Miracle of the Möbius

Punch-tape Jesus and his infinite loop.

Reading that blurb it's very hard not to take ultimate in the sense of "last".

Smurfette seems to be suckling an infant, so I guess smurfkind has better chances though?

Bye son. I gnu you well.

Only 2 comments so far, but both top-notch.

@AndreasJ: But since there's only one Smurfette, the inbreeding is going to do for them soon.

@TorMented: LOL. Good pun. Although I'd say Dad's pretty buffaloed.

Is the flying fish an insectivore or just astonished at the tableau?

I don't know how fast Manscaped Jesus is going to save us if punched paper tape is all he's got to work with. That stuff was slow.

Pretty sure we had this at the old place too.

>4 GSSex-noob: Indeed we did

Scott B’s Art Direction: OK, I want a triad of spiritual guru, alien Venus, and bull-man, linked by a strip of computer punch tape (futuristic!). Also, it must have a hummingbird-whale. I insist.
Published 1977

Tagged with: animals with faces • beard-wielding • bull people • Carlos Ochagavia • Charles W. Runyon • dude • horns • monsters • muscles • neo-jesus • Popular Library • scrolls • strange creature • whale • wings • WTF
36 Responses to “I, Weapon”

Adam Roberts Says:
October 21st, 2011 at 11:16 am

‘He was the ultimate man-and …’ What’s a man-and?
Adam Roberts Says:
October 21st, 2011 at 11:16 am

That hummingbirdwhale! Really, the whole scene is just waiting for a Bronzino foot to come crashing down and the De Souza brass theme to start up.
A.R.Yngve Says:
October 21st, 2011 at 11:56 am

Well, in Swedish, Danish and Norwegian “and” is a species of duck… so that dude must be an invincible duck-man.

Or just a confused, hallucinating loony…
A.R.Yngve Says:
October 21st, 2011 at 11:57 am

I, HOMELESS MENTAL PATIENT
A.R.Yngve Says:
October 21st, 2011 at 11:59 am

Thank goodness the cover text explicitly states this is a “science-fiction” novel… or hordes of New Age hippie types would’ve nabbed every copy in the bookstore!
A.R.Yngve Says:
October 21st, 2011 at 12:00 pm

When computer programmers go mental.
Muttley Says:
October 21st, 2011 at 12:40 pm

@Adam Roberts
De Souza? ITYM John Philip Souza? The Liberty Bell, perhaps?

@yngve – by 1977 the New Age Hippies were hip-deep in Bad Fantasy, sold in trilogies, and wouldn’t look at something this short.

However, from the look of it, the artist had been trying to sell this picture since the mid ’60’s.
Nix Says:
October 21st, 2011 at 1:21 pm

Quite. Punched cards, futuristic? In 1977? Obsolete more like.
SI Says:
October 21st, 2011 at 1:43 pm

The two behind him are clearly annoyed that he looks so normal.

And its not a humming bird whale! It’s a distant whale with wings! I’m sure of it!
THX 1138 Says:
October 21st, 2011 at 2:02 pm

I, Weepin’ after an eyeful of that.
fred Says:
October 21st, 2011 at 2:06 pm

Eric and Julia Roberts on the same cover? Priceless.
Tom Noir Says:
October 21st, 2011 at 2:22 pm

So is his “weapon” strong body odor?
Adam Roberts Says:
October 21st, 2011 at 5:22 pm

Muttley @7: you’re right, I meant Souza, not De Souza. In point of fact, I meant this.
Phil Says:
October 21st, 2011 at 8:57 pm

Adam, you meant neither Souza nor De Souza. You meant Sousa. (It’s Sousa with an S not Souza with a Z, ’cause Sousa with an S goes sss not zzz.)

I think that bull-man with his large face and bull horns is hilarious. One of the best human-animal hybrids I’ve seen. None of that centaur nonsense where HALF a man is grafted onto MOST of a large grazing mammal.
Skuds Sister Says:
October 21st, 2011 at 9:17 pm

And there’s me getting confused and thinking Apple were just waiting for Steve Jobs to die before getting into the arms trade….
Alessandra Says:
October 21st, 2011 at 9:44 pm

The man-bull is ultimately derived from a Sumerian Lamassu, a protective deity with the face of a man left in honkin’ big statues all over Mesopotamia. I don’t know the source of the blue woman nursing the baby.

The sad thing is between color and atmosphere this is a not bad riff on early Renaissance realism, with some echo of alchemical symbolism. That figure, although kind of disturbingly 1970s, is really well-painted.

I think the artist knew his stuff. Can we blame the art director?
Tom Noir Says:
October 22nd, 2011 at 3:27 am

The more you know…!
Scott B Says:
October 22nd, 2011 at 6:31 am

He’s also The Most Interesting Man-Bull In The World.
Phil Says:
October 22nd, 2011 at 10:04 am

So he’s not a man-bull or man-bull, he’s a lamassu. That makes it even more a hilarious: a lamassu without wings!
Alessandra Says:
October 22nd, 2011 at 3:38 pm

This is the same artist who did the cover art for “Retief’s War,” also on this site:

http://www.goodshowsir.co.uk/2010/07/retiefs-war/

He also did the very strange art for “Dream Park,” the one with the warrior fighting, as someone put it, the big dragon with the strawberry for a tongue:

http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/a/a3/DREAMPK1981.jpg
Dead Stuff With Big Teeth Says:
October 22nd, 2011 at 9:47 pm

@Phil: Maybe the whale nicked ’em?
Claire Says:
October 24th, 2011 at 9:20 am

I, weapon, you, tool.
Anti-Sceptic Says:
October 24th, 2011 at 6:51 pm

The scene looks like Jesus hanging out with some Greek mythos characters struggling to figure out this newfangled language of computers…You can see from the whale-bird’s smiling face that he’s thinking to himself “did anyone tell them that they have desktops now?”
Jerk of all Trades Says:
October 25th, 2011 at 7:06 am

“And lo, the beast who had a face as a man said, ‘BLEAGH.'”
— The Book of the Revelation of Good Show Sir, chapter 4.
Winter Says:
December 9th, 2011 at 2:07 am

If that book is the one I think it is, it deserves that cover. A more unreadable, nonsensical pile of dren I have never finished. Perhaps my mistake was reading it while sober.
JoeC Says:
August 10th, 2012 at 12:55 am

The book is pretty good sci-fi. A little sparse in characterization and probably too much narrative summary for today’s audience, but overall a unique and worthwhile work.

Those aren’t punchcards, those are strands of DNA. The whole point of the novel is that humans were nearly destroyed by an alien invasion that wrecked the Earth. In the resulting radioactive hell that Earth became, as well as across the ruins of humanity’s former stellar empire, new “forms” of humanity arose. These included the bull-men on the cover, who were raised for their meat and eaten by other forms of humans. There are other forms of humanity (though I don’t know where the blue lady comes in) which are enrolled in a breeding program to produce a “super-being”. Obviously it stretches the imagination to think that these different forms of humanity would still be able to interbreed and would not be classified as separate species, but it makes for an interesting story.

The best part about the book is when the super-human produced by the breeding program heads off to investigate the Vim, the race that had nearly destroyed mankind once and has suddenly returned (perhaps to finish the job). Finding out who the Vim are and why they’re so intent on conquering is a neat little mystery that the author came up with.

So yes, the cover is pretty funky, but the book itself is fairly strong on ideas, if not necessarily on execution. I would recommend it just for its breadth of imagination.
anon Says:
August 27th, 2015 at 11:24 am

Naturally somebody thinks “the ultimate man” and “humankind’s last hope for survival” is an iWeapon, but was it really necessary to write a book about it?
Tat Wood Says:
August 27th, 2015 at 2:32 pm

I, Weapon do take thee, Willendorf Venus, to be my lawfully wedded wife, from this day forth…
GSS noob Says:
January 8th, 2017 at 10:57 pm

@Tat: and then they chowed down on bull-man at the wedding dinner? Who’s the father of the baby, then? I guess Willendorf Venus isn’t about to hold with our middle-class monotheistic sexual rules.

Punched paper tape was barely still around in 1977, if you weren’t important enough to deserve your own permanent disc space — as I wasn’t as a wee schoolNoob working with obsolete equipment that someone’s father had rescued from his office and then given to the school. It was out of style and old fashioned even then, as the real futuristic types had moved onto those giant tape reels that signified COMPUTER! back in the 60’s-80’s.
Emster Says:
February 10th, 2023 at 11:57 pm

I, just happened upon this cover.

I, can’t make sense of it (but I usually steer clear of anything with hippie-Jesus imagery having barely survived Stranger in a Strange Land…)
GSS ex-noob Says:
February 11th, 2023 at 11:36 pm

@Emster: Ah, the joys of going through the “back issues” of GSS! I remember that.

I’m not sure either about the juxtaposition of blue mother, bull-man, and neo-Jesus with punched paper tape coming out of his… loincloth.

The very tiny punches from the tape fell into a box provided with the terminal, which you had to empty when it got full. The school staff much preferred if it wasn’t emptied like confetti from the second floor (where the computer room was) to flutter down upon the first-floor lunch area and the assistant principal’s office doorway.

I never did that but I sure enjoyed watching. None of us computer nerds ever ratted out the culprits. The janitors didn’t like it either — the bits were so small even industrial vacuums had problems, and they spread all over.

All of which made much more sense than this cover. Maybe neo-Jesus has a bin to catch the paper in his loincloth.
Bruce Alexander Munro Says:
February 12th, 2023 at 7:01 am

“So, you’re a mix of the best elements of all the different types of humanity.”

“Yup.”

“Did you get anything from the bull-men?”

“Well, I don’t want to boast…”
GSS ex-noob Says:
February 14th, 2023 at 4:21 am

@Bruce: checking blue baby for horns
Hammy Says:
February 15th, 2023 at 3:31 am

Hmm….

Is Ms. Blonde-and-Blue nursing that baby, suffocating it against her chest or barfing on it? Even enlarging the picture doesn’t reveal which it is….
GSS ex-noob Says:
February 15th, 2023 at 10:28 pm

@Hammy: I couldn’t tell either. Not sure if looking at the actual book would make it any clearer. Possibly one could tell if you were brave enough to look at the original painting.

Other possibilities include her biting off its face skin.

i would like to chastise the mouseover text; he may not have shaved, but he sure neatened up the edges. Unless that’s part of his super genetic engineering too.
Leak Says:
February 16th, 2023 at 7:27 pm

@GSS X-N: Behold! The wonders of PECTORAL ANTI-ALIASING

>4 GSSex-noob: Two puns. “Bye son.”

>6 TorMented: Yes, sorry. But at least we agree on his bison-ness.

@haydninvienna: Thanks for the comment rescue. I see I noticed the manscaping and punched paper tape both times, but only now did I mention the air/sea creature. It's gaping in WTF at this tableau as much as we are.

Speaking of WTF, I came across a lovely version of that the other day online: someone inquired "What the actual hand-crafted bespoke artisanal F?"

She's a single mother giant Smurf.
He's a reverse minotaur who wishes he had wings.
They're a flying mini-whale who can't swim.
He's Manscaped Jesus.

Together, they fight crime.
Computer crime.

>8 bam2001: GSS.