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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