Tour Of The Universe
(1980 - Pierrot Publishing / Mayflower Books)

[-BELOW THE LINE-] (by Malcolm Edwards & Robert Holdstock) This book is a narrative of one couple's tour package through a number of worlds, with a large selection of commissioned artwork to accompany it. Unfortunately, as supportive documentation, it is also filled with diagrams, star-maps, cave-plans, hieroglyphics, company logos, cut-aways diagrams, flyers, ads, news-reports, reservations, passports, id-cards, tickets, admission forms and lots of other faux paperwork. Only 50 art-pages, out of the book's 140, are not enough to get it up on to The List. It's also sad to see so many of those pages used to serve 21 double-page spreads, though only four of those could be said to be misaligned, distorted and total losers. It's a shame that artwork was so underrepresented, because a handful of these works are quite striking and I've seen some of those reproduced in other collections. So, the list of artists that count as being 'well-presented', even if only barely so, are: Jim Burns (3), Richard Clifton-Dey, Alan Daniels (3), Les Edwards (4), Bob Fowke (3), Angus McKie (2), Terry Oakes (2), Jeff Ridge, Tony Roberts (4) and Richard Sparks.