Girls for the Slime God

I was alerted to Mike Resnik's anthology, Girls For the Slime God in Earl Kemp's ezine, EL. At the core of the anthology is 3 novelettes by Henry Kuttner that appeared in Marvel Science Stories in 1938. Now your typical Science Fiction magazine from the 1930's featured a scantily clad woman wearing a brass bra and little else, who is being menaced by a slobbering BEM (Bug Eyed Monster) while the hero, clad in heavy space armor, is about to dispatch the monster. While the covers promised exciting sexual content, the actual contents of the magazines had about as much sexual content as a Sunday school prayer book. The exception to this rule was to be found in the first three issues of Marvel Science Stories (the Post Office then threatened legal action and the magazine substituted a much blander fare). Mike was alerted to these stories by an article by pornographer and SF fan William Knoles that appeared in Playboy in 1960. The article is reprinted in the book.

To quote Knoles," A quivering bosom was no novel sight for a 1930's S-F hero. Space girls expressed most of their emotions through their pectoral muscles. Bosoms swayed, trembled, heaved,shivered, danced or pouted according to their owners' moods. In fact, if a hero in those days had been a little more observant, and had carried a tape measure, he could have saved himself a lot of trouble. When he opened an airlock and a gorgeous stowaway fell out, uniform ripping, it usually took him 5 or 6 pages pages to find out if she was a Venusian spy or not, whereas the reader knew at once. If her torn uniform revealed pouting young breasts, she was OK--probably someone's kid sister. If she had eager, straining breasts, she was the heroine. But a girl with proud, arrogant breasts was definitely a spy--while a ripe, full bosom meant she was a Pirate Queen and all hell would soon break loose."

The first of the stories reprinted here is Henry Kuttner's Avengers Of Space. As early as the third page, the heroine, Lorna, has her dress torn off, while the hero, Shawn, pulls her though a shattered car window "the glass that remained played havoc with the girl's dress, ripping it off her slim body. For a second, Shawn felt the warm firmness of her half-bared bosom hot against his cheek. Even at that moment the blood pounded dizzily in his temples at the girl's alluring nearness, at the musky perfume that was strong in his nostrils. Shawn's throat felt dry. His pulse beat faster at the touch of his hands upon her rounded, vibrant body."

An endless series of monsters menaces Lorna and tear her clothing off. One time, while runniung away from dinosaur men on the moon Titan, she even tore her own clothing off, item by item, to distract the dinosaur men, who would stop to sniff her clothing before resuming the chase.

The book is a delightful journey through the pulp SF fiction of the 1930's, "when pulp was king, men were men and women were naked -Karen Taylor"

As far as I know, the book is out of print. I got my copy through alibris.com. 1000 copies were printed by Obscura Press. My copy is number 274.