I removed two links from your post, CalMeacham- you may have used the wrong URL, or the host of the imagine may have blocked hotlinking. Not sure which. Either way, the image you wanted wasn’t displaying.
Great idea for a thread!
This is more of an appreciation of the dust jacket(s), but the hardcover edition of Michael Chabon’s Maps and Legends has three different-sized and die-cut wraparound covers that fit very nicely on top of each other (the blue fits on top of the green, which fits on top of the brown) to make the overall design. Each of the covers has representations of characters or themes discussed in Chabon’s essays contained within the book. Most of the copies I’ve seen in stores have been shrinkwrapped.
Michael Wheland’s cover for Foundations Edge.
Try this one for Bored of the Rings, then:
You can go from a link there to the original poster, too
Yes indeed! And all the more so because that series of covers shows Trantor slowly falling into ruins over centuries. The two earlier ones:
http://www.slawcio.com/foundation/found1.jpg
http://www.michaelwhelan.com/catalog/images/large_arkady.jpg
Some nice ones, and the Caustic Cover site was also very nice. Thank you.
The original cover to John Christopher’s The White Mountains…as well as a later cover to the same book, done in a completely different art style, and a different focus on the subject of the picture. What can I say?
And the cover to The Martian Chronicles, too, of course. Though it doesn’t do it justice not to show the illustration as continued to the back cover.
Though to be honest, I’m not sure if it’s the art itself (which is still gorgeous), or the heartwarming old memories of when I first got the book which are making the most impression. Maybe both.
Elbow Room’s cover is pretty amusing.
(The link comes from filling pages above linky to caustic cover art thing. ( very cool! )
The book of lost things has an especially pleasing cover to me.
That’s from the Kelmscott Chaucer? Or, at least, was designed by William Morris, who did the KC. He did gorgeous work, didn’t he?
Yes!!! I’d forgotten that. One of the best unions of image to text I’ve ever seen in sf. Here’s the whole thing: http://www.michaelwhelan.com/catalog/images/large_descent1.jpg
I like some of the covers as shown on this page, especially the avantgarde stuff such as items around 6560. But this catalogue is a bit disappointing to be frank. There’s better books on this site. I actually own some of these books, although there not usually first editions - I am sort of cheap that way.
Also, anything designed by Mayakovskij.
There has to be a market for book cover artwork out there. I know it intrigues me a lot.
I’m glad y’all enjoy the Caustic Cover Critic. I always paid attention to book covers, but reading that blog has opened my eyes to much of the design process and little details I wouldn’t have considered on my own.
And one more cover, for the fun of it. I picked up this particular edition of Left Hand of Darkness because I like the design so much, especially compared to come of the newer paperback copies.
Not great art, but I love the cover of a book I bought years ago called The Physics of Star Trek.
It’s a rudimentary hologram, and tilting the book from side to side makes the figure on the cover appear and disappear as if being transported.
Yes, I am easily amused sometimes.
I’ve always liked the covers on Kurt Vonnegut’s soft cover books.
http://www.marshall.edu/library/bannedbooks/images/slaughterhouse5.jpg
I was fifteen years old (almost 14 years ago, I am getting old). I was at a bookstore and no book caught my attention. Suddenly I saw this.
I thought the cover was lovely and so I opened the book and read the first line.
The Dead Zone - Stepen King
The Songs of Distant Earth - Arthur C. Clarke
Harvest Home - Thomas Tryon. Couldn’t find a pic of the front and back covers together.