Faithful reader Paolo F. sends us this gem from Italy. Heck, I can't read it*, I'll let him explain!
Behold in all its HD glory the cover of the first Italian edition of"QUINTO PIANETA" by Fred Hoyle(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Planet), Feltrinelli editions,circa 1966.
Translation for the (many) italian-impeded:---------------------
FRED HOYLE one of the greatest scientists of our time
AND GEOFFREY HOYLE
science fiction
Feltrinelli
FIFTH PLANET
After that trip into space his wife was not the same---------------------
Please note:
- the sexploitation-inspired half-naked green girl with grey head and puny breasts
- the pasted-over red russian helmet and Zontar belt
- the lovely ladies and Kruschev lookalike pondering her arse
- the faded zone underneath her armpit, clearly indicating that something nasty is coming out of there
- the blurb
- man I love that blurb text - it is especially offensive when you consider that one of the authors is "one of the greatest scientists of our time"
----------------------------------------
Thanks, Paolo F! Just as a note, DocTurtle tells me that Fred Hoyle, the noted astronomer, was known for a while as the most pre-eminent scientist who denied the Big Bang Theory. Guess the green chick is just a little bang! Bada bing.
*What do you call a person who can speak three languages? Trilingual. What do you call a person who speaks two languages? Bilingual. What do you call a person who can only speak one language? American
7 comments:
Now, I'm wondering if this is a pretty standard Italian science fiction cover, or if this is bizarrely bad even by their standards.
I am completely fascinated by the photo collage effect going on here.
It _IS_ bizarrely bad (awful, for that matter) for our standards - and I suggest next time you feel like writing "even by their standards" you think of a Ferrary car or a Prada bag. ^__^
Seriously, the most widely known italian SF line of books, "Urania", has quite good covers, actually - you can see some (all, actually) of them here: http://www.mondourania.com/ (there are exceptions, of course, but none so offensive)
I agree with Paolo F. I'd like to add that the main fault with Italian SF covers (and perhaps not just Italian ones) is that minor publishers used to recycle the same images for different novels, disregarding their relevance (unicorns for hard SF, and the like). As for this particular cover, one might want to keep in mind that Feltrinelli isn't and wasn't a publisher specialised in SF books, and so perhaps their marketing sector (or whoever had to desing the cover) could not make head or tail of this kind of novels...
But it has BOOBS! It can't be all bad then....
I think that's a monkey head under the helmet....
It looks like one of Terry Gilliam's "Gillanimations" from the Monty Python show.
You can see her nipples!
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