There are no whip-wielding women in Masters of Time, green-skinned or otherwise. In fact, the only female so much as mentioned in the entire novel is aging spinster Nora Matheson. The 1974 Manor Books edition above is a cheat designed to appeal to adolescent boys. I was eleven when it arrived in stores.
With van Vogt, covers rarely reflect content. Publishers puff, peddling images that – four times out of five – are entirely unappealing.
Yes, four times out of five.
I present the following as evidence:
Super-Cérebro [Supermind]
Lisbon: Livros do Brasil, 1978
The Book of Ptath
London: Panther, 1975
London: New English Library, 1970
宇宙嵐のかなた [Mission to the Stars]
Tokyo: Hayakawa, 1970
The Weapon Makers
New York: Greenberg, 1952
Related post: The Homoerotic van Vogt
What? Are you actually trying to say publishers market books based on their sexy covers?
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ReplyDeleteYep, I've really exposed something here.
ReplyDeleteWhat I find most interesting isn't so much the use of sex, but the idea of slapping on any old illustration on a science fiction novel. Thus we have the Macfadden-Bartell Masters of Time with its column of men and alien landscape (neither of which feature in the novel) and the space station and alien landscape on Signet's The 27th Day (ditto). Both publishers pale beside Panther, whose edition of The House that Stood Still features an attack (not in the novel) on a futuristic city (not in the novel) by some sort of spaceship (not in the novel), and a title change: The Undercover Aliens. As I've pointed out elsewhere, no aliens feature in the novel.
To be fair, the 1960 Ace edition of Masters of Time - retitiled Earth's Last Fortress - is very faithful to the book. Good fun, too.
This cover has little to do with the van Vogt book because it was painted to illustrate NEL's UK edition of a totally different novel by a different author, Whipping Star by Frank Herbert
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Great catch. Thanks!
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