Urth Net
PEACE cover art
↰ answers Christopher Culver
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on 5/8/02 7:06 PM, Christopher Culver at christopher_culver at yahoo.com wrote: Another question of early Wolfe: why did the cover "art" for the original edition of PEACE suck? In his biographical sketch of Wolfe before "The Death of Doctor Island" in MODERN CLASSIC SHORT NOVELS OF SCIENCE FICTION, the editor (whose name I forget, I'm across the Atlantic from my library at the moment) blames the plain cover art for the poor sales of PEACE. I could see how that could happen, the cover art looks like a generic bookcover a grade-school kid would put over a textbook. Why would a publisher design a book so it wouldn't sell?
I don't think the jacket design sucks; I much prefer it to Gahan Wilson's cover art for the tpb, which is completely out of keeping with the book's spirit and is a big fat spoiler, too. The book was originally published as a literary novel, and the jacket design reflects this.
--Adam