Apprendre le français LXXVI: Appât Page 85

PAGE 85 (Single panel, color)

(Note : on this and some following pages the Creature is now housed in a giant cylindrical glass tank. In the middle of this giant tank is some sort of coral structure inside of which the Creature (mostly) lurks.

Single panel: View of the giant tank as described above.

CAPTION – PSEUDO-NARRATION (1): The Creature is brought to the Energexecon Marine Center in Corpus Christi, Texas, where it is exhibited and studied.

Translation (1): La créature est transportée dans le centre d’études marines d’Energexecon à Corpus Christi au Texas où elle est exposée et étudiée.

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Do you like your oysters raw?

In keeping with yesterday’s maritime pulp theme

This is the cover to Bedtime Tales, a 1930s pulp about as genuinely obscure as any I’ve been able to find. Galactic Central shows only two extant issues but adds that “other issues probably exist.” But at least one of these issues is in the Internet Archive.

Worth a quick peruse, if only to show that naughty nudie mags have a longer history than most people realize, in this case dating back to when Hugh Hefner would have been in grade school.

Apprendre le français LXXV: Appât Page 84

PAGE 84 (Three panels, long one across the top).

Panel 1: Long view showing the table set out with the portraits of the three women Eliza, Daphne, and Claudia, with other arrangements.

CAPTION – UU Minister speaking (1): Let us think of the women we commemorate today as our Praxithea, Theope, and Eubule.

Translation (1): Imaginons les femmes que nous commémorons aujourd’hui comme étant Praxithée, Théope et Eubule.

Panel 2: Close-up of a particular mourner, showing signs of grief. The details are at the artist’s discretion.

CAPTION – UU Minister speaking (2): Let us honor and not disdain their sacrifices.

Translation (2): Honorons-les et valorisons leurs sacrifices.

Panel 3: Close-up view on the UU Minister again. Her head is bent forward and her eyes are closed.

CAPTION – UU Minister speaking (3): For is that not what human decency really requires?

Translation (3): Car n’est-ce pas ce dont la décence humaine a vraiment besoin ?

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Crab peril!

The pulps would menace a pretty scantily-clad girl with anything, and by 1959 they would go so far as to menace an unclad one.

It’s something I came across browsing my way through men’s adventure magazines in the Internet Archive, a place where I think I could easily putter away all my remaining days rather happily if it came to that. It’s not quite erotic mad science (it would be if the giant crabs were the mutant product of an experiment!) but it seems thematically connected in any number of ways to the sort of things that run here. This particular story of Central American tourism gone wrong appeared in Exotic Adventures, Volume 1, Number 3, an obscure mag which ran for maybe six issues in 1958-9. Unfortunately but perhaps unsurprisingly I don’t have an artist credit for the peril scene above.

You can read and download this contribution to Western Civilization at the Internet Archive.

In 1959 (or was it 1958?) the sexiest girl in Japan was majoring in philosophy at Northwestern, in case you were curious.

Apprendre le français LXXIV: Appât Page 83

PAGE 83 (Single panel page)

Single panel: A representation of Leos sacrificing his three daughters Praxithea, Theope, and Eubule. There are a number of art-historical views of what human sacrifices might have looked like in Archaic Greece and mostly this will be left to the discretion of the artist, with the recommendation that he image search some of the more famous Greek maiden sacrifices, such as those of Iphigenia or Polyxena, and extrapolate from there. Perhaps Praxithea can be lying already sacrificed at her father’s feet, Theope can be under the knife, and Eubule can be patiently waiting her turn. The four captions can be at the corners of the illustration, or otherwise arranged as seems reasonable.

CAPTION – UU Minister speaking (1): In Greek legend, Leos, the son of Orpheus, had three daughters: Praxithea, Theope, and Eubule. In response to a prophecy from the Oracle at Delphi, these three daughters volunteered themselves for sacrifice to save Athens from famine and plague.

Translation (1): Dans la légende grecque, Leos, le fils d’Orphée, a eu trois filles : Praxithée, Théope et Eubule. En réponse à une prophétie de l’oracle de Delphes, ces trois filles se sont portées volontaires pour se sacrifier afin de sauver Athènes de la famine et de la peste.

CAPTION – UU Minister speaking (2): Were their sacrifices regarded as tragedy, stupidity, or waste? Far from it. Demosthenes himself, in his funeral oration, compared them to the bravest of soldiers who fell defending their city.

Translation (2): Leurs sacrifices étaient-ils considérés comme une tragédie, une bêtise ou un gaspillage ? Pas du tout. Démosthène lui-même, dans son oraison funèbre, les a comparées aux plus courageux des soldats qui sont tombés pour défendre leur ville.

CAPTION – UU Minister quoting Demosthenes (3): ὅτε δὴ γυναῖκες ἐκεῖναι τοιαύτην ἔσχον ἀνδρείαν, οὐ θεμιτὸν αὑτοῖς ὑπελάμβανον χείροσιν ἀνδράσιν οὖσιν ἐκείνων φανῆναι.

Comment (3) : Do not attempt to translate this passage in Greek. It’s translated into English at (4) below, and you can translate it from there into your target language.

CAPTION – UU – Minister translating (4): “When, therefore, such courage was displayed by those women, they looked upon it as a heinous thing if they, being men, should have proved to possess less of manhood.”

Translation (4): « C’est pourquoi, face à une telle virilité déployée par les femmes, il leur aurait semblé abominable, alors qu’ils étaient des hommes, de faire montre de moins de virilité. »

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ASFR in reverse

A modern Pygmalion:

His touch turned flesh to stone.

(It’s a big image, so downloading is recommended for the full effect.) The art is by the prolific sci-fi and fantasy artist Virgil Finaly. It’s from Dream World, August 1957.

Dream World had a pretty short life under the editorship of Paul Fairman, apparently running to only three issues. It managed to attract some significant talent. Here’s the cover, by Ed Valigursky:

A smaller but cleaner version of the cover can be found via the issue’s ISFDB entry:

The magazine seems to have attracted real writing talent, as well. The August issue contains stories by Robert Silverberg and Harlan Ellison. You can read or download it from the Internet Archive.