Five classic science fiction books with new 3-D covers

Vintage Classics has just published a series of classic science fiction novels with newly commissioned 3-D covers. They are available in the UK, and can be ordered internationally from Amazon's UK site. I asked Suzanne Dean, the designer of the series to tell me a bit about the covers. she said:

All the illustrations are commissioned. We briefed each illustrator in exactly the same way, giving them the information they needed to know how to create a 3-D cover image.
We asked them to think about the colours that don't react when putting on the 3-D specs -- Black and yellow. The image would come towards the viewer or move away from the viewer, depending on whether you placed the red tone to the right or left of the blue tone.
The illustrators had to think about the image, and how it would look to the customer in the shop without them wearing the 3-D glasses, in other words where they would use the yellow and black to produce an attractive image in 2-D.

Each paperback comes with a set of 3-D glasses.

Planet of the Apes, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea The Lost World, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Tales

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

MORE: Art and Design • Book • science fiction

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Angryjim

Cool! My pal Vladimir Zimakov did the one on the right!
http://www.vladimirzimakov.com/
ill lich

Jeez, I’d think you’d get a headache from reading an entire book of 3-D text.

Oh. Nevermind.
Anonymous

I thought the correct title was “Monkey Planet” and was only changed to “Planet Of The Apes” to coincide with the Charlton Heston movie.
penguinchris

Whether or not the 3D effect adds anything, the aesthetic here is great and the illustrations are excellent. If I saw these in a store I’d be incredibly tempted, even though I’ve read them all and at least the middle three are public domain works that I’ve also got on my e-reader.
Nadreck

Shouldn’t the Call of Cthulhu be in 4D?
Anonymous

Cute, but yet another print of the terrible, but copyright-expired, translation of Verne’s work? I know publishers love them because, well, they’re free.

Wake me when someone pays a modern translator and cuts a new translation. Paying a designer to come up with a yet another pretty cover does not a classic make.