Those Vintage P K D Covers

It just baffles me. There’s a landslide of interesting Philip K. Dick covers out there. And yet, were you to pick up The Man in the High Castle, you’d likely wind up with the schmaltzy construction paper torso of astonishment at right. Are those supposed to be surprise lines or something? No, that naked, armless guy is embarassed, poor thing! “Hey, I thought I was posing for a can of Paul Mitchell primping wax! What’s with all this dystopia??”

Couldn’t we have just stick with white tiger on a ledge? Or czech this one!

See, this is exactly the benefit of used books. Aside from the glorious marginalia and ad-hoc footnoting, you get to find a nice, fun cover that isn’t around no more. And where does one go to scoop up used books? You go to AbeBooks, probably.

Here is what AbeBooks looks like:

Some entries have covers, but a lot don’t. Usually they only show the covers of the newest editions.

However, we can grab some editions from the cover library at LibraryThing:

This hack will only add covers to AbeBooks. If Abe already shows a picture (and some booksellers do show a photo of the actual book from their inventory,) then those images will be left alone.

Of course, some entries are still blank. If there is no ISBN. Or if LibraryThing lacks the cover — which is common, but less common than Amazon.

Here’s a shot of an updated book page, with the real cover.

See? A fine, illustrated cover from days of yore. Devoid of panicky torsos and their ilk.

The Greasemonkey script is entitled AbeBooks Covers at Userscripts.org. Find yourself a Clooney-free Solaris.