Mar 10
Vincent Comments: To be fair, the cover blurb says that it is “different” and judging by the illustration, which I cannot even comprehend, I think that’s very fair.
Published 1969
Vincent Comments: To be fair, the cover blurb says that it is “different” and judging by the illustration, which I cannot even comprehend, I think that’s very fair.
Published 1969
March 10th, 2014 at 9:11 am
I believe that was the original design for the Jules Rimet trophy.
March 10th, 2014 at 9:26 am
The bicycle-and-cake device at the bottom seems to be knitting the hunk holding the green vase.
So ‘Sexmax’ is reproduction by Heath Robinson devices that make multiple copies of Noosha Fox and the bloke from the Cillit Bang advert.
March 10th, 2014 at 9:29 am
SEXMAX – the sequel to MAD MAX.
Mel Gibson like you’ve never seen him before!
March 10th, 2014 at 10:28 am
Is it a variation on this kind of thing? http://tinyurl.com/qddwc8k
At first, I thought it was an annual. For a dirty magazine called SEXMAG. And Hughes Cooper sounds like an accountancy firm, or a rival to Freeman Hardy Willis.
March 10th, 2014 at 10:29 am
Another brilliant piece of subliminal advertising by the Absinthe Marketing Board.
March 10th, 2014 at 12:15 pm
Lionel Stander’s biography was not what anyone was expecting.
March 10th, 2014 at 12:28 pm
What are those green things everyone is holding? Are they parakeets? Is this dude sculpting green parakeets and passing them out to floating women?
That reminds me, I need to go to the bank.
March 10th, 2014 at 1:05 pm
@Tat Wood — Well cheerio mate, if you want to keep us Yanks from enjoying the joke you’re doing a bloody good show!
From goodreads: The plot deals with a benevolent future government that provides any man who lives until the age of fifty with a period of state-sponsored sexual license: Sexmax. Meanwhile, widows are assigned their own computer-matched sex partners.
I guess the widows get government-funded eHarmony accounts because all the old dudes got Sexmaxed to death before 50.
Anyway, since Brave New World and 1984 were both takeoffs of Zamyatin’s We I can assume that Sexmax here is neither very different nor original.
March 10th, 2014 at 2:08 pm
Though I must say the ribbon-dangling-from-the-navel thing takes the idea of the “Brazilian Landing Strip” to a whole new level.
March 10th, 2014 at 4:30 pm
Has to be one of my favorite illustrators from the period. I’ve been slowly collecting all of the covers Foster did for Pohl
March 10th, 2014 at 4:41 pm
@Biblio: ‘sexual license’? Is that like a motorist’s license? ‘Well, I can do missionary, but there’s a thirty-day grace period before I can file to test for reverse wheelbarrow.’
And how on Earth is that considered ‘benevolent’? Think of the washrooms! Think of the tissues! Think of the–wait. Don’t.
March 10th, 2014 at 5:52 pm
Replace ‘different’ with ‘gingy’.
March 10th, 2014 at 6:06 pm
@Bibliomancer: in the age of online, it’s easy to investigate and broaden your horizons. It’s what we’ve had to do when watching imported television and films made by and for parochial Americans. When ‘Sesame Street’ was first shown on LWT they had to explain most of what people were saying in a five-minute slot afterwards. ‘Quarters’, ‘sidewalks’, ‘junebugs’… it was more foreign than the Czech cartoons and Yugoslav film series we got shovelled onto us in summer.(‘Gilligan’s Island’, on the other hand, never aired in the UK so try to imagine how perplexing all the endless references to that in Pynchon and pop culture seem.) You might want to look up what ‘cheerio’ means while you’re at it. Don’t think walls, think bridges.
Back to the cover… the Moon seems to be orbiting the Moon.
March 10th, 2014 at 9:58 pm
@Tat13—well put; and while I’m here, on behalf of the Bibliomancer, I’ll think “bridges,” Lloyd Bridges to be exact, star of Sea Hunt, underwater detective who constantly had to endure his air hose getting slashed by evil smugglers and such. Just another piece of good bad Yank TV you all no doubt had foisted upon you during your tender years. There may well be a reference to the show somewhere in Pynchon, so I just figured, why not be helpful? At any rate, Bridges, fictional, metaphoric and literal, should indeed be today’s Sesame Street theme.
March 11th, 2014 at 9:39 am
Are you being discriminatory, fred?
March 11th, 2014 at 2:47 pm
@Tat Wood — You post a funny comment. I post a funny comment. No offense (offence?) intended.
BTW, I read the whole December 1944 archives of The Times so I could understand Pynchon’s wartime London references in Beyond the Zero. Apparently he lifted half of it from newspaper advertisements.
March 25th, 2015 at 3:49 pm
Nowadays, of course, they measure the distance from the Earth to the satellite using radio waves…
March 25th, 2015 at 5:14 pm
Oh I thought this place served TEX MEX. My bad!
December 21st, 2015 at 9:45 am
Two Adams, three Eves, apple cider and a very naked penis near a mechanical device… What could possibly go wrong?
January 11th, 2016 at 11:34 pm
All the old dudes
Carry the nudes
Licensed for sexmax
January 30th, 2016 at 12:28 am
SUXMAX
April 21st, 2022 at 4:31 am
SexMax = SenseMin
April 21st, 2022 at 11:00 pm
Now I’m wondering what the dishes of sherbet and/or Faberge eggs have to do with any of it.
Yon lowest damsel’s got very flexible and strong toes, I must say.
April 22nd, 2022 at 1:38 am
Looks to me like some sort of fancy soda fountain drink. A lime phosphate, maybe.
Man, now I want an ice-cream soda. 🙁
April 22nd, 2022 at 2:20 am
Wandered in for the recent comments – worth it! This cover is completely perplexing. Online story synopses weren’t a lot of help either… Belated GSS, @Vincent!
Also thanks @GSS ex-noob and @Bruce A Munro for unintentionally reminding me that there’s ice cream in the freezer – back in 5!
April 23rd, 2022 at 12:11 am
@Emster: And you’ve just reminded me of same! Even ones that sort of look like this (green tea mochi). Also some vanilla ice cream which I could put in lime-flavored (but not colored) fizzy water.
So what I’m saying is, Emster and Bruce are invited for dessert.
July 10th, 2024 at 8:55 pm
This cover is what Ralph really meant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98qw86DsdZ0