PUBLISHER - Ok, we've got here a cosmic horror SF novel that's actually discussing many deep philosophical themes and exploring the limits of human consciousness...
ARTIST - Giant purple head on a heap of pebbles then?
PUBLISHER - Nailed it!!!!
Celebrating the mad, bad, and dangerous to look at covers inflicted on the book world
I'm trying to find out the illustrator's name so I can see more of his work. Is it as bizarre as this? I remember the cover from this book so well. Most covers are generic because our age is becoming increasingly corporate and generic. Cover illustrations are mostly bland nowadays......Why?
ReplyDeleteI read the book 30 or so years ago and remember really liking it.
It was discouraging to enter a link that had this illustration as an example of a bad book cover. Thom's Bad Book Covers blog, I think it was called. People celebrate badness for so long they become blind to really exciting book covers like this.
It was a pleasure to read a book with this fun cover art. It's insane in a very good way. It did capture some of the feel of the novel as I remember it.
Your blog celebrates stuff you like, or is it like Thom's blog?
The artist's name was Bob Fowke - and he's did lots of fantastic book covers, included two of my all-time favourite Lovecraft covers for the Panther paperback editions of the The Horror in the Museum and the Horror in the Burying Ground - a list of his art can be found here - http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?26629
ReplyDeleteI'm a huge fan of Colin Wilson's works, and I too lament the current bland state of cover art and movie posters - you just don't get insane visionary book covers like this one very often these days sadly!
On this blog and on my podcast, I mostly cover things that I love as I am a big believer in sharing what you are passionate about rather than idly nitpicking and snarking stuff for the sake of it.