Friday 24 May 2019

Two Early Covers

Behold the covers of the Gollancz hardback edition and of an unidentified paperback edition of Poul Anderson's novel, Satan's World. For larger reproductions of these covers, see here and here.

The Gollancz cover describes the book as "A new science fiction novel featuring Nicholas van Rijn and David Falkayn" whereas the paperback cover proclaims "Merchant adventurers David Falkayn and Nicholas van Rijn in the Third Chronicle of the Polesotechnic League!"

These covers are historically specific, e.g., any later edition can no longer be described as "new." In terms of book publication, this novel had been preceded only by:

Trader To The Stars, a collection of three stories about van Rijn;

The Trouble Twisters, a collection of three stories about Falkayn, with a cameo appearance by van Rijn in the third story.

It follows that:

it made sense to advertise this novel as featuring both these characters;

the novel was indeed "...the Third Chronicle of the Polesotechnic League!"

3 comments:

David Birr said...

Paul:
The "unidentified" paperback was put out by Berkley Books in 1983. (It's the edition I own.)

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

David,
Thank you. I knew that someone would identify it.
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul and DAVID!

And it seems the artist who did the cover painting paid ATTENTION to the descriptions given of the Shenna. The Shen we see on the cover seems to be accurately depicted.

Sean