The Science In Science Fiction
(1983 - Alfred A. Knopf)

[BELOW THE LINE] (by Peter Nicholls) Just thumbing quickly through this 208-page book, one might form an impression that it has a healthy amount of art in it, but in reality, most of the images found inside are pictures, diagrams, maps, cutaways & single-color tinted images of paintings. The real focus was always meant to be the 172 text pages with all the information & commentary about how science-fiction stories are inspired by advances in the real world (and vice-versa). Ultimately, you find that there are only 17 pages that feature 'well-presented' works and four other pages each collecting together two images. Among these are two images that spread across the book's central gutter, but both of those are still acceptable presentations of the panoramas they display. Most of the illustrations are accompanied by captions that are a bit of commentary about what's being depicted and, in the case of the artwork, usually provides the name of the artist. In a couple of instances, a little digging was required to identify the neglected ones and as you can see below, a couple remained unable to be identified. So, the 'well-presented' artists here are: Don Davis, Dougal Dixon, Peter Ellenshaw, Chris Foss (2), Peter Goodfellow, Fred T. Jane, Bob Layzell, John Martin, Angus McKie, J. Allen St. John, Denise Watt, Tim White*, Gilbert Williams, and UNKNOWN (2).