure.”
” He couldn’t take his eyes off my legs, so I closed them for good, sealed with hot lead from my .38.”
Can someone explain the dolls on the shelf in the background?I know I am supposed to be fixated on Betty there, but she is lower center, and they fill the focal point. Is she being held captive by a group of failed toy makers, driven insane by their failure to come up with a viable alternative to Barbie? “Where’s your Ken now,eh, huh?”
March 8th, 2013 at 2:49 pm
“I have come to pay my debt… in the way I discovered men prefer…”
“Excellent.. well hurry up then. Dinner, beer and a Die Hard dvd Marathon aren’t going to happen all by itself!”
March 8th, 2013 at 3:58 pm
Obviously she has discovered that the best way to pay off a debt to a man is to rearrange and carefully dust his collection of G.I. Joes and funeral urns on the bookshelf, while dressed in a casually dishabille manner, of course.
March 8th, 2013 at 5:31 pm
I find this cover is better appreciated if you assume the lady is NOT the debtor.
March 8th, 2013 at 5:50 pm
@Fred: Yipes! Now that is twisted thinking. I salute you sir.
March 8th, 2013 at 6:00 pm
What’s worse:
EITHER the publishers thought that a rapey picture would help sell the book,
OR they were right?
March 8th, 2013 at 6:36 pm
Nothing like celebrating International Women’s Day with… erm… an A.E. van Vogt novel.
March 8th, 2013 at 6:57 pm
Hey is that a Storm Trooper helmet behind her right shoulder?
March 8th, 2013 at 8:11 pm
FIFTY SHADES OF THE FIFTIES
March 8th, 2013 at 8:13 pm
I don’t know which is worse: the editor who thought this was the only way to convince men to, you know, READ… or the author who put up with being treated that way.
March 8th, 2013 at 11:50 pm
From what I’ve heard, most authors have very little say in what goes on their covers. So the editor is worse in this case.
March 9th, 2013 at 8:04 am
Same story, different covers: http://t.co/Yp4ka3mkKg and http://t.co/npLpYF5tDl About differences btw editions: http://t.co/ga2Z66B0pD
March 9th, 2013 at 9:14 am
I’ve decided the look of disbelief on the captive’s face is due to her having accidentally discovered that the bloodthirsty gang she was investigating is really just a front for three thuggish dudes to get together and play with their gigantic collection of action figures.
They are whipping her because she was laughing so hard she couldn’t run, and now their egos are bruised.
March 9th, 2013 at 5:27 pm
Wasn’t A.E.van Vogt buddies with L.Ron Ubbar? Or was that e.e. Cummins? Or C.J. Cherryh? No, no, pretty sure it was that Ubbar guy.
March 9th, 2013 at 7:22 pm
Elrond Ubbar invented a religion based on van Vogt’s stories, to which van Vogt apparently converted. I never did figure that one out.
And (@Jaouad) most of his later books were salvaged from total unreadability by being largely rewritten by his wife, so IWD is exactly the day for it.
I don’t think CJ Cherry was especially chummy with him, as he’d retired before she started. Or died. Or moved back to Canada. I can’t remember.
March 10th, 2013 at 9:33 am
Older readers may be familiar with how critics have debated Van Vogt literally for DECADES — was he a hack or a misunderstood savant genius, what’s the meaning of his stories, are they just incoherent power fantasies or art…
Perhaps a Van Vogt book is like one of those ink blots you’re being asked to look at — you’ll see what you want to see. (I see an ink blot obscuring parts of a narrative, so to speak…)
March 10th, 2013 at 9:25 pm
@Adam, fred:Then, she’s bitten off his left arm, but he hasn’t gone into shock yet???
Is that Huitzil on the shelves?
March 11th, 2013 at 11:14 am
Can it be that we are entirely misjudging and misinterpreting this cover? Maybe the woman represents the reader and the “tied up and beaten” theme is actually a clever metaphor for the experience of subjecting oneself to an A.E. van Vogt novel?
March 11th, 2013 at 1:11 pm
The hero of the book rescues the woman in the chair from Mexican cultists (who later prove to be nothing of the sort). who have her tied up in a room in the same building as his own office. Her name is Mistra Lanett and she’s a classic noir femme fatale. At least she is in the original novel. In the spiced-up The Mating Cry, she’s less Lauren Bacall and more Sylvia Kristel.
March 11th, 2013 at 6:04 pm
Her name is Mister Lanett?
March 11th, 2013 at 8:30 pm
– “The men will be sentenced……..TO DEATH!!!!”
(all men gasp!)
– “By snu-snu!”
(all men cheer!)
March 12th, 2013 at 1:29 am
@David Cowie, re#28: Ah, so this is a bit like Ed Wood’s “Glen or Glenda” for the sci-fi crowd then? Kinky, but then, well, that sells.
March 12th, 2013 at 11:03 am
@FearofMusic: no, that would be this http://www.biblio.com/books/267125885.html. I was going to photograph it and send it in but I have to remember which box it’s in).
March 12th, 2013 at 2:06 pm
@Tat Wood.: Oh dear. Hmmm. I like that the seller put in the description ” nice cover art”.
March 12th, 2013 at 5:38 pm
I am banking on a “Crying Game” surprise for these gentlemen.
August 25th, 2015 at 12:10 am
@Anti-Sceptic: No. It’s a Scout Trooper helmet.