Startling Stories’s tube girl

Vulcan's Doll
Bad robot!

How sharp my regret I don’t have a higher-quality version of this cover, given how it exhibits one of my favorite visual tropes. It was painted by Walter Popp for the August 1953 issue of Startling Stories. Interior art in the issue includes this piece by Ed Emshwiller, illustrating Theodore Sturgeon’s “The Wages of Synergy,” which is about as symbolically representative of Erotic Mad Science as any piece of pulp art I have yet found.

This issue of Startling Stories is available to read and download at the Internet Archive.

2 thoughts on “Startling Stories’s tube girl

  1. So sad. The inexperienced scientist tends to start his clone for his new mistress in a flask too small to hold her to maturity. If she is decanted too early, she may never achieve a size sufficient to entertain sexual congress. This is frustrating to both the scientist and the worthy but tiny clone. Luckily, this occurs sufficiently often that young female mad scientists often happen to have handy an undersized male homunculous of their own to share, and viewing the results can be entertaining and instructive.

    • I can recommend any of the artists who’ve drawn comics on this site, if you feel like that’s the direction you’re going here.

Comments are closed.