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.

Big Hair

[Sorry about the long gap between posts: among other things, I managed to injure myself while putting in a new hot water system, and my wife managed to injure herself while cooking, so it's been Uncoordinated Self-Inflicted Iinjury Fortnight at our place.]

I've never read George Pelecanos--he's one of those writers I keep heariung great things about, but have never got around to. However, now seems a good time to start: his UK publisher, Orion, is doing a three-version launch of his most recent book, What It Was, which is probably a test in how to make money in the new digital publishing world. They're simultaneously doing an ultra-cheap ebook, a normal paperback, and a fancy-pants (but not over-expensive) hardcover. And it has worked on me, since I've now ordered the hardcover.

The novel is set in 1972, and the book has a full-on blaxsploitation look. I can find no info on the designer anywhere, sadly. Here's the hardcover:

And the paperback:

Both are much more interesting than the US edition:

White China

With china being the traditional 20th anniversary gift, British publishers Orion have decided to commemorate their two decades next year by commissioning sculptor Ben Twiston-Davies to create new sculptures representing 20 of their books; sculptures which have then been carefully photographed against white backgrounds and given minimalist text treatments. The results are quite lovely, as I hope you can see from the 10 covers I've scrounged together show.

I just wish that some of the books themselves were more deserving of this beautiful treatment. Orion may claim that "Award-winning, ground-breaking, genre-defining, blockbusting, [...] they’re the very best in publishing," but the likes of Dave Pelzer should be kept out of print, not celebrated. And the Horrid Henry cover looks unfortunately like this Tutis classic...

If Henry's doing what I think he's doing, then he really is horrid.