Busted! What Moxy gets up to in his spare time

by Lauren Beukes on Jun 30th, 2009

Moxy has been spotted across the country flagrantly cuddling with kids and small animals.

Let me put this in perspective. This is the mascot for a book that has been described as “a dazzling hell”, “deeply disturbing” “a gritty urban thriller”, “overtly, sublimely political” “high-octane”, “refreshingly unsentimental” and “the larval form of a new kind of SF munching its way out of the intestines of the wasp-paralysed caterpillar of cyberpunk”.

And he’s running around CUDDLING?

Angry Robot may have been right when they decided the original Moxyland cover was too cute for the content.

More photographic evidence of adorable Moxyness below.

But first a word commemorating the original Jacana cover (the Angry Robot edition is due out this week):

What I love about working with designer Joey Hifi is the way he plays with the plot visually. Moxy stands in for the major theme of the book, the glossy veneer on a fundamentally damaged society. He’s cute, but in a creepy kinda way.

The badges all represent essential elements of the storyline. The sparky cell phone represents the electrocuting defusers used for social control. The CCTV camera stands in for surveillance society. The ghost is the icon for Kendra’s nanotech habit. The attack dog on the bag (commonly seen on South African beware-of-dog security signs) is a genetically modified police dog or Aito.

And there are some more subtle clues too, like the soccer ball or the biohazard stitching that will only become clear once you’ve read the whole thing.

moxyland_cover_repro

But enough about the cover. I know you’re only here for the cute photos.

You can get your very own mutant clone for R150 (R100 of which goes directly to the women’s collective who make them, the Montagu Sew & Sews) from The Book Lounge. Email: booklounge@gmail.com

And please, if anyone has photos of Moxy that might restore his street cred - getting drunk on Long Street or starting a riot or fighting great whites sharks or something, please send them to me. Email: moxy (at) moxyland.com

: Anet’s Niamh & “the cleverest baby in the house” (he reads a lot apparently)

: Rosa is fluffier and more vicious

: Keitu: They’re multiplying

: Louis’ Todzilla <3 Moxy

: Todzilla busts out the wrestling moves

: Helen’s Lily cat gets cosy

: Moxy and Karina’s Glinka

Cats: South Africa
Tags: baby, cat, helen moffett, karina brink, Lauren Beukes, montagu sew & sews, moxy, Moxyland, South Africa
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Recent comments:

Helen
June 30th, 2009 @10:00 #

Aaaaaaaah! My knees have gone all melty, like warm taffy. That gorgeous fluffy snuggling up to Moxy is my Lily -- her sister Meggie just never got into the whole Moxy thang. Tell me, do other parents also look at a set of pics like this with a smug little voice in their head saying "YOUR baby is the fairest of them all"? (Apologies to Todzilla, Keitu, Glinka et al...)
Sarah Lotz
June 30th, 2009 @10:05 #

Awwww. Gorgeous pics. I'm going to pass these on to Denise and the rest of the Sew & Sews, they'll be chuffed.
ar
June 30th, 2009 @12:46 #

Funny. Book covers are strange beasts. No maybe it’s book-buyers who are the strange beasts. When I first spotted Moxyland in the bookshop, it was only cute to my eyes for about a tenth of a second, 'til I registered the biohazard stitching. That intrigued me enough to actually pick the book up off the shelf and have a closer look, then get more intrigued and buy the book. I honestly feel that I might not have given the book a second glance, and therefore not have bought or read it at all, if it had had the Angry Robot cover with the four graffiti-people with broken link icons in their blanked faces – which I find too obvious and superficially technogrungy to be intriguing. I dunno.

I always want to ask, too, about Agaat – why do the Afrikaans and English versions have different covers? The Afrikaans one is superior by far.

I think I need a Moxy too, for keeping my kitties in line or at least sitting still for long enough to have their portraits taken.
Helen
June 30th, 2009 @12:55 #

A Moxy can be arranged, AR. I'm sure Ben will carry one up to The Big Smoke in his hand luggage for the next Jozi bloggers outing...

And I agree with you re the Moxy cover. The SA cover is so much more witty and subtle, but not so subtle that you don't pick it up, intrigued. Those fangs immediately counter the fluff.

I also wonder about this different covers for different languages. I prefer the cover of Andre Brink's memoir in Afrikaans to the English version, f'rinstance.
ar
June 30th, 2009 @14:31 #

Let's just hope Mr Ben doesn't get followed from the airport and mugged for my Moxy. Sjoe. He better wrap it in tinfoil so it looks like an egg mayo sarmie and not a Moxy. I can't wait! Yay.
Lauren Beukes
June 30th, 2009 @14:48 #

Okay, I'm taking orders!

Anyone else in Jozi or elsewhere want one? Signed and everything! I only have three at the moment and I'm going to have to put in a new order with Denise and the Montagu Sew & Sews if there's a demand for more than that and it'll take at least a week (the cloning procedure is a laborious affair).

Remember that R100 of the R150 goes directly to the women's collective operating the cloning technology.

The Book Lounge is also perfectly happy to ship Moxys to anywhere in the world.
ar
June 30th, 2009 @14:56 #

1 for me for sure. And I wonder, d'you think the sew&sews would make me a short, hairy, irate angel toy from Texas, too? I'd pay extra even.
Helen
June 30th, 2009 @14:59 #

Tom, it would appear that you have a stalker.
Sarah Lotz
June 30th, 2009 @15:25 #

The Sew & Sews will make anything you want - anything at all, angels, demons, Moxies, curtains, cushions, hats (and you can never have too many of those as Helen knows) you name it. They made me a dog basket that is so gorgeous I'm thinking of using it myself.
Rustum Kozain
June 30th, 2009 @16:24 #

Hey, how's about making ceramic Moxies - a kind of 21st century garden gnome?

Don't thank me Lauren - just a bottle of Ballantine's or Appleton Estate a month until I die. Oh, and two laser printer cartridges per year. Thanks.
Louis Greenberg
June 30th, 2009 @20:41 #

This is brilliant, Lauren.

Helen, I would normally say that my kid is by far the best-looking in the room, but all of these kids and furkids are preternaturally good-looking.

Heh heh - Moxy's going to have therapy-issues from that Niamh pose.

Um, fangs, anyone? Which other plush kid(t)d(t)y toy do you know with such evil fangs?
Lauren Beukes
June 30th, 2009 @22:20 #

Let's say Todzilla is the best-looking boy child in the room. And I had lots of evil toys with fangs. Although perhaps that's because I was ripping off my Barbie's head to replace it with my brother's wheelie gila monster toy's head so she could be head honcho lizard alien, Diana, from V.
Helen
June 30th, 2009 @22:55 #

Todzilla the best-looking boy-child, Niamh the best little girl, Keitu best baby, Rosa best dog, Lily -- er er oops. That was close: almost ended a beautiful friendship with Karina.
ar
June 30th, 2009 @23:01 #

I have never seen a wheelie gila monster, not ever. I feel a bit cheated because it sounds like something that ought to be seen, but only twice: the first time only half of it, in the moonlit dark sticking out from behind a dressing gown hanging behind the bedroom door; and the second time in full after having screamed my lungs out and beaten it to death with a slipper. Is it fluffy?

(ROTFL, Helen! I stalk, therefore etc. But that’s not all – with each stalking, the lucky (?) writer gets a free one-woman underground guerrilla marketing department that occasionally shoots itself in the foot with a rocket launcher. Oh, by Fedecks, Anoia and Reg (fully functional deities all), Mr Eaton will have his Nobel if it’s the last thing I do. Maybe only when he’s 80, and maybe only via telefacsimile or telegraph, or even morse code - because by then probly all the planes and satellites will have fallen out the sky and the lights gone off and the wondrous undersea fibreoptic thingies have long hacked out their last stricken yottabyte - but still, he will have it. Mark me. He’s the One, you know, and he’s gonna save us whether he likes it or knows it or not. Yea.)
Helen
June 30th, 2009 @23:06 #

aha! *triumphant* Lily the most beautiful long-haired tortoiseshell Norwegian Forest Cat (I think: also pavement special de luxe), Glinka the most beautiful short-haired silver tabby. Phew!
Helen
June 30th, 2009 @23:22 #

AR, I am in complete agreement with you re St Thomas, except that we need to organise his Nobel while he still has time to enjoy spending the prize money. And before he takes out a restraining order against you.
ar
June 30th, 2009 @23:25 #

Ok cool. Let's do it!
Louis Greenberg
July 1st, 2009 @10:58 #

V! Lauren, what with this and Under the Mountain (Wilberforces!) you are the official 80s scary-nostalgia-machine. My brother and I hired a tiny TV specially to watch V because my pesky old pops always insisted on watching the news instead. Ooer.

Does anyone remember The Devil's Triangle, the Most Terrifying Movie Ever Shown on TV? It was the Saturday night feature film some time in the 80s and traumatised a whole generation of children. Or did it? I'm trying to convince myself it wasn't some evil hallucination.

I found myself humming a Three Trees Tea jingle this morning, dug up from somewhere in the sludgy recesses of my mind. "Oh my feet are killing me: I could do with a Three Trees Tea." Not quite 80s, I suppose.
Richard de Nooy
July 1st, 2009 @11:08 #

That was indeed a terrifying movie, Louis. I think it was actually called Satan's Triangle (just checked Google). The evil eyes and smile of the rescued 'woman' aboard the helicopter will remain etched in my mind forever.
Louis Greenberg
July 1st, 2009 @11:31 #

Thank goodness - I was about to pop out and get some pills. The title confusion explain everyone else's memory lapse.

Jeez, imagine Catholic-boy here when the priest turns into SATAN himself! I was dragged to church kicking ans screaming the next morning.
Richard de Nooy
July 1st, 2009 @11:42 #

Open at your own risk, Louis Greenberg.

http://crankedoncinema.com/files/sattri11big.jpg