2023
I am a bit overwhelmed, and I don’t know what more there is to say about it anymore, but the case is cracked, and the mystery is solved! You can read all about it and listen to the story over at The Endless Thread Podcast today.
And also, because I do not want to possibly contribute to confusion for future people seeking this answer, I’m going to include it plain as day right here: it’s Richard Bober! But you should listen to the podcast anyway because it was lots of fun hearing about the twists and turns that eventually led to the answer. You need to experience the whole wild ride! Many, many thanks to all of the people who left comments on this blog post, on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, and on all of the various subreddits. And a huge thanks to John Coulthart for A LOT of suggestions and ideas and, of course, Adam Rowe and Michael Whelan, who shared their expertise and connections and got so many eyeballs and brain noodles involved!
In the meantime, if you need to reacquaint yourself with this particular mystery, you can read all about it here. A Mystery That Should Not Exist: Who Is The Cover Artist For This Edition Of A Wrinkle In Time?
AND ALSO, I never would have made the connections and guessed it was this particular artist; however, he was not entirely new to me. Do you recall me sharing this image all over social media a few years back? Well…it’s the same artist!!
If you enjoy posts like these or if you have ever enjoyed or been inspired by something I have written, and you would like to support this blog, consider buying the author a coffee?
Drax says
Outstanding!
Hayley says
This is so exciting! That was always my favorite cover.
Nanne says
L'Engle would say you are a Namer, fighting the fallen angels. "War and hate are their business, and one of their chief weapons is un-Naming – making people not know who they are. If someone knows who he is, really knows, then he doesn’t need to hate.
That’s why we still need Namers, because there are places throughout the universe like your planet Earth." (A Wind in the Door) What a string, and would that more people would attempt to connect points A and B as inspired by your question!
Owlmirror says
Congratulations and kudos to all the investigators!
You might want to edit the original post to forward link to this one.
I still have some questions that were not answered in the podcast, that I could see. Maybe these could be passed on to Endless Thread?
One of the things that struck me, looking at the ISFDB pages for the covers of Wrinkle, was that there seemed to be two versions of this cover; early ones with a lighter, greenish palette, and later ones with a darker, purplish palette. Going by the images posted to the Endless Thread transcript, the original art does seem to have a dark purplish palette. Bober himself probably was not responsible for making the change, but maybe Bruce Hall would know? Was it deliberate, or was it an accidental artifact of how the art was given to or configured by the printers? Or could it be that the art was in fact done with the light greenish palette originally, but some chemical change over the course of time darkened it? Maybe the Bober family members could speak to that possibility.
And another question that Bruce Hall and/or the Bober's could address is the cover of the sequel, "A Wind in the Door". Was that also by Richard Bober? Or is there yet another mystery to be solved, there?
Finally, looking at the forehead of the centaur in the slide-scan, it definitely looks like there are numbers there -- 213, maybe? Did Matthew Bober ever notice those when he was young, and question his uncle about what they meant? Or am I still just seeing patterns where none exist?
S. Elizabeth says
Great minds think alike! I was thinking on this just as I fell asleep last night...I will do it now!
S. Elizabeth says
I just now had a chance to read through the rest of your questions, and I will pass them on! (I had similar questions about The Wind at the Door!)
S. Elizabeth says
Hm! I see they updated the ISFD page to include the artist credit and look at that, they've included covers in both the blue and green palettes! https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?3222679
Emera says
Oh my goodness, congratulations!! I only just got into the Endless Thread podcast this summer, so what a treat to pull it up one morning and find that your Wrinkle in Time quest had terminated here?! It was so heartwarming to hear the shout-outs to your blog and writing work and get to hear you on the podcast. Oh my gosh, the photo of the water-damaged paintings in Bober's basement made my gut clench, but I guess I should take it as a sign that Bober presumably enjoyed his practice and his career but wasn't over-concerned about material permanence or legacy.
Thank you for championing this quest to give an unknown artist his due, and uniting a surprising percentage of the SFF art/publishing community in mystery-hunting along the way!