Saturday, June 2, 2012

C.S. Lewis Space Trilogy - 1st Editions


(Click to enlarge.)

I found a nice picture of these at Ebay today. Believe it or not, I had never seen the original 1st edition books with their original dust jackets. I really like these. Dust jackets today are so darn busy and flashy, but I find these to be very warm and inviting. They look the way books did when I was a kid going to the library. Simple and understated is better I think.

However, having said that, note that in the upper left corner of Out of the Silent Planet there's a drawing of a planet with a ring around it. The trip in that book was from Earth to Mars and back. Mars has no rings! In fact, only Mars, Earth, and Venus were featured in the three books. No rings around any of them. I bet Lewis wasn't too crazy about that dust jacket design to say the least!

Perelandra shows a drawing of huge castle-like ocean front house. I don't remember there being any houses at all on Venus mentioned in the story except maybe huts, and that's where the ocean was. It was a very primative land on Venus where a new Adam and Eve lived. There was a large country house on Earth toward the beginning of the story, but it wasn't near an ocean. What were the people who designed these dust jackets thinking?

Did I mention that the guy selling these books is asking $3,400 for the lot? I'll never understand the minds of collectors.