enders game - What is the Speaker for the Dead cover depicting?

To me, it seems that whatever is on the cover of Speaker for the Dead--it appears to be a docking location for starships--is entirely unrelated to the story.

Am I missing something?

Is it depicting something from one of the other stories? (This seems highly unlikely, considering that Speaker was the second book written in the Ender saga)

Or is it just a science-fictiony looking picture that the publishers thought would sell more books than an image of anything that is actually in the story?

Speaker for the Dead cover

Answer

The picture used as the cover for 'Speaker for the Dead' is called "The Age of Pussyfoot". It was drawn by monumental space artist Jon Harris in 1969 and the title very closely mirrors a book by Frederick Pohl called "The Age of the Pussyfoot".

The image was created as a bespoke image for the Pohl book, then simply re-used as a stock cover image for OSC's 'Speaker for the Dead' without bearing any particular relation to the actual plotline.

The same technique (e.g. placing unrelated cover images by John Harris) was used for the three other books in the original Ender Series. Ender's Game used a picture called "Drunkard's Walk" that was originally a bespoke picture created for another Frederick Pohl book of the same name. Xenocide and Children of the Mind also used untitled stock illustrations, several of which can be purchased on John Harris' website.

Age of the Pussyfoot cover

Drunkard's Walk cover

Comments

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