(Karel Thole’s cover for the 1986 edition of The Divine Invasion (1981), Philip K. Dick)
Following close on the heels of my post on European (Italy, France, and Spain) editions of Robert Silverberg’s SF I present fifteen Italian covers for Philip K. Dick’s novels and short story collections. Karel Thole, as always, puts in the best shift. But there are some other gems—for example Libero Vitali’s cover for the 1974 edition of PKD’s wonderful (and terrifying) novel A Maze of Death (1970). My favorite Thole cover of the bunch is for Urania #897 (1981), which contains contains various PKD short stories gathered by the Italian editors. Thole’s delightful ability to interject uncanny surrealist elements in his art matches perfectly PKD’s own stylistic tendencies.
Note: There’s a fantastic (but incomplete) resource that gathers thumbnail images of many of the PKD’s foreign editions. I have tried to find higher quality ones that also appealed to me for the sake of this post. But check Continue reading