Suddenly Wells Everywhere

In 1946, having recently published the short but aptly-titled Mind at the End of Its Tether, H. G. Wells died. And thus 2017, which is 70 years later, sees him drop out of copyright in much of the world. And lo, there suddenly shall come forth a torrent of Wells.

Vintage Classics UK is one of the first to have a go, with these eye-warping 3D covers. Vintage Classics used to compete with Penguin Classics, who have the paperback rights to Wells while copyright lasts. Now Vintage is wned by the same people, Penguin Random House, so they will be going into competition with themselves, but I'm sure this makes sense to an accountant somewhere.

Oxford World's Classics are being rather more sober about things (I do like the Moreau cover, but the others are a bit bland).

Alma are adding him to their Evergreens catalogue...

..while Gollancz/Weinfeld & Nicolson, who currently only have hardback rights to Wells, are shuffling a whole lot into paperback (more on these here):

 

Collins Classics are doing their usual quickie covers...

..and the Macmillan Collector's Library are having a go too:

Vintage US is bringing out a couple...

..and finally we have Wordworth Classics, if you want ugly but cheap editions.

The five most popular choices in all this lot are, of course, five of Wells's best-known books, and for a good reason. Each of them effectively created a branch of science-fiction that would have countless imitators and followers over the next century-and-more (The War of the Worlds: alien invasion, The Time Machine: time travel, The First Men in the Moon: space exploration, The Island of Doctor Moreau: biological/genetic engineering, The Invisible Man: superpowers), but it's nice to see a few of the neglected social novels getting some attention too. In this respect, Peter Owen is standing out from the crowd: they're republishing only one Wells, and it's completely SF-free.

Social Relevance

I've discussed the cunning ploy used by publisher Orion/Gollancz/Weidenfeld for republishing classic books owned by another publisher: get hold of the cheap hardback rights, and publish the book as a small hardback at a paperback price. It's a tactic they're already using on a number of H. G. Wells' most famous SF works (see below), and they're about do it with five of his best 'social novels'. The designs for these paperback-sized hardbacks were done by Luke Roberts and Simon Cox, who won a competition run by design group D&AD. They run with the 'social problem' aspect by using a period newspaper look, with an object lying on the newspaper which interacts with a newspaper photograph in some way.

See more pictures here, and other entries in the competition here. (I especially like this, this, this and this.)

Penguin owns the paperback right to Wells' work, hence this hardback scheme. As I said before, a number of Wells' SF works are now in the Gollancz SF Masterworks series as cheap hardbacks. This excellent collection of books was recently given a facelift. Unfortunately, as I remarked before, part of this facelift involves tinting all of the covers a urinous yellow colour, a not entirely successful nod to the mid-20th-Century yellowjacket look of the Gollancz SF line.

And to compare, here are the Penguin Classics editions of these various titles, featuring the screenprint cover designs of Kate Gibb.

The Unexpected Intrusion of Television

UPDATED: See the end of the post for comments by John Parot.

It's all over the internet, at least if you visit the distinctly nerdy places I do: Penguin got some contestants on an irritating sounding become-the-next-great-modern-artist TV show to design a book cover, and then rushed the result into print. This is the underwhelming result:

The artist, John Parot, described his inspiration as "my reality and gay culture", apparently, which is part of my problem with this thing: it's about the artist and not at all about the book, which is a self-indulgent mistake. I don't mind the type, to be honest: at least it's hand-drawn, with all of the irregularities that entails, rather than being some free distorted font slaped on there. Overall, though, it's not much good, and the banner across the top makes it even worse.

Still, you only need to look at some of the other possibilities, and you can see how much worse it could have been. And I can't quite believe I just linked to the site of a "reality" show. Excuse me while I slit my wrists. Take a look at some of these hideous contenders, and you may feel the need to do the same:

This reminds me of the time Penguin asked musicians to design covers for them, and got a bunch of murky, shitty rubbish.

UPDATE: John Parot commented on this post, and I think it's fair to reproduce what he had to say here, to give his side of the story: 

Hi! I thought I'd enlighten some of you haters. You misunderstood some things. I was asked to create a book design for the Penguin Classic "The Time Machine". When we met with the representative we were asked to create a cover that would win new readers to these old classics. My inspiration for the piece was not my "gay culture" or gayness or whatever it was called. On the T.V show the producer showcased my professional artwork. They sited that in my profession artwork I reference my gay reality and it is a constant theme. This book and the design has nothing to do with being gay.

I grew up in a Library, my Dad is a historian and librarian. I grew up collecting paperbacks and have seen many covers. For this cover I was thinking of the gorgeous Milton Glaser Illustrations in the sixties as well as the classic psychedelic sci-fi of the 70's That is where the "jumble of purple/pink" colors comes from. It is stylized time machine. not the one described in the book, but one i wanted new readers to go into. Since the book is psychological as well as fantastical, I decided my machine would have a profile of a person, to echo the struggles of the main character.

What surprises me the most of all of you is no one has commented on the decline of the book cover from the 50's to the present. John Grisham covers anyone? The nineties were darker then some of the clunkers that were on the show last night! Finally, I love my cover and so do my new friends at Penguin. I would love to chat more on the subject. Come meet me. I will be signing copies of my design at the Vroman's:  Wed, June 30th.