Melancholy Elephants by Spider Robinson (Tor, 1985)
Melancholy Elephants is a collection of fourteen stories from Hugo Award-winning author Spider Robinson (b. 1948), opening with the eponymous one from 1982. First published in hardback by Penguin Canada in 1984, this is the first paperback edition, issued in 1985 by Tor Books, New York, with cover art by Jill Bauman.
Ryter is a typeface family released by VGC around 1974. Its designer is unknown to me. Ryter came with a bucketload of alternates, and the uncredited cover designer employed several of them, like the flat-roofed M, the L without top bar, and the A with a corner at the top right. If you look closely, you can spot two different forms for O, N, and S. This wasn’t enough, though: there are also swashy forms for E and H which appear to be custom additions, possibly created to echo the trunk and tusks of the elephant floating in space. Talking about alternates: they should have used the plain I as well: Ryter’s default glyph with tail and entry stroke is best used in initial position, and not in the middle of words like here.
Back cover
