Brave New World

I promise not to make a habit of this. Others have devoted themselves to posting vintage paperback covers, Pop Sensation, for example.

This is one of my favorite covers, by Charles Binger. I have a framed blow-up of it on the wall here in my office at home, done for a "classics" display at the library. Binger has used the "keyhole" technique popular in paperback covers of the '40's. I had cherished this cover as a find, but I see that it is all over the 'Net, even roundly mocked at BoingBoing.

I don't care, I like it. It says, "stop the world, I want to get off!" We see a new Adam and Eve, sans fig leaves, escaping, not cast out from, the "soulless Eden". Will they be missed?

I don't suppose the word dystopia had yet been coined. It is a potent and ancient image. Escape or exile? From Ur of the Chaldees, The Old World, the Concrete Jungle, Suburbia, Cyberspace?

And return, to what? To a naked, undistracted, painful, ethical, courageous existence in the sight of an inscrutable God.

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.