I just got Gene Wolfe's Free Live Free from the library and I haven't started reading it yet. I dearly love the cover, though. As with most of Wolfe it's a science fiction book but the art style looks much more like a 1970s reprint of a 1940s mystery novel. The jacket copy describes the four main characters as "a private detective, a witch, a salesman, and a prostitute." So let's see.
The witch, a definite Liz Taylor type in plunging neckline, is doing a perfect "raise the roof" move. While it's probable that she's supposed to be in a different scene, the prostitute appears to be checking her out. She also looks much more inviting than the vast majority of prostitutes.
Of the two men, I'm not sure which is supposed to be the salesman and which is the private detective. The guy on the left combines a sharp city slicker suit with a mustache that yells "yee-ha!" The guy on the right, in the tan overcoat, seems like the artist ("Enric") modeled him on William Holden but is a dead ringer for what Tom Hanks looks like today. That's serendipity for you.
2 comments:
Your observations about the cover of this one are pretty shrewd as well as amusing. Wolfe wrote a large enough number of books that I'd often notice a shelf or two full at Powell's but I never did buy one. What I did notice is that there appeared to be a number of artists who produced covers for his books - some way better than others. This is a good one. When I checked further I learned it was the first edition hardcover copy (of a book that many consider to be among Wolfe's best). Unfortunately, the artist wasn't named anywhere I looked.
Carl Lundgren painted the original paperback cover of Live Free Live - definitely an admirable job (and another non-typical looking prostitute).
Another artist I admired for his Wolfe covers was Bruce Pennington, famous as the cover artist for a number of sc-fi authors. I especially liked this cover illustration for The Island of Dr. Death. Pretty wild (but I wouldn't want to live there).
If you're interested there's an interview with Pennington about his illustrations of Gene Wolfe's books.
Wolfe was pretty prolific, it's true. He was an engineer who started publishing fiction in the late 60s, and just kept going for the rest of his life. So I can see how a lot of illustrators would want to work with him. This cover was buy an artist name Enric, with his full name seeming to be Enric Torres-Prat. Other pieces of his work are shown here. Most of it doesn't really interest me because it looks like fairly standard fantasy art, but it might just not be the best selection.
That's a neat cover by Carl Lundgren. He actually seems to come closer to what the character looks like in the back, I'd say.
"Nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there" is a common condition of science fiction worlds. That one looks particularly apocalyptic, although it's a strangely peach colored apocalypse. Funny how you can change the mood with some odd details like that.
Bruce Pennington seems like an interesting guy. He has a background in taxidermy as well, which sort of shows.
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