Cover Stamps (Discworld covers, Going Postal recap)

Unfortunately some scheduling issues pushed back our recording of #Pratchat80, and unfortunately we aren’t going to be able to bring you that discussion of Making Money until until October. But it has been a very long time since we talked about Going Postal, so Ben thought you might like a recap to tide you over – plus a discussion of some of his favourite Discworld book covers, prompted by subscriber Ian!

We’d love to hear about your favourite covers, from any of the various editions of Pratchett’s works! Let us know about them using the hashtag #Pratchat79A on social media, or get in touch via email or our subscriber Discord.

You can find various covers of the Discworld books via the L-Space wiki, or via the Internet Speculative Fiction Database at isfdb.org. For the isfdb, make sure you choose “Fiction Titles” below the search box when searching for a specific book, then scroll down to the bottom of the list of editions and click the link which says “View all covers for [Book Title]”. Note that not all the covers Ben mentions are at those two sources; we’ve linked to other sources below where necessary.

Ben mentions these favourite covers:

• The original cover for The Colour of Magic by Alan Smith
• Pratchett’s own original cover for The Carpet People (the image isn’t as small as Ben remembered)
• The new Penguin paperback designs by Leo Nickolls, incorporating Paul Kidby’s artwork, especially Moving Pictures. (The link is to the L-Space page Ben put together for these editions, which also gives you handy links to all the books in the wiki.)
• Paul Kidby’s covers for the first UK editions, in particular Night Watch, Going Postal and The Science of Discworld, plus the back cover of the original hardcover edition of The Last Hero
• Josh Kirby’s covers for Eric (the original large format edition), Small Gods, and especially Reaper Man
• The cover for the graphic novel adaptation of Small Gods by Ray Friesen
• The Penguin 25th Anniversary edition of Hogfather, with art by BoomArtwork
• The American hardcover edition of Raising Steam, with art by Justin Gerard
• The Mai Més Catalan editions with covers by Marina Vidal, especially Equal Rites and The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

We discussed Going Postal way back in 2020, in #Pratchat38, “Moisten to Steal”, with guests Nicholas J Johnson and Lawrence Leung.

We’ll be back in October with #Pratchat80 discussing Making Money with guest Stephanie Convery.

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