Avon Fantasy Reader No. 13 – 'Love Slave and the Scientists' Cover, c.1950
Warm flesh tones and iridescent lab equipment saturate this lurid pulp cover, where a white-coated scientist leans hungrily toward a glassy-eyed blonde woman wearing only a metallic skullcap — one of several semi-transparent female figures arrayed like specimens in a futuristic laboratory. Coiled springs, control panels, and ghostly duplicate women crowd the background, suggesting a cloning or mind-control experiment gone gloriously wrong. The palette oscillates between warm golden skin tones and cool violet-green laboratory shadows, maximizing voyeuristic tension.
This cover cranks the imagination-per-square-inch ratio to fever pitch — semi-nude duplicated women, a leering scientist in a brain-scanning helmet, and glowing lab equipment all compete for attention in one claustrophobic frame. It is unapologetically, magnificently unhinged pulp sensationalism.
“AN AVON PUBLICATION AVON Fantasy READER No. 13 THE LOVE SLAVE AND THE SCIENTISTS — Frank Belknap Long also stories by Ray Cummings Albert R. Wetjen August Derleth AND OTHERS 35¢”
