Why do sci-fi books from the 60s and 70's have so many scatily-clad women...

[Odin2005]

...on their covers? Seriously, I think it's creepy.

[csziggy]

1. Because the publishers thought most of the people buying them were teenage boys?

And ignored the fact that a lot were sold to women.

Yes, it was kind of creepy.

[Odin2005]

6. That's as good an explaination as any.

[FSogol]

2. Creepy? Those covers were awesome.

http://pulpcovers.com/tag/scifi

Of course all of the other genres from mystery to western to romance had the same types of covers:
http://pulpcovers.com/

[petronius]

22. Very cool! I really like that bottom one on the scifi list,

the big scientifiction eye. I'd say that contest was over before it started...

[Curmudgeoness]

3. Most of the ones I read didn't.

Arthur Clarke, Robert Heinlein, Frank Herbert....I can't think of any with scatily-clad (sic) women.

I think you must be looking at the crappy sci-fi.

[Odin2005]

7. It's mostly the pulpy stuff.

Part of a gigantic donation of sci-fi books we got to the thrift store.

[csziggy]

8. Any Ace doubles in the batch?

We have a large collection of those but we're always looking for more.

And I love anthologies, the earlier, the better.

If you've got any of those and I can buy long distance, let me know how much per book and how many you have. Pure numbers of either of those categories would be OK. Then we can talk about shipping.

[Odin2005]

9. We have several dozen of them!

Sadly, we don't ship long distance, we are a tiny operation.

[csziggy]

14. Well, darn.

You wouldn't want to make a deal with me personally, would you? I could Paypal you money.

[pokerfan]

10. Time Enough for Love

I guess it doesn't really count as clad, scantily or otherwise...

[Curmudgeoness]

11. I stand corrected.

That one certainly is in the category the OP was talking about.

[pokerfan]

12. Here's one where the woman is wearing more than the dude

[MiddleFingerMom]

16. Heinlein was my favorite growing up.

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That book was my absolute favorite of his for many reasons. About that
time, he went ballistic sexually. For the rest of his career, he wrote MAJOR
themes of swinging and incest in his works. His characters all seemed
continually UNclad.
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[pokerfan]

17. One of my favorites as well

The intermissions, the notebooks of Lazarus Long, were good fun.

[PassingFair]

26. He was always trying to go back in time and nail his mother.

Ew.

[LeftyMom]

36. My copy of To Sail Beyond the Sunset

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sailbeyond.jpg

No surprise, its Heinlein at his pervy old man-iest.

[dixiegrrrrl]

4. Because the male age group that mostly read them

tended to develop in one area faster than the other.

[Orrex]

5. Why do shitty romance novels *still* feature scantily clad characters on their covers?

Not all, but plenty.

[bluedigger]

13. It's hard to believe, but back in the 20th Century, humans used "sex" to sell "products"

Thank Gaeia the AIDS pandemic of the 1980s, and the resulting Eugenics Wars of the 1990s, allowed us to form the pangender egalitarian utopian society we all enjoy today!

[cyberswede]

19. LOL nt

[libodem]

20. Tee hee hee

Cute.

[Chan790]

15. Targeted Marketing.

Target audience: Pubescent boys.
Unique Selling Proposition: scantily-clad women, space sex.

See, I learned something in all those Marking/PR courses I've been taking. Now if I had a PR/Marketing job to go with them.

[MiddleFingerMom]

18. Space Sex. Show us your Outer Space O-Face!!!

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[pokerfan]

25. space sex

ain't as much fun as you think it might be...

[Bruce Wayne]

30. sexay!

[XemaSab]

21. BECAUSE THERE'S TOO MUCH BOOB FOR THE BOOK TO HOLD!

[Bruce Wayne]

29. This thread has too much boob for the internet to hold.

By the way, big "win" for the word "scatily". I once fell into a sewer and found myself clad in quite a bit of "scat".

[laconicsax]

23. You mean sci-fi books since the 50s, right?

It wasn't new in the 60s and 70s, nor did it end.

Fantasy novels do it too.

[dimbear]

24. As happens so often in this forum, this can be solved with three little words: Margaret Brundage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Brundage

[baldguy]

27. or Hugo Gernsback

[pulpcovers]

28. Brundage was, inspirational, to say the least.

http://pulpcovers.com/tag/margaretbrundage

[Bruce Wayne]

31. It's a refreshing break from the puritanical world of automobile ads

[KamaAina]

32. Sharyn McCrumb parodied this brilliantly in "Bimbos of the Death Sun"

in which a character based on Harlan Ellison gets his serious SF book published -- but the publisher changes the name to, you got it, "Bimbos of the Death Sun", with cover to match.

[greiner3]

33. "Why do sci-fi books from the 60s and 70's have so many scatily-clad women..."

No offense but;


DUHHHHHHHHHHHH!

[Baclava]

34. How about the 1920's? Edgar Rice Burroughs

[Bucky]

41. That's one evil looking Gandhi

[Baclava]

44. it gets better - alien porn!

[Capn Sunshine]

43. Here's the dust jacket from Burrough's "Thuvia, Maid of Mars"

Got some beefcake for the ladies in there too

[RedCloud]

35. If you meant scatologically clad, see the santorum thread!

[JitterbugPerfume]

37. Why was Kilgore Trout my first thought

upon seeing this thread?

[pitohui]

40. i owned "that" cover too

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Venusonahal.gif

i decided not to collect books for their covers any more but this thread is really taking me down memory lane...

[pitohui]

38. 2 reasons

1) sf was aimed at a male adolescent (or wishes he still was adolescent) market...as tom disch describes it, it was speaking to the (almost always male -- and often the young naive male ) person who believed that if you were smart, it would help you win girls & ultimately be a big success in life (ha ha ha ha ha)

2) there was a new freedom in discussing sex and sexual freedom in print in the 50s but even more so in the 60s and & 70s and novels of all kind (not just sf) were obsessed w. human sexuality and sex scenes--such scenes that would be abbreviated today because who needs another description of a blow job are expanded upon in great detail in older novels because it was such a thrill for the writer to be able to be sexually explicit without being put in the porn or illegal category

i don't think it's creepy, while i don't go the extra mile of collecting the old-time "sexy" covers -- and thrillers had really good cheesecake covers too! -- they do bring a smile to my face when i happen to encounter one

sex was still new and fun since it was only a few years that day in 1964 when it was invented...(grin)

[pitohui]

39. a humor cover from a local new orleans writer

can you see this photo? i had this book w. this cover as part of my personal collection for years, it has everything to push every button, interracial bikini sex in outer space...if that doesn't make you giggle, what does?

a real space alien could understand the entire 1960s just from the yellow boots!!!

[Aristus]

42. There once was a publisher of paperback Gothic novels

that reused the same cover theme dozens and dozens of times. Minimal variation.

The theme: A beautiful, frightened-looking woman in a fancy ball gown is running away from a sinister Gothic mansion at night. In one window only, there is a bright light shining.

I saw these books on the shelf of a second-hand book store when I was a kid. And over and over again, on scores of books, this same theme in cover art. It was as if the art department didn't even try to come up with a different visual hook. Or maybe the art department was underfunded.

Anyway, anybody ever see these books?

[JitterbugPerfume]

45. Harlequin Romances?

I used to work with a girl that lived to read them . She wasn't all that bright, but a nice girl none the less.

[Aristus]

46. No, this set of novels went back further than Harlequin.

Back to the early 60's or so, I would guess. Harlequin covert art is just as distinctive, but completely different: A handsome, rakish man (usually with his shirt off) in a clutch with an impossibly beautiful young woman.

Hey! I found an example of the kind I referred to in my first reply, through Bing Images:



Shoot! I just found a whole webpage!

http://www.bookscans.com/Oddities/gothicromance.htm

[Odin2005]

50. I've seen one of those at the thriftstore.

Not the same book, but the cover is almost identical to that one.

[Motown_Johnny]

47. not all were like that

mostly the second rate authors did that to try and hide their inferior talents

[pitohui]

53. NO author had control of cover illo in the 1960s

yr claim that "second rate authors" did that on the cover for any reason is completely untrue

authors had no control over the cover illustration and this would include isaac asimov

contracts would say specifically that jacket copy (and even the choice of title) was owned by the publisher not the author

do you really think asimov was a better writer (as opposed to a better selling writer) than heinlein? so asimov gets robots and heinlein gets scantily clad twins? (actually i personally prefer asimov myself but the reality is that both writers were probably about equal as far as literary gift, i just don't like heinlein's fatuous political beliefs)

[Art_from_Ark]

48. You may as well ask why The Avengers' ratings went way down

after Diana Rigg (Emma Peel) left the show.

[Matariki]

49. scatily clad?

that's a shitty thing to say

[Old Troop]

51. maybe because it sold books

[eppur_se_muova]

52. Because the covers often had little to do with the stories inside ?

Try reading bio notes from any SF author -- complaints about the randomly-chosen cover art abound. Sometimes editors were to blame; sometime marketing. More than one author was pressured to change a story to match a cover painting. And John W. Campbell tried getting authors to write a story to go with cover paintings he had already bought. Asimov was one of them; he didn't care for the idea, and JWC dropped it after a few tries.

PS: Plenty of half-naked women on military SF today (posing with men covered in armor everywhere but their chins), and lots of tatooed ones on vampire etc. fantasy.