Philip Jose Farmer book with Silverberg Cover

[Bick]

Hi,
I don't know if this has ever come up before, but what do you think? The Grafton (1980s) paperback release of Philip Jose Farmer's "Dayworld", clearly has a cover that depicts the Urbmons of Robert Silverberg's "The World Inside". I wonder why? Anyone else noticed this? It does not relate to any architecture in dayworld, but is an absolute ringer for World Inside. Strange!

Bick

 

[Pyan]

Not as odd as you might think - the cover art frequently bears no resemblance to the events in the story, and the author often has little or no say in the choice of cover.

A lot of my 70's and 80's paperbacks have Chris Foss paintings as covers, but they don't fit into the story at all.

There's also a lot of duplicated (and more) cover art in SF, especially the earlier works - have a look at the diversity of authors in this selection:

Adventures in Science Fiction Cover Art: Reusing Cover Art

 

[Bick]

Thanks pyan - that's a really nice link.

The wierd thing with the dayworld cover, is that I don't think its a reuse from a silverberg release - I suspect it was drawn for The World Inside, not used for some reason, so they put it on the cover of the next book they published. Would love to hear if anyone knows the true story.

Yes - chris foss covers! Brilliant. He did lots of asimov books (Panther releases in the 70's-80's). You're right - they have nothing to do with the stories at all, but I loved them.

 

[Ursa major]

It isn't only SFF where covers are either reused or bear striking resemblances to one another. (I think it's Private Eye magazine that sometimes shows two supposedly independently conceived, but nearly identical, book covers side-by-side and wonders how this came to be.)


It's the same with some adverts, where it's clear that whatever ingenuity and creativity its producers and directors have has been exclusively channeled into putting in enough tweaks to avoid claims of plagiarism. (Sadly, these folk's creativity is so limited, even in this area, that we can all see their adverts are knock-offs.)