Spaceships: An Illustrated History of the Real and the Imagined Hardcover Book:
Highly Recommended. By Ron Miller. How have actual spaceships influenced the design of fictional ones like the Millenium Falcon and the Starship Enterprise? Did a fiction series in Collier's magazine really inspire us to create real-life space stations like Mir and the ISS? How have our depictions of space travel developed as the reality of space travel changed? In this very cool new book, Ron Miller shows that when it comes to manned spacecraft, art actually does imitate life and, even more bizarrely, life imitates art. Packed with 800 images and photos!!
How have actual spaceships influenced the design of fictional ones like the Millenium Falcon and the Starship Enterprise? Did a fiction series in Collier's magazine really inspire us to create real-life space stations like Mir and the ISS? How have our depictions of space travel developed as the reality of space travel changed? In this very cool new book, Ron Miller shows that when it comes to manned spacecraft, art actually does imitate life and, even more bizarrely, life imitates art. Packed with 800 images and photos!!
In fact, astronautics owes its origins to art. Long before engineers and scientists took the possibility of spaceflight seriously, virtually all of its aspects had been explored in art and literature. Miller takes readers on a visual journey through the history of the spaceship both in our collective imagination and in reality. The vivid illustrations trace the spaceship through its conception, engineering, and building, from the practical origins of spaceflight in the wartime V-2 rocket to future Mars programs.
They also chart, in exquisite detail, the ubiquity of spaceships in the golden age of space travel fiction (1950s and '60s) plus their broad influence in popular art, television, film, and literature. Spaceships reminds us of the romance of manned space travel as it has been, as we imagined it could be, and as it may be in the future.
Chapters each explore: The Dreamers (Copernicus and Galileo; invention of the Rocket), The Engineers (including Jules Verne), The Experimentors (Goddard, Obert, Mond, Rocket Cars and Rocket Sleds, Flash Gordon & Buck Rogers), WWII and the Rocket Race (Eugene Sanger, V-2s, British Interplanetary Society), The Golden Age (Colliers, Destination Moon, Movie Spaceships, Walt Disney, X-15)...
And onward, with Dreams to Reality (Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Soviet Lunar Program, The Space Shuttle), and finally The Future, which explores Space Lanes, XPrize, Virgin Galactic, Mars Missions, Orion, Solar Sails, etc.)
This is only a brief list of all the features here. From space toys of the 1950s, comic books and comic strips, to Jules Verne and the pulp writers, to modern science fiction, to, well, you get the idea. This is a knockout of a book, the best I've ever seen on the subject, covering every aspect of our romantic vision of exploring the planets and beyond. And it looks very readable, besides being a gathering place for 800 images, including lots of cool vintage work rarely if ever before collected! What a job well done! -Bud
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