Sunday, 22 July 2012

Sex sells


Here’s a selection of cover art comparable to the femme fatale aesthetic of pulp crime thrillers. They suggest that interstellar couture never evolved beyond the string bikini, or that the only fashion designers who ever made it beyond the starts were sexually frustrated and emotionally retarded. 















I love the way philosophical writer Olaf Stapledon’s ‘Odd John’ – a novel which intelligently debates the concept of the ubermensch against a backdrop of cosmic angst – has its eponymous protagonist reduced to a bug-eyed Neanderthal lumbering towards a naked woman whose modesty is protected by a couple of strategically placed branches. How many people bought that novel based on the cover only to discover, with mounting horror, that they were reading a book which required them to think.

If the robot coming through the door in ‘The Pleasure Model’ is the blonde’s next client, she might want to think about a career change.

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